The Importance Of My Cultural Identity

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Introduction Not until I left China for a boarding school in New Hampshire, United States did I realize how strong a cultural identity I had. I once thought that probably only I alone had realized this identity, and it was so strong that it could be reminded of several times a day. But after I talked to other international students in my school, I figured out that I was not the only one who realized this cultural identity. Several other students from China, South Korea and Vietnam also felt it, and then we generally concluded that our experience could demonstrate the old saying that goes “only when you leave your hometown can you realize how much you love the place and your distinct identity”. Now I can not assert whether it fits all the population I believe that many Chinese citizens have a similar cultural identity, whether stronger or weaker than mine, whether they realize it or not, it always exists, deeply hidden in their heart, their blood, and their soul. I wrote several essays on culture before, but none of them were long enough for me to include all my ideas, so I hope that this paper will be a useful resource for those Chinese citizens who have some sense of culture but wonder what it is and how it forms and also for those citizens from other countries who have a strong curiosity of Chinese culture or simply want to know why Chinese act so “strange” sometimes when sightseeing in foreign The circles were titled as “mesosystem”, “exosystem”, and “macrosystem” where the scale went larger gradually. Originated by Bronfenbrenner in 1979, this Ecological System Theory (EST) is now used by most developmental psychologists to understand a person in context (Neal & Neal, 2013). The smallest scale, “microsystem”, includes the influence of family; “mesosystem” includes the influence of parents and teachers; “exosystem” includes the influence of educational policy; and “macrosystem”, the largest scale, includes the influence of societal values. Together, the EST system works to analyze a person’s identities. In this paper, I will not analyze my cultural identity using the EST model but will accomplish this by using the same idea that we need to look into the context to understand identities. Unlike William Cross originated Nigrescence Theory that focuses on the conflict between racial identity (Worrell, Cross, & Vandiver, 2001) and Jean Phinney originated stage theory of ethnic identity formation that focuses on the conflict between ethnicities (Berry, Phinney, Sam, & Vedder, 2006), I will organize and explain in detail the factors that influenced or is influencing my cultural identity instead of limiting to stage

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