A Foot In Each World

International students may feel like they have to choose between the comfort of their own cultural bubble and making friends with Americans. Walk into the student newsroom at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and you'll find one international student who hasn't had to choose.

Kaidi "Ruby" Yuan was born in Wuhan, China and moved to Chesapeake, Virginia for high school.

Kaidi "Ruby" Yuan, a journalism major hailing from the Chinese city of Wuhan, has made friends with Americans who share his passion for news. His mission as a student journalist is two-fold. Besides being the second-highest ranked journalist working for Annenberg Media, overseeing hundreds of students in their reporting, he carries what he feels is a special responsibility to the Chinese student community.

USC boasted an enrollment of more than 11,300 international students in the fall of 2018. More than half of them are Chinese. It also ranked 33rd out of all national universities in the number of international students enrolled for the 2017-2018 academic year, according to US News & World Report. But when students group together, their cliques often become more homogenous. Students who look like each other and speak the same language tend to drift together, even unknowingly. Finding diversity is the easy part — diversifying your friend group is harder.

"2013 Ruby couldn't recognize 2019 Ruby," Yuan says about the extroversion that he adopted when he moved from Wuhan, nicknamed "the Chicago of China," to Chesapeake, Virginia for high school. One of a handful of Chinese international students, the adjustment was lonely.

Some background on the international student population at USC and helpful tips for engagement.

"It was like you are in the middle of two social circles. You are trying to push yourself, so you are not that close to the Chinese social circle, but you haven't gotten into the American social circle yet," he remembers. It's why his parents had tried to dissuade him from pursuing high school in the United States.

"They had been warning me about this kind of stuff. So I was kind of like, it's my decision. Even if I face difficulties, I need to tackle it," he says. Once in Virginia, Yuan's host-mom performed what he refers to as a "surgery" on his personality.

"She forced me to go to my first homecoming. She forced me to learn dancing with my host grandpa. She always pushed me to do something new, and I really appreciate that," he says.

He joined the soccer team. He became the first international student at his high school to graduate salutatorian. He applied to 22 universities. And ultimately, he turned down Cornell to attend USC.

Even though Yuan was able to make the most of his high school experience, studying journalism in the U.S. came with its own challenges. Transcribing interviews was no easy feat for a non-native English speaker, especially when people spoke quickly. Then there were what he calls "basic" things that journalism classes don't teach, like how to address someone respectfully in an email. But probably the biggest change was the cultural understanding of what it meant to be a journalist.

Less than a decade ago, Yuan knew nothing about the most notorious thing the Chinese government had ever done. An exchange student from Hong Kong was the one to teach him about what happened in Tiananmen Square, where the Chinese government cracked down with military force on a million protesters demanding basic press freedom and other democratic reforms of the communist government in 1989. Yuan had never heard of it because the news media he had grown up with censored even this important historical moment.

He had already been thinking about journalism, but Yuan realized he could hold truth to power in the U.S. without fear of retaliation. And that included his own university.

"I call it privilege, in America we call it rights," he says of the freedom of the press. For articles about financial aid resources for international students, he had to persuade students to speak on-the-record, so afraid were they of angering administration.

But the histancy to complain went beyond financial aid. He learned that some Chinese international students had experienced racial discrimination, but had no idea what the appropriate channels were for reporting the misconduct, and again, didn't want to get in trouble with the university. One of the reasons for these assumptions, Yuan thought, was that news -- and critical news -- about USC wasn't making it to the Chinese international community.

Over a matter of days, there's been almost 80 new messages in an informal group chat for WeChat users who keep track of what's happening at USC. Since 2017, Yuan's served as the social editor of the account, where he publishes stories in Chinese to over 2,700 subscribers. He's also been using the group chat on the most popular messaging app in China as a "prototype or test run for a potential Facebook group," to gauge the interest of the Chinese community in USC news. In less technical terms, the project is Yuan's baby.

Currently, Yuan's is the only branch of Annenberg Media that targets an international population, and issues that might affect them specifically, like H-1B visa sponsorship. This idea didn't come to fruition overnight. His work covering the Chinese community at USC has been a long time coming.

"While I was planning for it, one news that hit me really strongly was tuition hikes. Because that story arrived at the Chinese Community two days after the Daily Trojan or the Annenberg Media website both reported," he says in disbelief.

Since the Annenberg Media WeChat has been up and running, Yuan's used it to share darker news with the Chinese international community. In May of 2018, news broke that former USC gynecologist, George Tydnall, had been sexually abusing Asian women and specifically women from China. This time, there was virtually no delay in sharing that news with Chinese international students.

Peiran Ye (far left) says she typically prefers to stay within her Chinese social circle, which includes Ruby Yuan (center).

Yuan uses the cultural "headstart" of completing high school in the U.S. to do some of the legwork for his readers. But he recognizes this isn't as easy for students who are coming to the U.S. for the first time for college. There's no guide to all the cultural references and jokes Yuan has had three years to pick up, so it's no wonder some international students struggle to integrate.

This is especially difficult at USC where there isn't necessarily an incentive to assimilate. Yuan's best friend, Peiran Ye, says she can easily stick to the 10 or so Chinese international students that she knows in her architecture classes. On field trips, they'll only Uber together.

In high school, Yuan worried he would have to decide between his Chinese social circle and his American one. Not so anymore.

"It's the same as my host family. It's not like I'm close to my host family, so I abandon my own family," Yuan says. He's got the best of both.

In April, an exhausted Yuan meets his best American friend to celebrate his 22nd birthday. After his long day in the newsroom, not the least bit unusual, he just wanted to take a rain check. When he walked into her apartment, Yuan expected just a few drinks. Instead, the house screamed.

"SURPRISE!"

From under tables and behind curtains, his friends from the newsroom emerged and sang "Happy Birthday" to a stunned Yuan. Dramatizing his relief, he tumbled onto the couch and then the floor while his friends laughed.

It's 2019, and a Yuan that once struggled to feel a part of an American community is struggling to say goodbye to graduating seniors. Next year, he will assume his role as the Executive Editor of the newsroom.

"People who guide me, defend me, teach me, trust me, help me, they're all leaving. And now it's my time time to defend, trust, guide, teach or help the young bloods," he says.

At least for the Chinese international student community, Yuan's been doing that all along.