2 more days and I'll be back at MIT! Just turned in my Full Technical Report today. That thing was supposed to take 10 hours but I went past 10 hours sometime last week. Also had 2 supervisions today one of which started at 9am. Grad students, gosh. I was total unprepared for the other supervision but it couldn't have been helped...
Anyway, the past Sunday, I went to a Chinese Orchestra Concert. This is their first performance as a group so they were really excited about it and played a lot of "traditional and popular" songs. Songs that every Chinese person would've heard before. There was a western instrument department as well as a Chinese instrument department. They're not a very big group but managed to put together 2 hours of performance. I knew quite a few people from Caius, most of whom are Singaporean.
Sitting at the concert, listening to the music was an interesting experience. I don't know anything about music so I can't tell you how well they actually performed. But it felt very special for me because it was the first time in a long time that I heard most of the songs. I don't think I've ever actually attended any live Chinese orchestra. Between taking Chinese here, hanging out with people from China, Singapore, and Malaysia, and attending this concert, I feel like I've been avoiding anything Chinese for the past few years. I don't think I did it consciously but I feel very American compared to the Chinese international students here.
Going to Germany made me realize what "my culture" actually is. I never realized that so many things I took to be "right" was actually part of American culture and that the rest of the world doesn't have the same values. And then coming here to Cambridge, where 50% of the international students are Chinese, I feel... (how do I explain?...) Okay so here, there's not a lot of Chinese British people. I've met a few but nothing like what you see at MIT, New York, San Francisco, etc. If you don't look British, people assume you're an international student. I guess I am an international student here but I'm from America, not China like everyone seems to think. People are just confused once I start speaking because I don't have a Chinese or British accent. (What's this? American?) I've also found that Chinese people don't understand Asian American culture. Things that people in America say are "Asian" are considered "Americanized" by uh, real Asian people.
So while I can safely say I have a good insight to German and British culture, the real culture shock was finding out more about my own culture, why I do things the way I do, the things that I value most and where they come from, etc. etc.
2 comments:
In my French class right now we are talking a lot about culture too... that's like the theme of the class. The last few weeks we had a project where we view the different responses the american and french students give to the same questions. Now we are watching a French film and an American remake. It's really interesting how different our perceptions are about the same things :-D
stay confused. i think the best way to describe our culture is asian, more specifically chinese american. although, me and lots of other XX of asian descent have been finding a hard time to get chinese people to stop not acknowledging us as americans, or germans, or whatever. but at the same time, it's not like they think we are chinese...wtf? it's not that i dont acknowledge my chineseness, but, it's not right for anyone to not acknowledge me as american especially if we are a land of immigrants, ya know? anyways... happy for you that you're back in the states!
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