Jiande Ling

Jiande (pronounced Jee-ahn-DER) Ling is a 24-year-old female graduate student at PSU. She is from the People’s Republic of China. She has a master’s degree from Beijing University in economics. She is very shy and timid and her spoken English is very hesitant, although she reads fairly well. At 4’11” and 95 pounds, she looks and acts much younger than her years.

Jiande lives with another Chinese female student in student housing on the PSU campus, right along the Park Blocks. They share a studio apartment for $305 per month, not including phone. Her total living and school expenses, not including tuition, amount to about $8,000 a year. Jiande has a graduate assistantship, which gives her $315 per month, or nearly $3,000 per year; it also covers her tuition, but not any fees or books. She does not receive any of this money during the summer.

Her family lives in a medium-sized city in China. They do not have any money to contribute to their daughter’s education. She has therefore found it necessary to find a part-time job to help support her, especially during the summer. She has recently found a job as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant in Old Town. She works three nights a week (Friday, Saturday, Sunday), from 5 pm to midnight. She has not told her parents about this, because she knows they would be very upset if they knew she was out late at night in Portland, a U.S. city they really don’t know very much about.