Shannon Ryker | Nov. 13, 2008
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| Courtesy photo |
| Elizabeth Dilts, B.A.J. ’08, is living and working in China indefinitely after traveling there as the 2008 Hazeltine Travel Scholarship winner. |
Elizabeth Dilts, B.A.J. ’08, did just that.
The 2008 recipient of School of Journalism’s Ross Hazeltine Travel Scholarship, Dilts wanted to go to China as soon as she heard about this scholarship opportunity.
“I wanted to see how young people use the Internet in China and if they can’t find what they want, how they deal with it,” said Dilts, who already had a focus in mind for her adventure.
Since last summer, Dilts has been teaching journalism writing at Nankai University in Tianjin. She also studies Chinese for 15 hours per week and freelances in English for the Post Tribune in Northwest Indiana and for Jin Life, a Chinese lifestyle magazine.
In an hour-long interview using the software program Skype, Dilts spoke about her experience thus far living in Tianjin, China. One of her chief duties is teaching. At Nankai University, Dilts teaches in English to her students, who are fluent in English. She said Nankai University is equivalent to Princeton in China.
“They will let me teach here, but I probably wouldn’t have been able to get accepted,” she joked.
Dilts explained the main reason she wanted to come to China was because of the emerging usage of technology, specifically, the Internet. She finds that the students don’t really question the government censorship of the Internet.
“Students aren’t really looking for things away from the status quo; they know what they hear and see is filtered from the government,” she explained. “The Internet is mostly used for entertainment value. They don’t want to know what they aren’t supposed to know.”
The Internet in China is hard to access. It took three weeks for Dilts to get Internet access in her apartment after her initial move to Tianjin.
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| Courtesy photo |
| “China offers the easiest place to make friends,” Dilts said. Among crowds, she draws attention as a Westerner and people aren’t afraid to talk to her and ask questions. This shot is from the Bund in Shanghai. |
Access is a frustration for Dilts when she is teaching.
“The freshmen are not even given e-mail addressees from the school when they are accepted into the university,” she said, describing a scenario opposite the highly-wired student life she experienced at IU. “I started having them to check their e-mail addresses for an assignment.”
As for her own freelance work, Dilts says that writing in English for a Chinese publication is significantly different from writing for one in the U.S.
“Journalism in the U.S. is all about verification, things are either right or wrong. Journalism in China is about assertion. The publication tells the audiences what is right and wrong,” said Dilts.
Another aspect of Chinese journalism she finds a big adjustment is the difficulty getting the facts right – and the idea that editors as well as the audience may be OK with not having all the facts.
“In China, the media is more interested in the storytelling aspect of journalism. They want articles to have an entertainment value. The stories need to read more like a novel,” she said.
For example, she described how editors may assess a restaurant review in the U.S. and in China.
“For a restaurant review in China, they would want to hear how entertaining or fun the restaurant is, rather than the facts about it,” she explained.
Living in China has been a challenge for Dilts. When she arrived, she spoke little Chinese. Now, she is beginning to become more comfortable when ordering in restaurants and going out by herself.
“It’s hard because here you are mute and illiterate if you don’t speak the language,” she said. “Here, I have to learn a whole new system of symbols on top of learning the language.”
But making friends and having a social life hasn’t been as big of a challenge as she’d predicted.
"The demand for English speakers here is very high. I have received numerous job offers since I’ve been here, by just speaking English with someone over the phone.” |
Dilts says with the little free time she has, she enjoys going out to local bars with her friends and singing karaoke, or KTV, as it is known in China. She isn’t afraid to travel and explore. For her birthday present to herself, she traveled to the little village of Cuandixia. She took a train ride to the west side of Beijing and then another three-hour bus ride into the mountains. She said she was the only American who had visited Cuandixia that month.
It was “the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten,” she said.
Surprisingly, Dilts says one of the easiest things for Americans to do in China is to get a job.
“The demand for English speakers here is very high,” she reported. “I have received numerous job offers since I’ve been here, by just speaking English with someone over the phone.”
Dilts plans on staying in China indefinitely. She doesn’t have any plans to come back to live in the U.S. in the next year.
“The average turnover for foreigners in China is two to five years, and I can really see myself still here in five years, setting up a life,” she said. She hopes to continue writing in China after her teaching visa expires in July.
“I want to write for a living. I can’t get a writing job in the States and what better place to study Chinese than in China?” she said.
She has no plans to continue teaching when her visa expires and says if she cannot get a journalism job, she will apply for a student visa and study Chinese while working.
She’s already completed the requirements of the scholarship, which is two months in duration. The Ross Hazeltine Scholarship was initiated in 1978 to reward graduating journalism students with a grant to travel outside of North America.
“Generally, we give the chosen student between $7,000 and $8,000 for their trip,” said Bonnie Brownlee, associate dean for undergraduate studies for the School of Journalism. “To apply, students have to write a proposal describing where they want to go and why.”
Students provide a detailed budget for their trip, so the scholarship committee has a better idea of what the award money will go toward. After students apply, those who closely match the criteria needed are interviewed and the scholarship committee makes a decision.
“Elizabeth had really done her homework when she was interviewed,” Brownlee said. “She had already made contacts in China in anticipation of her winning the scholarship. I think the scholarship committee was surprised and pleased with that.”
Dilts had contacted everyone she knew who had a link with China.
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| Courtesy photo |
| Dilts has not been deterred from sightseeing and traveling. She recently visited the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. |
Dilts also used the IU alumni database at the school to search for any alumni in China. She contacted Evan Osnos, then Beijing bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune, and networked with friends and family to find people with connections to China.
Dilts encourages American journalism students to jump in as she did, to not fear the state of the economy in the U.S. but to understand how much more competitive it will be to get a job out of college. She knew how hard it would be to get a job in the U.S., so traveling was very appealing to her.
“If you process the world through storytelling, take a broader look, there are many opportunities in other places in the world,” she said.
While traveling and living abroad may be difficult, Dilts says people should know what they are willing to do and how far from home they still can be comfortable.
“If you make a decision to move half a world away from everything you know, you have to decide that you’re going to succeed,” she said. “I decided that I was going to succeed here long before I left.”
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