Sociology of Tao Li Yuan

Life in our dorm has been interesting. There are two residential buildings at Jiao Tong Da Xue dedicated to foreign students. The buildings are tucked away in a remote corner of campus, I suspect to minimize mingling with the local Chinese students. The demographic of the overseas students is about 70% Korean, 10% Japanese, 10% Overseas Chinese, 10% Other. The people I've met have been mostly around the ages of 22-29.

Most of the students pay more money and choose to live off campus to have a standard of living similar to their home countries. Cheap bastards like me are ok with slumming it out in the dorms (I'm paying about $4.5/day to live in my dorm). However, I've heard that our dorms are much nicer than that of the local Chinese students.

The Koreans tend to stick to their own little cliques. Their English isn't that good so they probably find it a lot easier to mingle amongst themselves. The Japanese seem more open to interacting with people from other nationalities. They also speak better English and seem to come from more traveled backgrounds. The Europeans and Whites tend to stick together. The overseas Chinese (me) are sort of webbed between all of the groups.

Surprisingly our floors are co-ed. This was kind of shocker considering how conservative China is about sex. I already had one funny incident involving a Korean girl living on our floor. Our floor has 2 public bathrooms one for women the other for dudes. I had just finished taking a shower and was on my way out of the bathroom. I noticed a Korean girl brushing her teeth at the sink. I made eye contact with her reflection and we both took a couple seconds to process the situation. For a moment I thought some glitch in the Matrix had moved me from one shower to another. I checked the symbol on the door and confirmed the code to the Matrix wasn't compromised. The Korean girl subsequently sprinted out of the bathroom and ran back into her room. I don't think she realized the gun show I was giving her was free. It turns out she lives across the hall from me. She always has gets embarrassed when I bump into her, but I'll always remember that special moment we had together.