This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Yingyi Ma, an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University and the author of the book Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education. Yingyi’s book, which focuses on the specific experiences of Chinese undergraduates, examines the push-and-pull factors that have made studying abroad — and studying in the U.S. in particular — a “new education gospel” for many parents in China. She discusses why after 2006 Chinese students surged into American colleges and universities, and how despite their eagerness to build “cosmopolitan capital” by studying in the U.S., they’ve faced challenges in navigating American higher education.
6:56: A duality of ambition and anxiety
13:00: “Cosmopolitan capital” and globalization
39:57: The sacrifices made by Chinese families and researchers
43:58: American higher education and Chinese undergraduate students
46:14: With regard to education, the grass is always greener on the other side
Recommendations:
Yingyi: Invisible China: How the Urban-Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise, by Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell, and the popular Chinese language podcast Story FM.
Kaiser: The app Weee!, specializing in Asian and Hispanic food delivery.
Allegiance
Sauced: American cooking in China
The China meltdown
Air pollution and climate change
While we're here: China stories from a writers' colony
Out of Africa: The swifts of Beijing
Live at the Bookworm, part two: What's ahead for China?
Live at the Bookworm, part one: How has Beijing changed over the years?
Fokke Obbema on China's rising power and the nation's relations with the West
Tu Youyou and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Edmund Backhouse in the long view of history
Sinica archive: Beijing's Great Leap Forward
Rogier Creemers on cyber Leninism and the political culture of the Chinese internet
Comfort women and the struggle for reparations
Under the Dome
LGBT China
The Islamic State and China
Bo Xilai: The Trial of the Century
The one-child policy, plus the African community in Guangzhou
The extremes of Chinese media, plus Chinese internet humor
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