Why Chinese students still mask after Penn State lifts the mandate
On a rainy Wednesday at the HUB, a group of Asian students huddled in front of Starbucks. With their masks either on the table or under their chins, they were ready to put them on as soon as they were done eating.
“I think it’s supposed to go up to 50 [degrees] today,” the male student in a navy hoodie said.
“I think it’s gonna go up to 70 tomorrow,” the girl in white chimed in.
With a mix of Korean, Chinese, and English, the group chattered away in different languages until the guy in navy left for class.
“Catch you guys later,” he said. As he headed towards the HUB lawn exit, the male student pulled his mask over his nose.
With Penn State’s new policy in effect that no longer mandates masking, except for at places required by federal law, almost every student wanders on campus maskless. However, Chinese students at University Park, even though have shown weary signs of the pandemic, still mask on school grounds.
“We always [joke] that when the mask policy [is] canceled, you can tell who is Chinese. It’s those who still wear the masks,” Xinxin Liu said. Liu (sophomore-marketing) is one of the many Chinese students at University Park who aren’t over the pandemic despite Penn State’s decision to lift the mask mandate campus-wide starting March 23.
Penn State Office of Strategic Communications’ media relations team did not respond to a request for comment about the new adjustment. However, Penn State President Eric Barron discussed newly adjusted plans in a press release on March 21.
“With transmission levels low in much of the commonwealth and the high vaccination rates of our campus communities, we believe we can safely alter our masking and testing requirements at this time,” he said.
This decision to eliminate masking follows an earlier adjustment on March 4 that requires masks to be worn in academic spaces on campus after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cleared State College’s Covid community level as a low/medium.
China’s Zero-Covid policy
Contradicting the U.S. and Penn State’s leniency, China has a zero-Covid policy that implements city-wide lockdowns in communities with as few Covid cases as one.
Liu, a Beijing native, is “worried” for her parents after the city imposed a lockdown on her neighborhood.
“I think it’s too serious,” Liu said. “There’s only one positive [case], but they’re going to lock the whole community and [enforce] a two-week quarantine.”
Along with Liu, Suzhou native Jieyi Zhou also agrees that Chinese students take the pandemic more seriously than other non-Chinese students. Zhou (senior-digital & print journalism) thought it was because of the Chinese media’s emphasis on a national Covid elimination.
“I think the lockdown policy in China is one of the strictest policies [in] the world,” she said. “People in China, they are very nervous about this pandemic.”
China strives to maintain a Covid-free environment through a QR code system, a tracking mechanism that gained traction in the country in recent years. The system keeps track of the user’s travel history and notifies if they’ve been in an infected community.
A year ago, when Zhou returned home from Shanghai, one of the most populated cities in China, she encountered a travel restriction after a positive case in the city came to light.
“Even if there’s one case in the city, it will show on your QR code. I [couldn’t] go anywhere just because my QR code shows I’ve been in Shanghai several days ago,” she said.
Originally from Nantong, a city that resides an hour away from Shanghai, Yihan “Angela” Bao explained the QR code concept in simpler terms.
“If you have to enter, for example, a restaurant, […] if the code is green, you can enter,” Bao (senior-actuarial science) said. She also said that if the code is yellow or red, establishments have the right to deny outside access.
Bao sees “completely different strategies” from how China handles Covid and the way the U.S., particularly Penn State, does. While China wants zero cases, the U.S. is building up “community immunity from people that got Covid” previously by slowly eliminating masking.
“[Penn State] should at least keep this [masking] policy for on-campus buildings,” Bao said. “We can’t just think for ourselves. We’re young and healthy, but a lot of people who work on-campus are older, and they probably have other health conditions that make them vulnerable [to] Covid.”
However, freshman Laurence Wang shares a different perspective from Bao’s. Wang (freshman-kinesiology) said he trusts Penn State and how the school operates regarding Covid guidelines.
“Penn State is a big school [with] a lot of people. If [masking policy] was a failure, we wouldn’t even have in-person classes,” Wang said. “I know we have a lot of people on campus, but I’m not too worried about [Covid].”
Regardless, Ph.D. student Jiacheng Liu sees the worst of both worlds. Liu (1st-year Ph.D.-mass communications) said that he is “frustrated by the policy [on] both sides.”
“I think it should be something in the middle,” Liu said. “I don’t think what Penn State is doing is good enough, […] and I also don’t think China’s policy is correct. I’m disappointed by both sides.”
Masking for China’s Gen-Z
While masking remains a heated debate, Chinese students have grown accustomed to the piece of cloth that covers half of their face even before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid a pandemic.
“We were educated on how to wear masks and what kind of mask is valid to prevent the spread,” Liu looked back to when Covid was first discovered in China. “I don’t like those who wear masks but don’t cover their nose.”
Marketing major Xinxin Liu has worn a mask regularly before Covid on “crowded and uncomfortable” public transportations in Beijing. She also shared that people in Beijing are sometimes allergic to the aspen trees’ pollen when spring comes. They tend to mask in the first one or two weeks of the season.
At University Park, Kexuan Li thought that Penn State should have kept the mask mandate.
“It’s a way for us to protect ourselves,” Li (junior-public relations) said. She planned to keep masking even after the university went mask-less on March 24.
Despite controversies arising concerning Penn State’s latest decisions, masking remains a popular choice in the Chinese community due to its cosmetic practicality. For Li, masking doesn’t strictly associate with health concerns.
“Sometimes, [when] I don’t wear make-up, I will wear [a mask],” she said.
Zhou also plans to keep her mask on outdoors for the same reason.
“Before the pandemic, I sometimes wore a mask when I didn’t wear makeup,” Zhou said. “It’s not only about the worry of Covid-19, but I feel I already got used to wearing my mask.”
Liu believed people followed the masking policy at first because they valued safety. However, over time, masking has slowly become a fashion statement.
“Young people really like wearing masks,” she said. “It’s kinda cool and we don’t wanna show our face.”
Bao believed one of the reasons that factored in Chinese students’ masking decisions is cultural reasons. She thought 95% of Chinese students took this pandemic more seriously than students from other countries.
“Our parents [freak] out when they hear anything about Covid. My parents [told] me ‘you have to wipe all the packages you receive from outside’ [and] ‘you have to change your clothes when you enter your house,” Bao said. “They were taught that this [pandemic] is a really serious thing.”
Liu said his family was similar and he had to pack 300 masks for the school year before coming to the States.
“Chinese people don’t like risks,” Liu said. “I don’t have much faith in Penn State and I don’t think what I’m doing is rational. But what I do is impacted by what people do in China.”
