Life in a Chinese classroom

Sitting in the back row of classroom six at Gao Xin No. 1 high school, a silent ocean of blue and white cotton separates me from the teacher who stands on a podium at the front of the classroom. Slowly, I notice that the ripples in the cotton are outlines of bodies. The ocean has morphed into a group of sixty students, all sitting attentively and writing furiously as their teacher lectures them on ancient Chinese literature. A thick black ponytail distinguishes girls from boys, but otherwise everyone appears to be the same. Clearly communism has worked its magic in China’s school systems; the students have lost their identities and have become one.
I feel like an outsider. My tight jeans, leather boots, and ruffled shirt look like a Halloween costume next to the baggy jumpsuits of my classmates. I feel as if my shoulder-length brown curly hair reaches down to my toes, whose red nails burn through my heavy socks. I am tall and gangly next to my female classmates, whose short legs scuttle around the aisles during our five-minute breaks. 120 eyes glance in my direction.
As I stare off into space, unable to understand the characters written on board and our teacher’s rapid speech, I notice the boy sitting in front of me glance down into his lap. I straighten up in my seat and stretch my neck forward; what I discover is priceless. In his hands lays a portable play station; Donkey Kong and his teeny car zoom across the screen. A smile spreads across my face.
The next day, a petite, pony-tailed classmate of mine approaches me, and begins to speak the same broken English that I encounter every day. I nod and smile as I have the same conversation I had with another student yesterday, and will probably have with yet another student tomorrow. As she begins to ask me about American music, I notice a shiny piece of plastic poke out from the nape of her standard blue and white sweater. That plastic slowly reveals itself, and becomes a pink necklace embedded with rhinestones.
One week later, I’m reading a book under my desk when I hear the boy sitting next to me whisper to the girl directly in front of him. She hands him her exercise book, which is overflowing with notes and completed fill-in-the-blanks, and returns to her own work. His stubby fingers slip up and down the pencil as he quickly copies down the girl’s answers into his own spotless exercise book. He types a series of characters in his electronic Chinese-English translator and slides it into my desk. “I copy,” the translator reads. He proceeds by asking me to do his English homework.
Our fourth week here I’m moved up to the front row of the classroom. Here the teacher is more imposing, the pens scribble faster, and the smiles are fewer. The girl on my right takes a break from her notes to tell me that she’s ranked number three in the class. I learn that sitting next to her is number two, and on my right is number one. I hear a series of snickers and snorts from the rows behind me.
It’s our sixth week here and I’ve returned to the back row of classroom six. When I raise my eyes and gaze ahead, I see the class clown, the goof, the nerd, the slacker, and the “cool” girl. The ocean has turned into a roomful of people, who have the same quirks as teenagers in high schools across the U.S. The jumpsuits, ponytails, and lack of chatter have hindered the visibility of individual personality traits, but have failed to make them invisible.