USC Student Group Helps Chinese Students Settle in

By OWEN WANG

Studying aboard is always a challenge, beginning with what to do when you first arrive in a foreign country. Imagine flying from China to the U.S., perhaps for the first time ever, and the difficulty of finding your way around a huge, sprawling city like Los Angeles. Recognizing this problem, University of Southern California’s Chinese Students & Scholars Association (CSSA) mobilized and came to the rescue. With 30 volunteer drivers, CSSA picked up 612 incoming Chinese students from the Los Angeles International Airport and brought them to USC for the fall semester of 2011. 
               
CSSA is one of the most active Chinese student associations on the USC campus. Not only does it host traditional events like this week’s Mid-Autumn Festival, it also organizes more socially oriented ones, such as singing contests and food outings. It is an organization committed to the betterment of Chinese students’ experience and involvement at USC. For more than ten years, CSSA has coordinated fund raisers to cover the costs of its pick up service for hundreds of students coming from China to study at USC.
 
Along with China’s development into a global power, the number of Chinese students coming to the U.S. to study has risen by 80 percent in recent years. In 1999, there were 54,466 Chinese students in the U.S. and one decade later in 2009, the number has risen to 128,000. In 2010, 229,300 Chinese students decided to study abroad, 23.4% of which chose to come to the U.S. USC alone welcomed 1,951 of these Chinese students last year. This significant growth of Chinese students at U.S. colleges is expected to continue. 
               
The support provided by CSSA and other similar organizations to these international students help lessen the often difficult transition that many experience while studying abroad. In the words of Zhaohu Fan, the VP of CSSA, “we look at every single Chinese student as our brothers and sisters. It is our duty to not only better ourselves but also embrace our compatriots... I firmly believe that those excellent Chinese students here today will become the mainstays of China and U.S.’s development tomorrow.”