Interview Three

How are you doing today?

Andy: I am very good, thank you

What is your full name?

Andy: My English name is Andy. My Chinese name is Liang Fenghui. “Feng” means the top of a mountain, and “hui” kind of means bright.

How did you come to be in Minnesota and how do you like it here?

Andy: My father’s friends and customers told me about SCSU and helped me to do the application. A degree from United States is very valuable to the Chinese. I like Minnesota but I don’t like the food. There also is very few place to do things with friends in St. Cloud.

What are some things that you like doing on your free time? Sports, Hobbies, Activity’s?

Andy: I play guitar, I think acoustic is very beautiful. I also watch movies with my roommate and try different types of beer that they sell here. Very different from China. China has beer too, but it has less flavor. Tsing tao beer is from Qingdao in Shandong province and is very famous here, but the beer sold to the United States tastes different from the beer they make to sell in China. I also like to fish. My roommate and I go fishing a few times a week when we can. I am very excited to try ice fishing this winter, I find it very interesting.

What are your likes and dislikes about the United States?

Andy: I don’t like the food here, haha but I like to go fishing and the school facilities are much better than in China. The gym and the stadiums are clean and in good conditionand so are the classrooms and areas where you can eat. Schools in China are old and poorly constructed. Network coverage here is good too.

Where do you originally come from: the town and region?

Andy: I am from near Shanghai, but in Zhejiang province.

What can you tell me more about it?

Andy: Shanghai is one of the biggest cities in the world. So many people. There is lots of business and foreigners. Other cities in China maybe no one has seen a foreigner, but around Shanghai there are a lot. People also think in China everyone speaks the same language, but there are many languages. Mandarin is the main language and it is taught in schools, but in places like Shanghai there are much older languages like Shanghainese which is very different from Mandarin. Younger children don’t use Shanghainese much anymore, they talk in Mandarin mostly. Hong Kong also uses a different language too and even still uses traditional characters while the rest of China uses less complicated characters.

What do you miss about your country?

Andy: I miss the food, they have lots of food there. I especially miss my friends. We hang out differently than American friends hang out. We go to Karaoke bars to hang out. I miss my family a lot.

What is the value of family in your country?

Andy: Family is important, but the good of all the people is more important. That is why people allow the one-child policy, because the government says it is what we need to do. Children must respect their parents and take care of them when they are old. In old times it was very sad if a couple did not have children because they would have no one to care for them when they were old. Rich men also had many wives back then and could have many children, but you can’t do that anymore.

What is your family structure like? (Head of house, values, etc.)

Andy: Do you mean for all of China or just my family? Many couples are more equal now. My parents are above my brother and I and we must show them respect. Before, the men were at the top, while the women were lower. Sometimes it is still like that.

How many brothers and sister do you have and can you tell me a little about each one?

Andy: I have one brother, he is 19. He is looking for universities in the US right now. You know the one-child policy? My mom hid when she was pregnant and forfeit a lot of money as punishment from the government. She wanted to keep him. Sometimes you can have more than one child, but it is complicated and you will have to give up a lot of money. There is pressure from other people to have only one child, even from your job and the people who work with you.

How does your home country culture different from the US culture?

Andy: In China we eat very differently. Very little junk, and a lot of food is made in stalls on a street. We have restaurants everywhere, and we use chopsticks and different spoons from the ones used here. Sometimes it is very funny to watch Chinese eat with forks, it is like many Americans trying to use chopsticks. We like to go out and treat our friends to expensive dinners and we have many fun places to hang out, like Karaoke bars and places to dance.

What are the highlights in your culture?

Andy: Our food is very important, I miss the food. We have Pandas too, but they are only in a small area in southwest China now. We have many martial arts, not just Kungfu. Our writing is very different from English. The Japanese copied our writing for their language a long time ago, but characters started in China. We have to know thousands of characters to read and write.

What are some things will make people immediately think about your country?

Andy: Electronics and cheap things made in China. Chopsticks. Pandas and dragons. Maybe tea too. Our writing definitely.

