The Chinese student in Tomsk State University: values, motivations, adaptation

The Chinese students in Tomsk may be researched as the representatives of the ethnic (Chinese students), local (the Chinese in Tomsk/TSU) and professional community (Chinese students-philologists, studying Russian language) at the same time. Based on their example we could reveal specific valuable, motivational and adaptive guidance. But located in TSU Chinese students are first of all the citizens of the PRC, which by definite reasons for some time educating in our city. By force of their temporal stay in our country and conservation connections with motherland, the task of total adaptation is not so sharp for them. In this case the difference from other ethnic and local communities exists. Also, the Chinese, as every foreign student, not only internationalize scientific and cultural life of the university, but form the specific image of their country in it. So according to concrete examples, the analyzing of the Chinese stu-dents» situation in TSU as well as some social, economic and spiritual aspects of the life in modern China is very topical. For these reasons three students of the philological faculty of TSU were interviewed. They arrived from Shenyang due to special exchange program. The author of this article met with them in November of 2013 in Confucius Institute. As the student of the Institute, author directly contacts with the representatives of the Celestial for a long time. This circumstance made the organization of the meeting easier and added in the researching the elements of the participant observation. In interview Chinese students were offered to answer the questions in valuable aspects: biographic, gender, social-economic, linguistic, religious, moral, cultural and adaptation. It appeared this format allows adding primary, but significant details to the image of the Chinese youth, which arrives in Tomsk to study and gets used to a new reality. As the result of the researching some findings could be made. Methodologically, the weakest link of the interview was the language barrier. Sometimes to make understanding easier, questions and answers were concretized and unambiguous a lot, therefore fragmented and limited for unfolded interpretation. Some of the voiced characteristics were brief and restrained, as long as the very sensitive Chinese people do not discuss all of the topics in formal interview. A wide field for the reflection consists of the things, about which students kept silence. In this case, the most perspective method for researching the Chinese in TSU appears the participant observation. The important valuable and motivational guidance in China may be family, social-economic situation, philosophy. The religious regulations influence less. In Tomsk the Chinese students» identity entirely saves in the framework of the national culture and generally influenced by changes of everyday habits, connected with temporal adaptation to a new lifestyle. Locating in university, they involved enough in connections with hosting side in the framework of the scientific and cultural communication.

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