China’s AIM Saved My Research中国的即时通救了我的调查

I was a recent American college graduate dropped in central China with a mission. I had just started a Fulbright grant researching Student Village Officials (or SVOs), a particular group of young government officials in China who were scattered across the country working in rural villages. I needed to somehow get in touch with, and interview, them.

I made contacts through friends and friends of friends, but that covered SVOs in only two cities. My first instinct was to search online for organizational contacts. I began scouring hundreds of SVO discussion forums and websites, but soon realized it was hopeless. The phone numbers were all disconnected or rang forever. The email addresses were all “webmaster@” addresses and bounced back.

Then I discovered QQ, China’s original instant messenger. For me, “instant messenger” conjures up memories of funky fonts and colors, perfectly curated user profiles, and away messages (“brb… mom needs the comp…”). But while AIM all but disappeared and Americans moved on to Google Chat, China’s original instant message service, QQ, is more popular than ever.

With 784 million users, QQ is one of the largest virtual communities in the world, second only to Facebook. But QQ serves another purpose, one that turned my research around. QQ is also a place for work.

For SVOs who have internet access, a top priority is connecting on QQ. I soon realized that’s how they connected with co-workers during the workday and with each other. A simple search reveals over 300 ongoing group chats (QQ群) specifically for SVOs.

I joined a few to gauge interest on helping with my project. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the warm welcome I hoped. Some of the more colorful reception I received included: “We don’t like American imperialists around here,” and “This is a political plot by the U.S. government!”

Acrimony aside, this was my solution. Through QQ I met new officials, kept in touch with SVOs, even though they lived far away from my home base in Chongqing, and was able to listen in on the day-to-day commentary of SVOs from across the country.

Then came the biggest boon of my research. A girl named Pingping messaged me claiming to work at the central-level Ministry of Agriculture (MoA, one of the big three Chinese government bureaus that lead the SVO program). She said she was interested in my research and wanted to help.

I thought for sure it was a scam. Group chats frequently feature posts from scammers who jump in. (“Free iPhone 5! Please respond with your credit card information and address.”) What kind of a weirdo would stalk me on QQ?

But after talking a bit, I found out Pingping really did work for the Ministry of Agriculture. More than that, she created training materials for all SVOs and worked directly with a high-level MoA director. Pingping helped me meet with Director Zhang, who was so excited a foreigner would study her program that she wanted *my* advice on how to improve it.

What a surprise! Just three months earlier I was at a loss to make connections. By learning how QQ is used at the workplace in China, I solved my outreach challenge.

我是一个美国大学毕业生，最近被指派到中国中部地区完成一项任务，这项任务是富布莱特赞助的关于大学生村官的调查研究。大学生村官是一群分散在中国农村地区工作的年轻的政府官员，我需要想办法联系他们然后对他们进行采访。

我想办法从朋友和朋友的朋友那里联系他们，可是我只联系到了两个城市的大学生村官。直觉告诉我，我应该上网去找一些他们组织的联系方式。我开始查找阅读大量的关于大学生村官的论坛和网站，可是我很快就发现这样找下去毫无希望。他们给出的电话号码，要么被挂断要门永远没有人接。而电子邮箱地址全部都是网站管理员的地址，然后被系统弹回。

然后我发现了中国原创的即时通聊天软件——QQ。对我来说，“即时通”在我的记忆里，都是那些时髦的字体和颜色，被刻意包装完美的头像，以及离开状态提示信息（“马上回来……正忙”）。但是在美国人都转向谷歌聊天，即时通几乎要消失了的时候，中国的即时通服务，QQ，却正如日中天。

QQ拥有7.84亿用户，是全世界最大的虚拟社区之一，仅近次于脸书。但是QQ还起到了另一个作用，在工作中也经常用到。正是这个作用，拯救了我的调查研究。

对于可以上网的大学生村官，他们的上网的第一件事就是打开QQ。我马上就意识到这就是他们在日常工作与同事沟通和彼此联系的常见方式。通过简单的搜索，就能发现有超过300个专门由大学生村官组成的QQ群。我加入了几个，希望他们能帮我完成我的调查项目。但不幸的是，我并未得到我期待的欢迎。我甚至收到了以下几个带着强烈政治色彩的回应：“我们不喜欢美帝国主义的人在群里”和“这是美国政府一手策划的阴谋！”

我的解决方法就是忽略这些刻薄的回复。通过QQ，我结识了许多新的官员，他们与许多大学生村官保持着联系，尽管他们住在离我重庆的家很远的地方。与此同时，我也能倾听到来自全国各地大学生村官每天的评论。

这一切马上给我的调研带来的巨大的福音。一个叫萍萍的女孩给我发来了消息说她在农业部的中层工作（农业部是发起大学生村官项目的三部委之一）。她表示对我的调研有兴趣而且想帮忙。

当时我觉得这肯定是个骗局。群聊经常会出现骗子加入聊天然后发垃圾广告（“免费苹果5手机！请回复你的信用卡信息和地址）。什么样的怪人会在QQ上接近我？

但是经过一些讨论，我发现萍萍真的是在农业部门工作。不仅如此，她还编写了所有大学生村官培训材料并且直接与一名高级农业部官员工作。萍萍介绍我与一位张主任见了面，张主任对一个外国人研究她的项目显得很兴奋，他很想要知道我对这个项目有什么建设性的建议。

这真是个惊喜啊！三个月前我还为谁也联系不上不知所措。但通过学习如何使用QQ——这一在中国工作中也常常用到的即时通，我解决这个巨大的挑战。