The Atmosphere Of The Neighborhood

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Zhao Zhuang, a rural neighborhood in Taiyuan, a second tier city in China, is the place where I was born. Rather than shopping malls, theaters and indifferent neighbors who are always busy doing their jobs; farms, storytelling and caring people were what I needed to face. The rural neighborhood in one way enabled me, a girl younger than six years old, to talk to people from different age groups, ranging from one year old to eighty years old, and who have various life experience, ranging from people who never had a job to ones who switched several jobs in lifetime (AUTHOR). The atmosphere of the neighborhood makes me inclusive enough to feel comfortable and always curious to learn from others. In another way the environment reinforced gender scripts. Since agriculture is the main industry in rural area of China, boys are expected to farm and girls are expected to stay at home and do housework. The notion of doing gender took root in my mind until senior high school. My parents, a female kindergarten teacher and a male businessman without BA diplomas, were in a low economic class, like most people do not have BA diplomas end up with (AUTHOR); they firmly believed in financially upward mobility, and so sent me to my grandparents’ apartment, in the rural area, 10 days after I was born in order to focus on their jobs. In Chinese culture, one of the social norms is that younger people are supposed to take care of elders. Therefore, growing up with my grandparents, both my parents and people in the neighborhood kept reminding me that I needed to take care of my grandparents within the bound of my abilities. The social construction process, which is demonstrated through my consent with my parents and the neighborhood’s idea that I need ... ... middle of paper ... ...ntity, I get to know that the model minority myth does exist, and party appears as a subculture in American colleges. In addition, being a woman but also a Chinese, the intersectionality identity challenged me to fight for rights for both communities. Furthermore, as everybody looking for identity, a friend in senior high school claimed that he is bisexual after coming to US. The fact convinced me that sexuality is a spectrum. I keep pivoting to be a better person in each stage of life, but I know that the reason why I have the chance of pivoting is because my parents worked hard to earn enough money. More money means more opportunities to travel; attend programs that gather youth from all over the world, and increase cultural capital. Looking into the future, I know that problems like stereotype will still exist, but I will learn the way to eliminate them at OXY.

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