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Cultural Differences Between China and the United States
Cultural differences between the united states and china
Cultural differences among people
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United States usually known as the “melting pot” and it is a typical immigrant country. In the past 400 years, United States has become a mixture of more than 100 ethnic groups. Immigrants bring they own dream and come to this land, some of them looking for better life for themselves and some want to make some money to send back home or they want their children to grow up in better condition. Throughout the history there’s few times of large wave of immigration and it is no exaggeration to say that immigrants created United States. For this paper I interview my neighbor and his immigration story is pretty interesting. My neighbor is 87 years old and he been here for 75 years. He has experienced a lot of things and changes. He told me, when he was young, he lived in a small village in Guandong China. There is no electricity, so the place is dim and dark. His mother pass away, when he was 4 years old. He was raised by his grandmother. He didn’t have any sense of his father, because his father left for America before he was born. He told me the only thing that kept his family in China together was his father was making $25 a month working in a grocery store in Texas and he sent $15 of that home to China. It was a lot of money back then. He said the reason he …show more content…
Such as it is hard for him to buy a house, most of people don’t want to sell their house to Chinese during that time. When he graduated, he looked for a job and he went to maybe half a dozen interviews, but nobody hired him. After half a dozen of these rejections, he was just kind of kicking around. Finally he hear someone said, “California Department of Transportation is hiring.” It is in 1951 and it was Eisenhower’s idea of national defense, so a lot job opens up. He went for an interview. It turned out that the guy who interviewed him was a Cal Berkeley graduate, so he got the job. When he was 70 years old, he move to New York, because he children is lived in New
In port cities of China, leaflets distributed by labor brokers said, “Americans are very rich people. They want the Chinamen to come and make him very welcome. There you will have great pay, large houses, and good clothing of the finest description. Money is in great plenty and to spare in America.”
Immigration has existed around the world for centuries, decades, and included hundreds of cultures. Tired of poverty, a lack of opportunities, unequal treatment, political corruption, and lacking any choice, many decided to emigrate from their country of birth to seek new opportunities and a new and better life in another country, to settle a future for their families, to work hard and earn a place in life. As the nation of the opportunities, land of the dreams, and because of its foundation of a better, more equal world for all, the United States of America has been a point of hope for many of those people. A lot of nationals around the world have ended their research for a place to call home in the United States of America. By analyzing primary sources and the secondary sources to back up the information, one could find out about what Chinese, Italians, Swedish, and Vietnamese immigrants have experienced in the United States in different time periods from 1865 to 1990.
It is true that the more people from different cultures that are in a given area, the more the cultures are diversified. However, with all realities, some claim that immigrants dilute the American culture. Indeed, they cause some changes to the culture. Nevertheless, these changes can bring a wealth of attraction and a source of beauty for the country that everyone should be proud of. It is obvious that every single immigrant in the US has his own culture and way of life. When all these are added together, they form a very rich culture. In addition, they bring various interesting aspects such as food, music, literature, etc. That makes the Americans rich in cultural knowledge. The importance of cultural diversity is that it teaches the people to understand each other’s views, interests, and ideas and helps people view the world in different ways. This would finally lead the society to work towards each other’s interest, mutual goals, and objectives. Tamar Jacoby in his article “Are Today’s Immigrants Assimilating in U.S Society, Yes,” he said that, “Those who are coming now are people who understand cultural fluidity, understand intermarriage and find that a natural, easy thing. This maintains unity and balances in the society” (411). Once this stage is reached, all the problems would be solved. Then it can be said that America has reached a true democracy, echoed by
It should be noted that only a very small number of Chinese immigrants came to the United States prior to 1850. This number began to increase dramatically between the year 1850 and 1882, when the news of the discovery of gold mines in California reached China. At that period of time, western invasions and civil unrest had led to inflation, starvation and loss of land in southern China. Therefore, many young men sailed for the "Gold Mountain" ...
Long before the Gold Rush of 1849, the Chinese had known about the wealth that lay in America, or “the Mountain of Gold” (Sung 1-4; Howard 225). Legend told of a place where the precious metal was bountiful. They dismissed this until a few daring men found wealth in America. Many were drawn to the prospect of easy money and by 1850 nearly 25,000 Chinese had immigrated to California (Sung 5; Daley 26-27). Some searched the deserted land claims for overlooked gold, while other Chinese were hired by successful gold miners as cooks, houseboys, gardeners, farmers, and laundrymen (Sung 10-11; Howard 224-226). Unfortunately th...
