Weird. That's for-sure.
I wish we can have more than one side of the story - as we all know too well, popular media these days is pretty much single-narrative.
Take, for example, the following:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/virginia-tech ... d=52759734" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
^ This story of a foreign (Chinese) undergraduate Virginia Tech student, Mr. Zhao, plays very similar to the one above of Mr Sun, the Florida student.
However, the Gun Watch Blog, authored by Dean Weingarten, paints a
significantly different picture of the Zhao/VT story:
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2018/05/va ... d-for.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I agree that there's a lot of the Sun/University of Central Florida - as reported - that would strike me as being worrisome.
But remember, although many of these foreign undergraduate and graduate students are here on scholarships (either from their own institution/country or from their host institution), there's a not-insignificant portion who are literally of the "Crazy Rich Asians" sub-category (
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/book ... lence.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ). That Corvette? It's far from impossible that's just a "good grades gift" from his parents or grandparents. I had a couple of ethnic Chinese dorm-mates/friends from Malaysia and Singapore back in college, and their bankrolls were, er....significant.
The dyed hair? Again, moving out of his socially extremely conservative native country - and likely even more restrictive parents' home - it's not unusual for the kids to start to express some form of individuality/rebellion. Anyone here know of an Asian friend from school who did the same?
And heck, let's see *anyone* move from a traditional Asian diet to an American one, and not gain at least *_some_* weight....
OK, more seriously:
Remember this kid?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/edu ... 0cb0c81dbf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
[
Yes, his last name is also Sun, but he's unrelated to the University of Central Florida student above; there's only so many ways our last names get translated, so you can think of this one as someone having the popular family name of Jackson. ]
His story is now all but lost to American mass-media, but the story continues to lead first-page in the Taiwanese media because this kid is the son of two media personalities in his native country:
https://newbloommag.net/2018/04/16/sun-an-tso-case/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3394865" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Meanwhile......
After seeing the Sun/Philadelphia story, my mother calls me to make sure that I'm A-OK......