UC: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?
UT: Choose an issue of importance to you-the issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scope-and write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation
UW: Describe an experience of cultural difference or insensitivity you have had or observed. What did you learn from it?
OR
The University of Washington seeks to create a community of students richly diverse in cultural backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints. How would you contribute to this community?
need help to shorten it to 500-650 words (for UC & UW) or just some advice lol
I would not definitely say that there is no so-called "cultural differences" between China and America. But the situation is that, much more serious than cultural differences, the differences of human rights have created serious gaps in the "equality world".
Since I was born, I have been told that "Loving the Communist Party equals to love China, vice versa." "We Chinese live in a harmonious and a well-off society." Textbooks and TV news kept saying that, Western countries especially America are all controlled by "imperialism" and "capitalism" which are harmful, unfair systems, and the so-called "democracy and liberty" are only in need of reigning. These "facts" have created a poor impression of the western countries in me. Often, when I talked about America with my family and friends, the first thing came into my mind was that guns were legal and available there. Then terrorists, the school shootings and even blacks were mentioned. It was like Americans all faced misery lives.
But as I grew older, I found it unbelievable. "Were foreign countries all like what the political textbooks and TV news described?" I once searched the Internet and wanted to hear another voice. But what I found was that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and many other websites are blocked! I was shocked. Why could the government deprive our right to know! So I tried and tried, using methods to "break the wall (of the Internet block)" just for my little imagination of the outside world. Apparently, it didn't work well.
Then the chance to observe a true America came. After recalling my experiences in America, I felt very lucky to be chosen as one of the summer session students at UC Berkeley. I did not find any hope when I submitted the application form, but on April, unexpectedly I received the I-20 form. Actually I was not so excited, however, I started to think over whether I should go to US or not. Despite my hesitance and fears to a "terrible" environment, a tiny part of me knew that I should make it. I wanted to figure out if I was cheated by my growing-up environment. So I was at UC Berkeley and California.
On July 4th, I landed at San Francisco International Airport, took the metro to Berkeley downtown and stepped to my dormitory. Along the roads I found that many shops, supermarkets and private restaurants were out of business. I thought, "Don't people want to earn money? Why they seem so leisure?" The "ridiculous things" kept going on everywhere. The share of washing machine, the polite every driver was (pedestrians always go first), the smile a stranger showed to you... everything was incredible, even I lost my iPod Touch at a restaurant, somebody would pick it up and send it to the manager! "Americans' lives seem much greater than Chinese lives!"
In a totally free environment, unexpectedly I read plenty of thrilling but rarely-known historical events. For example, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 - most of the young generation (born after 1985 like me) knew nothing about this horrible but memorable event, because it has been covered. The government started arresting and persecuting student leaders and supporters, then banned and ruined everything related to it. There were no any materials about this massacre people could find, neither old newspapers nor photos. The only word was, "No casualties." I was shocked, and even began to doubt what I had read on Wikipedia. "How can this happen! How can a government treat its citizens in such way?"
Here at UC Berkeley, I started to review my impression of China. I talked with my roommates who are university students in Hong Kong. What they said was that, I was brainwashed. With their words, gradually I came to realize that a party never ever equals to a country or its government even it is the ruling party. Through various terrible movements, the Communist Party succeeded to make everything in line with its will. In short, it has been fooling us. So when the one-party-hegemony government made mistakes, it never regretted, even not admitted anything. First time I felt frustrated and was so angry and disappointed.
I sit here just months later and I try to describe what this study trip means to me. It is no exaggeration to say that it changed my life. I've ever heard somebody saying that, "University is where one learns to question the status quo." Now I can say that I love China but not the Communist Party. I just cannot find a way out in that environment. Thus, I am looking forward to an atmosphere of freedom, like America. I need to be stronger, until enough to change China's status quo. These next four years will be a shock for me, as I explore new intellectual realms and my mind continues to mature. Yet I also recognize that the coming time will be a challenge. I will be confronting new ideas, new situations, and new fears. At UC Berkeley I began to learn how to keep an independent mind and doubt everything I am unsure about. I had eyes to see the heart of things. Now or later, I will have to keep my vision of the world fresh and open, and not succumb to the hardening of established ideas that I see occurring around me all the time.