Immigration can be defined as passing foreigners to a country and making it their permanent residence. Reasons ranging from politics, economy, natural disasters, wish to change ones surroundings and poverty are in the list of the major causes of immigration in both history and today. In untied states, immigration comes with complexities in its demographic nature. A lot of cultural and population growth changes have been witnessed as a result of immigration. In the following paper, I will focus on how immigration helps United States as compared to the mostly held view that it hurts America.
In “Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home” written by Madeline Y. Hsu she discusses transnationalism among immigrants from Taishan. Transnationalism is a key part of globalization and it shows us how other people operate across national boundaries. Hsu wrote this book to shed light to the Chinese American culture and to help better understand the history of their people and culture. By doing this, the author hopes to show how immigrants from Taishan, a populous coastal county in south China, are responsible, at least until 1965, for the majority of Chinese immigrants coming to the United States. She is amazed at how that single county of Taishan is now representing well over half of the Chinese in America.
America is a melting pot of different cultures, religions, ideas and identities, a country which over the years has been molded, shaped and changed by its people. There are many historical factors that gone into creating the country as we know it today, but none so influential as the immigration of millions to “the land of opportunity”. The millions of people who came to the United States in hopes of finding a better life greatly affected the course of American history, bring the the country new cultures, customs and beliefs . Irish-Catholic immigrants, “. . . the first great ethnic ‘minority’ in American cities,”(1) had a substantial influence on the industrialization, labor movement and politics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Four Chinese mothers have migrated to America. Each hope for their daughter’s success and pray that they will not experience the hardships faced in China. One mother, Suyuan, imparts her knowledge on her daughter through stories. The American culture influences her daughter, Jing Mei, to such a degree that it is hard for Jing Mei to understand her mother's culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to understanding who her mother was and who she is lies in understanding her mother's life.
As a country founded on the many cultures drawn to a promise of a better life, the United States sees immigrants as vital to its expansion. Beginning with the first European settlements in 1607, America has since experienced successive waves of immigration that have risen and fallen over time. Throughout history, immigrants have helped form a distinct and unique political and social culture while providing labor for the growing economy. Immigrants shaped America. In the past, Americans embraced different cultures and assimilated new ideas, yet always maintained a strong sense of loyalty to the principles by which the country was founded on – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Immigration meant more opportunities for innovators, scholars,
Immigration in the United States can be referred to demographic changes resulted to the influx of foreigners to the local community. Immigration to the U.S is primarily responsible for the development of controversial social, economic, and political aspect. These developments are liable for altering settlement patterns, significant social mobility, voting patterns, and increased crime levels. Previously, immigration in the U.S was largely a white-man affair seconded by people from South East Asia; however, recently, leading immigrations are from South American, South Asia, Middle East, and Africa. Quite a significant number of immigrants are illegal; nonetheless, the illegal immigrants can through the immigration policy be naturalized into the nation. More than half of immigrants are in America through family reunification, seconded by employment factors and thirdly, humanitarian reaso...
Unlike most other families mine had decided to live with the Chinese rather than in the isolated compound away from them. I and my parents, we saw no need for separation, after all, what bad could it be? The culture and language of China had begun to grab my attention from the moment I started to learn them. I went to
At a young age, my teachers and parents taught me to believe that I could do and accomplish anything that I set my mind to. I grew up thinking that I was unstoppable and that the only limit to my achievements was the sky. However, during my second year in high school, I began to realize that I was not as unstoppable as I had thought. I began to experience the consequences of my parent’s decision of bringing me to the United States illegally. Among those consequences were, not being able to apply for a job, obtain a driver’s license or take advantage of the dual enrollment program at my high school, simply because I did not possess a social security number. I remember thinking that all of my hard work was in vain and that I was not going to
Understanding the Chinese culture was confusing for Kingston. “Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese , how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?” (Kingston 223). Kingston questions her tradition and she doesn’t seem very sure what it is. She questions whether what her mother did by...
Before I was five, I thought I was Chinese. However, I wondered why I couldn’t understand the Chinese patrons of Chinatown restaurants. Upon learning my true ethnicity, I pulled out a mammoth atlas we had under the bed. My father pointed to an “S”-shaped country bordering the ocean, below China. It was then that I learned my parents were refugees from Vietnam. “Boat people,” my mother, still struggling to grasp English back then, would hear kids whispering when she walked through the halls of her high school. Like many refugees, although my parents and their families weren’t wealthy when they came to America, they were willing to work hard, and like many Vietnamese parents, mine would tell me, “We want you to be success.”