Having a Chinese roommate

So the first thing I notice when I get back to campus in Beijing is that another person is living in my room. This person is my Chinese roommate, Ni Bing. His english is amazing (he's been studying it for seven years) and he's a sophmore in the international economics program at Bei Wai. All of the Chinese roommates speak english but I think Ni's english is exceptionally good. The only thing I notice is that he tends to use really extreme adjectives like "fantastic" or "brilliant" to describe things that aren't that impressive. On the other hand, he could just be a really enthusiastic guy.

REAL EXAMPLE:
Ni: (eating a bowl of green beans at his desk) Manny, what do you call these beans in english?
Me: green beans.
Ni: Ah, yes, we also call them green beans in Chinese.
Me: Oh
Ni: Do you also have black beans?
Me: yes
Ni: and red beans?
Me: yes
Ni: Ah, that's so fantastic!

Like most Chinese college students, he seems very studious. I got that impression when I first met him. When he realized we both had very similar majors and he said without hesitation "Ah! So we will become colleagues one day!"
He's a really nice guy and I think we've both gotten a lot out of living with each other. It's really interesting helping someone learn english especially since his english is already so good. A lot of the things he has trouble with are very high-level issues like using specific, complicated words or knowing when to use sophisticated english idioms. Its always an interesting challenge to try to articulate the minute differences between words to him and trying to help him express what he's really trying to say when he writes english papers or speeches.

Lately he really hasn't been around that much because sophmore year at least at Bei Wai is the busiest and most stressful year of school. The college culture here is very different from the US. There are some students who go out and everyone is very social but in general they go out at night a lot less than American students. From the way my roommate described it, the general mantra Chinese students live by is "study first, have fun later" which to an American student means "study until 10PM and then go out" or "do work until friday night and then go out" but in China I think it's more like "spend your entire time at college working very hard, and then after you graduate you can start going to bars". This sort of work ethic is definitely changing more and more as Chinese society becomes more liberal but it definitely still has a huge influence on the lifestyles of Chinese students. I'm still suprised that the American college work ethic of "work hard, play hard" that every American in my program essentially lives by hasn't managed to rub off on our Chinese roommates. More than a few Chinese roommates have never had a beer before. That's not to say they dont know how to have fun either though. A lot of them are really into sports. I've played a lot of ping pong and badminton (Chinese people love games with rackets) with the Chinese students and I just learned how to play Mah Jong, which some people take pretty seriously here. Basketball is also really popular and some people keep up with NBA teams pretty closeley.

What's also kind of strange to us Americans is that a good number of the brightest students are Communist party members. It seems really weird at first to think guys down the hall are members of THE PARTY but in reality there are huge benefits and opportunities that members get and you have to be a pretty exceptional student to become a member. I'll talk more about "The Party" later, but in general I think people's view and relationship with the communist party and Mao Zedong is very complicated. Despite all of the changes in economic and social policy since Cultural revolution, Mao Zedong's beliefs and hopes for China are still encouraging for many young Chinese people. In writing a speech about the current job crisis in China for his english class, the one quote my Chinese roommate used was from Mao Zedong.