On being a Chinese Student at Politecnico during the pandemic

19 November 2020

Zhupeng is an engineering student and founded the first association of Chinese students at the Politecnico. We met him (virtually, of course) to better understand the experience of this community, how the University lives and how he and his fellow students are experiencing the ongoing coronavirus emergency.

"At the beginning of this emergency I realized that when writing on the coronavirus, there was an automatic tendency to match the virus to the term «Chinese» in the titles of the various articles: «the Chinese virus», they called it. This may have had an effect on the Chinese community. Fortunately, the Politecnico, in addition to reacting immediately to the emergency by activating the lectures at a distance in a short time, also from the communicative point of view has been very supportive, I have not read in any of the Rector's press releases the combination of the term coronavirus or covid-19 with the word «Chinese». I liked it very much." So says Zhupeng, a student of Automation and Control Engineering at Politecnico di Milano.

"Compared to this moment of health emergency, we at the Association often hear in chats and we have decided to suspend all activities.

First of all, we had to get used to the new telematic lessons and the new lifestyle of this period. If the quarantine will be extended, we will resume our meetings on Microsoft Teams, as everyone does at this time.

Speaking with my associates from the student association I perceived that they are calm, also because, as soon as there were the first cases and the invitation to stay at home circulated, we followed the directions from the beginning and we did not underestimate the virus. At the end of January my aunt, who was in China, could not return to Italy, they had cancelled her flight and, despite being very far from Wuhan, the police said not to go out. Having had news directly from China we perceived, as a community and before others, the need to stay at home and consequently to invite all our colleagues of the Politecnico to do the same.

I was born and raised in Milan, Italian with Chinese origins. I am in the last year of my Master's Degree in Automation and Control Engineering and in 2018 I decided to found the first Chinese association called "WOSHOU Chinese Italian Polimi Students Association" at Politecnico di Milano.

I was educated at home following the Chinese culture, which is very strict, precise and involves knowing how to respect the rules and be quick: it’s not an optional in our culture. The school was my first point of contact with Italian culture, very different from Chinese culture. By now it’s well rooted in me, but at the beginning it fascinated me a lot; the aspect that has always struck me the most is curiosity. Every person I meet for the first time always asks me some questions about my origins, as a child it annoyed me a bit (it made me feel different, when I wanted to integrate), but then I realized that it is a good thing, it means that you want to know the other. It was a game of negotiation to get to know each other better.

The student association WOSHOU also represents an opportunity for all university students, Chinese and non-Chinese, to speak and learn about Chinese culture and reconcile it with Italian culture. WOSHOU has twenty students who are active members, mostly Chinese. Ten of us have decisional power and the rest support the activities in a constant way. There is also a variable number of non-affiliated people who participate in our events. Being a voluntary activity, we try to reconcile it with all other university commitments and it is not always easy.

Every semester we do some recruiting. It is difficult to involve students for various reasons and it’s always a challenge for us. The most difficult thing is to involve first generation Chinese students (this is what I call those who come directly from China). You may wonder why, simply because they tend to subscribe less to associations because they stay at Politecnico di Milano for a limited period of time and therefore, while they are settling into Milanese and university life, maybe they don't even have time to participate in these initiatives. And then, they come precisely with the intention of living a short experience and then return to China. Most of the students active within the student association tend to be second generation Chinese, who were born or have lived in Italy for a long time, and a minority represents Italy or other countries. We want to be an inclusive association, being part of an inclusive university as for Politecnico di Milano".

Zhupeng is an Italian student with Chinese origins. More than 1000 Chinese students are enrolled at Politecnico di Milano. Of these, more than 400 are studying Engineering.