Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Freshman Experience

As we mentioned in a previous entry (First Day for Freshmen), the life of first-year students at a Chinese university is quite different from that of their American counterparts. Classes have already been meeting for two weeks when the freshmen arrive. Sophomores clean the dorm rooms of the incoming students, meet them at the train and bus stations, help them register, conduct campus tours, and even carry their bags and belongings to their dormitories.

On their second day on campus, however, all of that changes. The freshmen are issued uniforms, divided up into platoons, and assigned to the supervision of a drill instructor from the People's Liberation Army. For the next two weeks, the freshmen learn military discipline, march in formation, sing patriotic songs, learn martial arts, and engage in various group-building activities with a cohort of classmates that they will stay with for the next four years.
Here are a few pictures showing the first days of a new student's life at LNU:

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