"it's very convenient to be together"

An inside view into the Chinese international student community at UW and their search for safe off-campus housing

Shelly Cao, a second-year international student from China, lives in TWELVE at U District.

The car is a mess.

An unpleasant smell lingers, leaves are strewn inside. Gone are her traditional Chinese dance clothes, several cooking utensils, and one of her jackets.

The car owner, a Chinese international student, found it had been broken into after entrusting it to a friend while she returned home during the pandemic lockdown. Her car, and the items she left inside it, were an easy target. Same as many other international students who land on the University of Washington Seattle campus from a long ways away and with little familiarity of life in Seattle.

Many Chinese international students at UW have leaned on each other to bolster their safety in off-campus housing, facing a lack of support from official university services.

“You’re an easy target”

According to a 2014 research report released by World Education Services, 73% of students from China pursuing bachelor’s degrees in the United States had high financial resources. 68% reported that they came from an upper or upper-middle class background.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese international students in the United States contributed approximately a third of the total amount of money spent on tuition, fees, and living expenses in 2014. That contribution stood in contrast to the little over 10% contributed by India, the second-highest country.

Not all Chinese international students are financially well-off. Shelly Cao, a second year student from a city near Shanghai, said that while many of her friends are wealthy and can afford fancy cars, she walks to campus because she can’t afford a car of her own. The association remains, however, and can make the community an easier target for crime.

Cao said Chinese students sometimes like to decorate their doors with characters to celebrate the coming of Chinese New Year and wish good luck to passersby.

“People tell me if you do that, people will know there are Chinese people [who] live in this unit,” Cao said. “Chinese international students are usually richer…So if you show people you are Chinese, you are under greater danger. You’re an easy target for bad people to break into your apartment and steal things.”

According to Cao, nonresidents gather for long stretches in the parking lot of her apartment, TWELVE at U District. She said they have also been seen inside the building and its upper floors.

Cao said that some visitors take the elevator to the upper floors where she and other residents live, knocking on doors and asking for food. It happened twice this year, she said, and because it happened late at night, the apartment office was closed and the residents didn’t know where to go for help.

The apartment landlord also did little to respond to resident complaints when several parked cars were broken into. Car windows were smashed and Cao’s friends had possessions stolen.

“Oh, we told you, you should keep all your bags outside the car, you should care [for] the things when you left the car,” Cao quotes the landlords to say. “So it’s not our fault that your car got damaged."

The apartment also doesn’t close the gate to the garage, allowing unwanted visitors to enter the parking area below the apartment building.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Cao said. “And they don’t care.”

Off-campus apartments: Chinese student strongholds

According to Cao, there are three main clubs that provide important information to Chinese students about issues like housing: Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA), Husky Help Organization (HHO), and Chinese Union.

A 2021 fall quarter guidebook produced by Chinese Union is over a hundred pages long and includes a list of several local apartment options, all written in Chinese.

According to the anonymous third-year student, CSSA also recommends off-campus living options that students can look into, one of which is TWELVE at U District.

Cao said that there is a large community of Chinese residents there.

“If you enter the elevator, probably you will see another Chinese student,” Cao said.

Because many international Chinese students live in close proximity to each other, the environment is conducive to a close-knit community.

“I think living with people from [the] same country give[s] me a sense of belonging, and it’s very convenient,” second-year student Lisa Li, who also lives in TWELVE at U District, said. “We have a big group chat with the people from [the] same country and we can borrow things, borrow food, or borrow groceries, so it’s very convenient to be together.”

The virtual network

One way that many Chinese students connect with each other is through large, often hundreds-strong WeChat message groups.

According to Cao, chats are made for groups ranging from students of specific graduating classes to people selling second hand items to classmates in specific courses. They also become a source of important safety information.

When a SWAT team entered the TWELVE at U District apartment, Cao messaged her group chat with other residents to let everyone know, as the apartment staff hadn’t told residents beforehand.

“When the SWAT team came, I left my unit to [go] to school and when I took the elevator to the first floor, I saw the SWAT team here with guns and … weapons,” Cao said. “And I told the group chat, ‘Ahh, the SWAT team is still here, don’t move, stay in your unit because we don’t know who they [were] aiming to [find].”

