Chéng Yú is listening. Ears cocked, head tilted, eyes wide, as if they have just met the world for the first time. Rhythmic nods fall in sync as Chéng listens. And he listens to everybody, people he knows and people he doesn’t. The 23-year-old Chinese international student listens attentively to better understand a U.S. culture far different from his own.

Chéng’s mind buzzes from question to question – Why do students drink alcohol in excess? Why do they have sex casually? Why do so many enlist in fraternities and sororities? Chéng wants to know. He believes this quality separates him from most other Chinese students at the University of Illinois. He estimates that 80 percent of them don’t have a desire to educate themselves outside of the classroom.

“I see that there’s a lot more diversity towards this country,” he says. “I shouldn’t just put a lot of value judgment very quickly on things I have seen. I think it just keeps my mind open to think that there’s an alternative way to living.”

Many of his international peers don’t have a need to understand the U.S., he says, because they are part of the 1 percent in their home countries — the sons and daughters of high-level government officials, CEOs and presidents of global corporations. He sees them smoking cigarettes together in packs outside of the campustown Starbucks, driving the latest model Audis, Mercedes and BMWs. 

He says they usually do not make friends with people who don’t speak their language. They will earn a degree and take a position at the family business in China, completing the plan that had been drawn out for them by their parents.

“A lot of time, we are more similar than we are different,” Chéng says about his fellow Chinese exchange students. “It’s just that I’m super motivated to learn about people and culture and everything here.”

So far, Chéng has learned that Christmas in the U.S. is a holiday spent with family. That four shots of alcohol is just enough. That college students in the U.S. are open to having sex – and talking about it. That male students often wear hoodies. That female students like to wear very short skirts. 

He also has realized that some of what he learned from movies and the media about the U.S. isn’t true. First, American students are actually very smart and hardworking, not lazy as the movies often portray them.

“Everybody has something they’re really good at,” he says of University students.

Chéng also has learned that Americans aren’t as unhealthy as he expected them to be. 

“Americans eat pretty healthy, contrary to the stereotype,” he says. “I know a lot of people who are vegetarian or vegan. Even if they’re not, when they eat, they eat a lot of salad.”

In the four years he has attended the University, Chéng’s curiosity has taken him to New York City, Providence, Boston, Washington, D.C., Detroit, El Paso, Virginia, Tennessee and California. Every place Chéng visited, he read up on the history. In the streets, he talked to people and asked questions. He visited rich neighborhoods and poor. 

“I wanted to get out of China to see a different perspective,” he says.

Whether talking to strangers or friends at a night club or campus event, Chéng asks questions about business, politics, money, sex. He’ll ask about anything. It’s how Chéng learned that courtship is more simple in America than in China. 

“Here, a date could be anything,” he says. “You could just take a girl out to Starbucks or a nice coffee shop. You don’t really have to spend a lot of money on girls.”

Chéng peppers his speech with profanity and U.S. slang. He learned English from his mother, an elementary school English teacher in China, and it was not until he began college in the U.S. that Chéng acquired a colorful array of informalities.

“If I hear something I don’t understand — let’s say when I first heard people use the phrase ‘get it in’ — I would just stop the conversation and ask my friends, and then my friends would explain. Sometimes it takes me very quickly to get, sometimes it takes me a long time.”

Sometimes, he also learns by making mistakes.

He had, for instance, heard his U.S. friends use the phrase “get it in” in a variety of circumstances – from food consumption to sexual intercourse. While working at the Undergraduate Library, Chéng referred to “getting it in” when inserting a DVD. He and his boss had a long, serious talk.

“Ohhh, sorry! I didn’t realize it,” Chéng said to his boss.

Occasionally, Chéng will educate himself on American culture by experiencing common social practices himself. When it came to student party culture, Chéng’s only knowledge prior to coming to the U.S. was from watching the film American Pie – a raunchy teen party comedy. 

Once on campus, Chéng decided to experience it for himself.

At first, he sat on the sidelines at parties as those around him became inebriated and danced salaciously. He even witnessed one partygoer vomit on the floor – a shocking experience, he admits. On one occasion, Chéng saw an American girl drink paint at a party. She was rushed to the hospital, he says.

Before coming to the U.S., Chéng had never been to a bar or nightclub. Such places existed in Shanghai, but children from families like Chéng’s – conservative, upper-middle class – never went. This activity was regarded as déclassé. This social stigma of bars and nightclubs dissolved for Chinese college students once in America.

“I was interested because it seems like something very normal over here,” Chéng says. “If people keep doing this, there’s a reason. I want to find out why.”

He began dancing. Then drinking. On one occasion, he decided to get blacked out – consume alcohol to the point of memory loss, something he had observed many times at campus bars and parties.

“Just for the sake of experimenting what it feels like,” he explains.

Chéng woke up by himself in the bathroom several hours later as a member of the cleaning staff banged on the door, asking if he was okay.

“It kind of felt like I’m floating in the air,” Chéng recalls, laughing at the memory.

Although Chéng finds humor in his first alcohol binge, he has decided he will not be a frequent participant of the American college student ritual.

“When it comes to drinking, it’s not because I hate it,” Chéng says. “It’s more because I want to live until I am at least 80 years old. Liquors might be harmful in stomachs, so I’m just planning things in the long term.”

Chéng also sees several similarities between U.S. and Chinese culture, particularly in their governments. 

As an adolescent, Chéng had a keen interest in the Chinese government. He read unorthodox literature frowned upon by his teachers, who he says regarded him as rebellious. 

Once in the U.S., he took an interest in the U.S. government. In 2012, he spent the entire summer in Washington, D.C., interning for the Institute for Policy Studies, where he researched the World Bank’s activities on carbon trading. 

After working under scholars who specialize in modern social movements, Chéng decided the Chinese and American governments aren’t so different after all. 

“A lot of the rituals might seem different,” he says of the U.S. “But how people set up the bureaucracy, this whole untransparent process of making decisions … It’s very similar in the end.”

Still, some differences emerged. For instance, Chéng was surprised to learn that many women work in the U.S. government. 

“Here you have more women in politics,” Chéng says. “There is more of a gender balance — especially in very high-up positions.”

He also did not expect to learn that most Americans adhere to the laws set out by the government. In China, he says, people have become resistant to the restrictions placed on them by a long succession of authoritarian governments. They find ways around strict regulations, such as using software to access restricted Internet pages and traveling abroad to give birth to circumnavigate the One-Child Policy.

As an exchange student, Chéng is often asked to choose between opposites: China or America; international friends or American friends; Communism or Democracy; urban life or rural life.

“I think that’s a very typical U.S. thinking,” he says. “You like it or not. You vote for Democrats or Republicans. The U.S. culture is a very ‘dichotomy’ culture – either/or, both/and, either/nor kind of thinking. One thing I learned is it’s not just black and white. It’s always shades of gray … I see it as what it is, not what I wish it to be.”