Assignment #4

As an international student, I can understand what Liu's feeling is like. It is quite normal that we will feel uncomfortable when we are surrounded by a different culture. Liu's need may be most of our choices. Everything will become easy when we live in our own culture. I appreciate the ones who can get the courage to face the culture shock and choose to put himself or herself into an unfamiliar culture. Since no one can understand you, foreigners here always have a struggling time to express themselves.
The first 2 weeks for me is definitely a kind of torch. I can not talk to my classmates and roommates,because of my limited English. I still do not want me to do as other international students. Deep inside, I want to stay in such environment which will force me to learn something new.
Fortunately, I managed to persuade myself. I did not choose to live with other Chinese. I feel happy to make this choice. I can speak loudly in English and make American friendsnow. I want to be different from my Chinese friends. I do not care about what others are thinking about me whenever I make mistakes. Actually there are still lots of native speakers who are also afraid to get involved on the campus.


vocabulary: sarcasm, exposure, reluctance

Blog Assignment #3

It is quite common to see that Americans are used to using gestures. That has already developed as a hobby of the nation, I think. We can see gestures everywhere, on TV program, in the daily conferences, even in the class. I have to admit that the use of gesture really makes the life here more attractive and lively than anywhere else. In China, people would try their best to minimize the chances of gesturing. We prefer to place the words that maybe easily expressed in gestures. If someone who is always using body language, he or she might be regarded as an anoying person. In the grown ups minds, those behaviors are only suitable on kids who is younger than the school age. Apprently, you can seldomly see the Chinese using gestures often.

In my culture, eye contact owns further more meaning than it has in American's. We choose to eye contact only if we need to express our special intention and viewpoint in the public. Here, it is just a kind of custome and politeness to use eye contact. It will take million of years to make all Chinese get used to eye contact during conversations. We consider the eye contact even ruder than the behavior of disturbing the speech in America. When we try to eye contact others, it is defined as we try to find other's secret and thought. As a result, no one will respond you with an eye contact, but questioning your strange and unusual behavior in mind.

Two sides of one coin.

In our tradition, keeping silent in the public is regarded as a virtue. It is firmly believed that private selves can never be shown to others. Mom used to tell me that respect every secret I have, if it is a secret and personal, then we should not make it be known. Personally, I agree with her. In my culture, let others know what we are thinking about and the feeling we have is dangerous. Even though I must admit that we may lose the happiness when we can not share the joys in life, showing our emotion makes you can be easily controlled by others.

It is common that the Chinese are good at hiding our emotion. Most of Americans can not understand the reason why we always have the same preference and taste and we give the identical choice or answer to questions. And we are usually considered be lack of creativity. However, things are not what they look like.

We should realize that it is not easy to control our emotion, and even harder to hide the feelings.
Remarkable amount of effort and willpower are needed to conceal the negative emotions. And we worship the power which can make us conquer ourselves. In our philosophy, if one can not control himself, people will not choose to trust him. The willpower is always the strongest power in the world. A real man may not have the strong body, but must own a strong mind.

I would say that kissing and hugging in public was impossible before 1980s in China. According to Confucianism,which influenced us for thousands of years, intimate behaviors between genders are regarded as offensive and immoral. But everything has changed since people went out and saw the different modern cultures. Nowadays, you can see people kiss and hug everywhere especially in the colleges of China. The youth think it is romantic and helpful to improve their personal relationships.

The public and private selves are just like the two sides of one coin. But most of time, people can only view one side. The other side is always a secret, especially of Chinese.

"Mother tongue" in my eyes

When it comes to china, no one will ignore the change it makes in the last 30 years, not only in economy but also in culture field. The people who was born in 1960s like my parents, they are the witness of the change between Mao's and modern China. They never talks about Internet, every time they see something different or new they would mentions what Mao would think of if he were alive. They can repeat what Mao had said and wrote anytime, those are the things that my parents will talk about when we sit at the table.

However, with the import of Hollywood movies and the appearance of American fast food and the influence of Internet, the young generations like me, prefer to accept the culture which looks just like the " American fast food". We use the words that come from English without translation, we are fond of the Internet mark and signals so that will help us save plenty of time, we think it would be cool and fashion if we use some foreign language in the Chinese conversation. And those are the things that most parents can not agree on.

Chinese teenagers choose to express their feeling directly instead of their parents' way, in which they never speak the word "love"directly, especially in a formal situation. However, it is more and more common nowadays that young people would like to speak the word "love" loudly when there are more people. I have to admit that we are not as shy as our parents any more when we want to speak and talk.

Meanwhile, most of the Chinese youth today still choose the language which "sounds like" their parents' in some formal situation. Because we expect people regard us as if we were grown ups just like our parents. We would prefer to mention traditional virtue or episode in history when we are asked to speak in front of people.

Apparently, mother tongue in my eyes is no longer the same as Tan's mother tongue. And I should say that we both tell you the truth about our mother tongues.

Something about Lisha

I look smart, but I am not. I seldomly listen to my mother and that's why I make mistakes all the time. It seems like I have a punch of friends but I can hardly find someone who can understand me. Friendship is really a serious item to me. We share with each other and we do respect each other. However, people just can not figure out what they really want. Many times, I ran away quietly from my most intimate freinds when I realized they were not the person I thought they were.

My favourite motto is "whatever does not kill you will make you stronger". I worship the difficulties in life. I believe that if there is a god who makes you struggle, then he will also give you the chance to survive. It is the difficulties that make you a real man.

I belive we have time to think but no chance to hezitate. To become intelligent and a person without fear is my goal. And that is why I come here to get educated. I still remember the saying that freedom comes into being only when you begin to understand your whole environment. Therefore, I pick up my courage and put it in my backpack which comes with me all the way through.

My name is Lisha and welcome to my blog!