When residents tried to get more information about the incident, they did not receive a very detailed explanation.

“We emailed the apartment office about it, and they said, oh, it’s just … the police department came and we just let them in, and they are here for some suspicious guy, but not Chinese people,” Cao said.

Students also use the WeChat groups to share items such as chargers, batteries, or cooking ingredients. That can reduce the dependence of TWELVE at U District residents on the 7/11 store downstairs, which many students would rather avoid, according to Cao.

The 7/11 is open 24 hours a day, but sometimes the cashiers will remember your pin number if you use your credit card so they can use it later, Cao said. Some individuals also take items and no one tries to stop them, she continued.

Outside the bubble

The closeness of the Chinese international student community may be its weakness as well as its strength.

A 2016 research report released by World Education Services said that 60% of Chinese students struggle with developing social connections in the U.S., a much greater portion than students from other countries and regions.

One contributing factor may be a “bubble effect” created by “a significant number of Chinese students on one campus … in which Chinese student are often surrounded by – incidentally or intentionally – other Chinese students and never make friends with American students or students from other countries in general,” the report stated.

Relying on largely student-created resources like the Chinese Union guidebook and WeChat groups, Chinese international students may miss out on apartment options that are safer but less well-known in their community of peers.

Shubhangi Bansal is a graduating senior and the 2021-2022 chair of the Center for International Relations and Cultural Leadership Exchange (CIRCLE) Student Advisory Board (SAB). The SAB is a committee composed of international students that advocate for the needs of their community to CIRCLE’s professional staff.

Bansal said that one issue in Seattle for international students is predicting the safety of their prospective housing location while still living miles away from campus.

“Every two to three blocks may be a different culture of security and you can’t really judge a security of a location other than visiting it,” Bansal said. “So that makes it very difficult for international students to find housing especially in their first year when they’ve not even come to the U.S. and to the Seattle area [yet].”

Because of these uncertainties, it can be easy to resort to the most visible option.

“I think most international students don’t want to go through the trouble to find the small apartments simply because they look shabby and staff not ‘professional’ enough,” Shumo Ji, a junior from China, said in a direct message on Instagram. “They are afraid that if mishap[s] [do] happen, this would be a huge trouble to go through. Then a lot of them just end up leasing the expensive ones when there’s clearly cheaper options.”

The gaps in peer-to-peer help combine with the absence of a formal system for helping international students find off-campus housing.

“It’s just ad hoc,” Bansal said. “Students are doing what they can, just pull[ing] strings … as an incoming student you’re already scared about a lot of things and you’re not really proactive, you don’t even know how to do things over here, and they expect you to find stuff. It’s too much and it forces students to live on-campus, which is also very expensive.”

Besides CIRCLE, other on-campus organizations exist for international students to get their voices heard and receive general support. The Foundation for International Understanding Through Students (FIUTS), a nonprofit organization that for years contracted with the University of Washington to offer orientation programming and other community-building activities to international students, offers housing tips and resources on its website. The International Student Services (ISS) Office website also has a page that includes links to emergency, health, financial, and other campus resources.

Unite UW is a quarterly on-campus program overseen by CIRCLE that brings together domestic and international students at UW to build relationships and exchange cultural experiences. It’s another way that students from both sides can expand their social bubbles.

Through all the challenges of finding housing near UW, the anonymous third-year student drove home the value of finding support from personal relationships, such as those built in the International Student Mentorship Program (ISMP).

“One way that [it] is helpful, in a way that it supports you emotionally [is] that it makes you feel like you are not alone in this campus,” the student said. “It makes you feel like you are represented and there is someone who genuinely care[s] about you.”

UW international student stats autumn 2021 (2).png

According to data collected from the University's Student Database and visualized on the UW International Student Services website, there were 3,887 combined undergraduate and graduate/professional international students from China counted at the UW Seattle campus in fall of 2021. That means China was the top home country for UW Seattle international students this past academic year.

The sheer size of the community combines with an interconnected network that makes building friendships easy, according to Cao. If you meet another Chinese student, that person often ends up being a friend of your friend, or a friend of your friend of your friend, she said.

Top 5 home countries of international students at UW-Seattle, Autumn 2021-2022

Source: International Student Services (ISS)