While attending Iowa State, Nicholas Woodley decided to study abroad in China because he was looking for something a bit bigger than his hometown of Wyoming, Iowa — a town with a population of 626 people. Three years later, his five programs studying abroad were just as much of a social and cultural education as an academic one.

Woodley, graduate in management and international business, has studied abroad in Shanghai; Beijing; Beppu, Japan; Tokyo; and Qingdao, China.

“China was the craziest, most mysterious and far-away place that I could think of,” Woodley said, “so I decided, ‘I’m going to go there and see what it’s all about.'”

Woodley applied for his first program of study in Shanghai through the ISU Study Abroad Center.

To fund his trips Woodley used his student loans and applied for and received scholarships.

Woodley’s first impression of China was that it was very loud.

“In some areas of China, when they talk to each other it just seems like they’re yelling all the time,” Woodley said.

Walking the streets of Shanghai, Woodley said he saw only a few other Caucasians daily. For this reason, his dirty-blonde hair caught a lot of eyes.

“When they see somebody with blonde hair or blue or green eyes, they’re very curious,” Woodley said. “They want to say ‘hi’ and practice their English.”

In fact, Woodley said it was common to be greeted with a chorus of “hellos” while walking down the street. He called this the “hello phenomenon,” and attributes much of this to the Chinese adherence to a “host versus guest” rule.

Woodley said the Chinese are committed to going out of their way to help people who are clearly guests to the country.

“You’re usually treated better than the average person in China,” Woodley said. “So it’s kind of like reverse discrimination. In America, we don’t really treat the Chinese as guests; we just treat them like more people.”

Another difference is that expectations for a Chinese student in America are different than expectations for an American student in China, Woodley said.

“When the Chinese come here, we expect them to speak almost perfect English,” Woodley said. “But when I go to China, everybody’s expectation is that I can speak zero Chinese. So the standards are different. We are held to a much lower level of expectation than the Chinese students are.”

The standards are different in academics as well.

“My grades overseas averaged at about a C [in China],” Woodley said. “Not because I’m an idiot, but because I had a lot of opportunities.”

Woodley said he often skipped classes for job opportunities, including acting and translating, and vacations. He felt free to do that because his grades didn’t transfer back to Iowa State, and he looked at those trips as learning opportunities outside the classroom.

“That’s okay for me to do that there,” Woodley said, “because I’m an American studying in China. But if a Chinese person were to do that in America, that wouldn’t go so well.”

Woodley said grades are more important to Chinese students who are studying in America because they could get kicked out of the university if they don’t perform well enough.

“Because Chinese universities aren’t really recognized in America, I could do whatever I wanted and it wouldn’t matter,” Woodley said. “But American universities are recognized the world over, so it’s important for them to do well. As long as I didn’t get an ‘F,’ I’d be all right.”

Despite skipping class, Woodley still had to study harder in China because of the language barrier.

“Chinese requires a lot of rote memorization,” Woodley said. “You have to study really hard if you want to keep up. In America, we focus more on the application of practical and useful knowledge and the Chinese focus on the attainment of knowledge and the collection of it.”

After he became more fluent, Woodley said he stopped studying so much from textbooks and started learning from conversations with Chinese people.

“My language level is nowhere near what [some Chinese students’] English is,” Woodley said, “but for a white guy, I am fantastic. So just that is enough to surprise the Chinese kids … they see that I am much more approachable and easy to talk to than someone who hasn’t studied abroad or studied a foreign language.”

While studying in China, Woodley said the few white students tended to gravitate toward each other and become friends.

“Because I was looking to completely immerse myself, whenever I saw a white person I would run away,” Woodley said.

Making friends with people of a different culture was nothing new for Woodley. Even in America, most of his friends are Asian.

“I don’t have very many American friends anymore,” Woodley said. “If you’re going to study the Chinese language and really get it … you have to immerse yourself. You have to have Chinese friends and be interested in Chinese culture.”

Woodley said the Chinese and Americans are very culturally different, and it can be difficult to cross that gap while studying abroad.

“The Chinese students here have to stretch so hard in order to reach out to American kids and make good friendships,” Woodley said.

Upon returning to America, Woodley said he experienced culture shock in his own country.

“We’re an extremely informal culture,” Woodley said. “I was shocked at how rude everyone was to each other.”

He observed that Americans don’t use titles of address, which are expected as a sign of respect in China. Americans also are more direct in conversations. They are comfortable with saying “no,” while the Chinese will be more indirect to avoid sounding rude.

In both China and America, though, Woodley said it’s more polite to speak the language of that country, to avoid being exclusive to other people.

Woodley’s girlfriend happens to be Chinese, and when they communicate, Woodley said they try to be inclusive with their conversations. This means that while they’re in America, they speak mostly English and when they’re in China, they speak mostly Chinese.

Dating is different between the two cultures as well, Woodley said.

“In America we’re much more open,” Woodley said. “In China, it’s generally known that if you take your boyfriend home to meet your parents, it means you will marry that person.”

He said this made visiting his girlfriend’s parents in China pretty interesting. While retrieving their luggage at the airport, he jokingly motioned to his girlfriend, Sophie, to pick up the bigger bag. Not realizing the joke, Sophie’s mother was horrified by this.

“In America, the women here want to be equal to the man,” Woodley said. “But that’s not the case in China.”

Woodley said Chinese women are treated with a lot of respect, and for some that means being treated like a princess.

His relationship with Sophie has required compromising on some issues.

“You have to realign your thoughts about different things,” Woodley said, “because we have different ways of thinking about a lot of different things, so we’ve got to find a happy medium. If the relationship is new, you tackle those issues as they come up, and then over time your way of thinking starts to come in line.”

Out of about 90 class credits Woodley took while studying in China, only about 10 transferred back to Iowa State. This is because Iowa State only offers a Chinese minor and not a Chinese major. Many of the credits he took while in China were business classes, and only his language and culture classes transferred.

“If I was in a better-equipped university for Asian studies,” Woodley said, “I would have a Masters already, because I went to school for more than six years. But because I’m here I only have an undergrad.”

Woodley said this makes studying in China difficult for some Americans.

However, he knew these restrictions going into the experience, and still decided to go.

Woodley graduated from Iowa State with a degree in management and international business and a minor in Chinese and entrepreneurship in August of this year. If he were at another university that offered Chinese and Japanese, he would have earned a major in Chinese and a minor in Japanese.

“What it says [I did] on paper is not important to me,” Woodley said. “I’m looking more towards my future and what I’m really learning by having all these experiences.”