{"id":69430,"date":"2018-03-20T15:42:25","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T20:42:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=69430"},"modified":"2018-03-20T15:54:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T20:54:56","slug":"chinese-students-find-love-and-community-in-the-werewolves-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/chinese-students-find-love-and-community-in-the-werewolves-club\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese students find love and community in the Werewolves Club"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Xiaozhang (Shaw) Wan<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"dropcap\">Anqi Hu, a 27-year-old Chinese graduate student, didn\u2019t expect to find the love of her life in the Chinese Werewolves Club at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it were not for the club, we wouldn\u2019t have met each other,\u201d said Hu, in her 5th year as a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student.<\/p>\n<p>Five couples have found their significant others\u00a0in the club over the last year, according to Xin Xu, 26, president of the Werewolves Club and a 4th year PhD student in applied physics.<\/p>\n<p>The club was officially established on the Valentine\u2019s Day of 2017.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<iframe title=\"Chinese students find love and community in the Werewolves Club\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/261011291?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nMembers play a board game called the Werewolves of Millers Hollow every Saturday in the Engelhart Hall Apartments, a graduate student dorm. Apart from that, they also gather on traditional Chinese holidays, playing games and eating Chinese food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo find something interesting to do, to make life not [so] boring, to keep myself away from dying from loneliness and sadness, I started joining the game every Saturday night,\u201d said Mengjiao Hong, 23, also a graduate student in mechanical engineering, who became a member last summer.<\/p>\n<p>Her friends there \u201cwere the only source of [a] smile in that summer,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p>About 30 members go to the weekly game sessions and more than 120 people are in the club WeChat group, where the club sends weekly events notification.<\/p>\n<p>Like Hong, students, who are mainly Chinese students, join the club for various reasons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey want to make new friends, they want to learn the popular board games, they want to know the social culture and of course they want to meet their Mr. Right,\u201d said Xu.<\/p>\n<p>According to Xu\u2019s observation, many Chinese students feel overwhelmed when they first arrive in the United States. They also feel lonely or homesick staying here.<\/p>\n<p>Fangyuan Ma, 24, a graduate student of project management, recalls having dinner with a professor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know English and I know how to talk, but I really didn\u2019t know what she likes\u201d or what might make her \u201cfeel uncomfortable or awkward,\u201d he said. At that time, he had lived in the States for almost a year.<\/p>\n<p>This same kind of confusion and loneliness he had found in others spurred Xu to start the club with three\u00a0 friends. By providing a platform for students who are interested in board games, Xu hopes that \u201cwhen we provide some traditional food, when we hang out together, when we celebrate the festivals, this would make them feel better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Werewolves games, with its goal of either the werewolves team or the villagers team to win, may not seem that conducive to building community. But club members are branching out. Last year, they went to the King Spa in Niles for exam week relief.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think I found a sense of belonging here. I think everybody in the world needs the sense of belonging so they can prove [themselves],\u201d said Ma.<\/p>\n<p>Members like Hu and Ma have stayed in the club since it started. They said what keeps them is \u201cdefinitely the people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe game itself is interesting. But your interest can only last for a while. But the people here, we have a lot in common. We really relate and it\u2019s easy to talk to them,\u201d said Hu.<\/p>\n<div class=\"featurecaption\">Photo at top: Players close their eyes \u201cat night,\u201d after taking different roles in the game such as villagers, the witch, the seer, and the werewolves. (Xiaozhang (Shaw) Wan\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Xiaozhang (Shaw) Wan Medill Reports Anqi Hu, a 27-year-old Chinese graduate student, didn\u2019t expect to find the love of her life in the Chinese Werewolves Club at Northwestern University. \u201cIf it were not for the club, we wouldn\u2019t have met each other,\u201d said Hu, in her 5th year as a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":446,"featured_media":69461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,28,3987],"tags":[4112,1641,4111,192,4110],"class_list":["post-69430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-general-interest","category-winter-2018","tag-board-games","tag-chinese","tag-love-and-relationship","tag-promo","tag-werewolves-club"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Chinese students find love and community in the Werewolves Club - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/chinese-students-find-love-and-community-in-the-werewolves-club\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chinese students find love and community in the Werewolves Club - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Xiaozhang (Shaw) Wan Medill Reports Anqi Hu, a 27-year-old Chinese graduate student, didn\u2019t expect to find the love of her life in the Chinese Werewolves Club at Northwestern University. \u201cIf it were not for the club, we wouldn\u2019t have met each other,\u201d said Hu, in her 5th year as a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student. 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