The book Almost a Revolution by Shen Tong is the story of Chinese student demonstrator during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Aside from the rest of the book the descriptions of the dormitories at Beida University, the school he attended made me think a lot about the living conditions of American students today compared to students in other countries. In his freshman year he was assigned to room with 5 other roommates. 5! I had a hard time living in a room with two last year. The rooms contained bunk beds only, no desks dressers or closets. There was a single cold water shower on his entire floor. In his bathroom there was a long troth to urinate in and this would often overflow. Their toilets were described as holes in the floor and the stalls had no doors. There was a lights out policy. In order to read after a certain time they had to have a lead cord to go out into the hallway to use one of the electrical sockets in the hall since their room was not equiped with one. To me these living conditions seem completely unbearable. It's no wonder they focussed so much on their studies if only to get out of the hell hole the called a dormitory. Now I'll compare this to when I lived in the dorms last year. I had my own bed, my own desk, computer, closet, dresser. We had a couch, T.V. and about 4 or 5 different video game systems. Each section of the hallway was equiped with 8 showers, and I think it goes without saying the quality of toilets were infintely better than theirs. The grounds surrounding the Ellicott dorms were also made to have certain aesthetic qualities such as the meandering bike paths, the abundance of trees, and lovely views of the polluted yet serene lake lasalle. I assume that the grounds surrounding theirs were not manicured to be pleasing to the eye. It made me thing that although our dorms were built with a utilitarian philosophy the Chinese took things to a whole nother level.
