Seth’s blog

Tsinghua University includes an art school added six or seven years ago. An art school elsewhere in Beijing moved to the Tsinghua campus; a big building was built for them. Two of my Chinese teachers are art students. I told them about the San Francisco art school where every department looks down on another department. This got a big laugh. The same thing happens in their school, they said. It is divided into fine arts and design. The fine arts students look down on the design students because the design students are working for money; the design students look down on the fine arts students because they aren’t practical.

The more curious interaction is between the art students and the rest of the school. Students in the rest of Tsinghua, which resembles MIT, often ask the art students their score on the national exam that high school students take to get into college. It is incredibly difficult to get into Tsinghua by that route; maybe 1 in 10,000 is successful. Art students have lower scores on this test but must also pass a test of artistic ability. One of my teachers, who is now a graduate student, said she’d been asked her exam scores at least 10 times.  Here is one context. My teacher has just helped another student with his bike.

Student who has just been helped: What’s your major?

My teacher: Art.

Student: What was your score on the national test?

And she is big and strong, she said, so potential questioners may have been afraid of being hit. Other art students are asked more often.

All Tsinghua undergraduates are required to take four Marxism-related classes to graduate; next year the requirement will be reduced to three classes. A friend told me about her Marxist philosophy class, which she thought was pretty interesting:

• There is no homework. No reading, no papers.
• If there will be a final, it hasn’t been mentioned.
• The teacher doesn’t take attendance. Now and then he calls on students to answer questions and if the student isn’t present, this is noted.

My friend, who is a member of the Communist Party, couldn’t suppress a smile when she told me about the lack of homework.

Several buildings are being built on the Tsinghua campus. At least one woman makes a living as a prostitute among the construction workers. She is known as Qikuaiban, which means seven and half yuan (about $1). The name came about when she offered her services to a worker, he said, “All I have is seven and a half yuan,” and she accepted that payment.

Happiness in China: Who wants to be a construction worker?

At Tsinghua University, students are said to spend more on bike locks than on  bikes. A friend of mine, a senior, is on her fourth bike. I met a faculty member who went to get her bike just as it was being stolen. She saw how it was done: The thief had a large number of keys. She shouted at the thief to stop, a crowd gathered, and he gave the bike back. Later she encountered him while buying pork: He was the butcher.

From James McGregor’s fascinating One Billion Customers (2005):

The Chinese were befuddled and worried by the five-hundred-page contract that McDonnell Douglas lawyers drafted to seal the $1 million deal. The Shanghai director looked forlornly at Chang [a McDonnell Douglas employee] as he signed it. “I am signing this because I trust you,” he said.

Yeah. I read this the day after I signed a five-page employment contract with Tsinghua University — the hard part was coming up with a Chinese name — that I couldn’t read a word of. I signed it because I trusted them.