Can you tell me some history of your country?

Andy: China is very old. We had lots of emperors; the first emperor to unite China built the Great Wall thousands of years ago, but other emperors made it bigger a few hundred years ago. We stopped having emperors in the early 1900’s and after World War II there was a civil war in China with the Communists winning. We had the Cultural Revolution in the 1960’s and a lot of people died or went to prison and people stopped going to school. A lot of people don’t really talk about it. After Mao died we got new leaders and people started going to school again. People were very poor until China opened up to US business.

What are some things that make you proud to come from China?

Andy: Our history. It is very old and many things were invented in China, like paper. It was very advanced compared with Europe for a long time.

What is the most famous food in your country?

Andy: Oh, I don’t know. There are many cooking style, from different parts of the country. In the north they eat a lot of dumplings and noodles. They eat more rice and sweet food in the south. Shanghai’s food is very famous and so is the food from Sichuan, it’s very spicy. The Chinese food in the US is usually not like Chinese food at all.

What are your meals like? Size, number, times of day.

Andy: We have a big breakfast in the morning. Usually we eat Zhou, it’s a soup made out of rice and you can eat it with different vegetables or meat. We can eat other foods at stalls too. Lunch is in the afternoon and we can eat at restaurants near our school or work. Dinner is later at night. Usually we eat with a rice bowl and have a few vegetable dishes and maybe a meat dish and some soup. Everyone picks food from the plates with their chopsticks and puts it in their bowl when they eat, we share the food.

What is the education system in your country?

Andy: In China we focus on learning as much as we can. English is taught to most children when they are young. We learn to read and write characters, but we also learn math and science and history. It is a lot like here. We have lots of exams and the students with the best scores go to better schools.

How many years do you attend school?

Andy: From elementary through high school and college we go to school about 17 years. I have gone to school for 19. Children start learning at nurseries when they are very young, even as babies sometimes. School starts very early for us.

Do a lot of people get a chance to attend college in your country?

Andy: Not really. It is hard to get to college in China. The government gives students lots of tests as they go to school, and the tests place you in different schools based on your score. Students study very hard for those tests so that they can go to better schools and get better jobs later. It is very competitive.

What did you attend SCSU for? What are some of your future plans?

Andy: I am in graduate school for business. I would like to find a good job eventually, maybe I will find one in the United States.

What are the top three social pastimes? Sports, group events, various activities

Andy: In China, Karaoke is very popular for young people. Also, it is very common to see large groups practicing martial arts in cities, right next to streets. People like to stay healthy there. Many people are very interested in basketball and all the parks have groups of men playing basketball during the day, especially in the evening. It is becoming one of the favorite sports.

What are the different religions in your country? And what is the predominant religion?

Andy: Not very many people are religious anymore, because of the Communists. Buddhism was very important, the largest Buddha in the world is in China. The Communists destroyed many Buddhist places. It is still probably the most popular religion. There are small religions practiced by other groups, and there are some parts of China with many Muslims. We have Christians too, but I don’t think very many people believe in these things anymore.

What are some holidays that you celebrate in China and how do you celebrate them?

Andy: The most important holiday is Chinese New Year, which is in late January or February. People go home to their families around then, and it is very sad if you can’t celebrate it with your family, kind of like Christmas here. We make and eat lots of dumplings to celebrate, and sometimes the dumplings have special things inside to symbolize what will happen during the year. We also celebrate the Moon Festival, and there is an event on campus every year around September. Then we buy special moon cakes that have a sweet filling, sometimes with an egg yolk inside that looks like the moon. Here in the US we celebrate it with our friends and have parties after the celebration on campus.

What holidays do you like in the United States? Why?

Andy: I like Thanksgiving and Christmas because we get to go to other people’s homes and eat. We don’t celebrate Christmas in China but I like the decorations and lights here, it’s fun.

Do you have any questions for me?

Andy: No, not really. I enjoyed the interview.



Thank you for your time and I enjoyed the interview too. Have a good day.



Andy: You too.