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How cross cultural communication problems can be reduced
Issues with cross cultural communication
How cross cultural communication problems can be reduced
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Immigration is always challenging: for the host country and for the new arrivals. There are tensions, obstacles, and expectations on both sides. These issues arise when the new country expects conformity and the immigrants anticipate preserving their cultures and traditions. They want to maintain their language, their religion, and their social practices. Dealing with these matters - positively or negatively - leaves a lasting impression on everyone. Wayson Choy considers this in The Jade Peony. It follows the lives of three Chinese immigrants to Canada in the 1930s: Jook-Liang a ten-year-old girl; Sek-Leung, an eight-year-old boy; and Meiying a teenage girl. Each wants to fit into Canadian society and adopt its nuances, but they face internal …show more content…
Rather than following her heart’s desire, she is limited by her mother and by the Chinese environment. She knows they disapprove of “others” and want her to remain Chinese. Uwem Akpan captures the same kind of conflict in his story, “My Parents’ Bedroom” from a collection of short stories in Say You’re One of Them. It features Hutus warring against Tutsis and a Hutu man is forced to decapitate his Tutsis wife to preserve the purity of his Hutu culture. “We must remain one [by cleansing the land of Tutsis] nothing shall dilute our blood. Not God. not marriage.” (Akpan 350) This gruesome scene is far more severe than twentieth century Vancouver, but it echoes how assimilation becomes problematic when mixing races is anathema to the dominant culture. Meiying is stuck trying to please herself and her heritage but winds up pleasing neither. Ultimately, she dies trying to self-abort the fetus she conceives with Kazuo. Her death is the direct result of her family and her country failing to support her wish to be Canadian. Being resistant to compromise and to integrating into other cultures, is a prescription for failure, rather than a solution for immigrants in the
In Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony, a major topic explored is the strict use of gender roles. In the novel, the theme of cultural identity explores how the characters are oppressed by gender roles through cultural tradition. The novel creates a window into the lives of a Chinese-Canadian family, as everyone is trying to find their place in a country that doesn’t accept them and a culture that is never truly theirs, each family member goes through a struggle wherein they have to figure out where they can stand on the side of that dash. Chinese – (or) – Canadian, each side holding its own unique challenges within its “hyphenated reality.” (Philip Gambone (The New York Times)).While they will never be accepted as truly Canadian, their Chinese culture
Judy Fong-Bates’ “The Gold Mountain Coat” discusses the childhood of the narrator who is a Chinese immigrant living in Canada. The narrator, even at a young age, possesses such admirable keen observation as she is able to notice the environment and even the situation of people around her. Living in a small town that is “typical of many small towns in Ontario” with only one Chinese family neighbor, the narrator is the only Chinese child. With the nearing day of arrival of John’s family, the narrator feels uneasy of her new responsibilities.
To begin with, immigrants who have settled in a country with new cultures and customs are often scared to lose their cultural values, not only for themselves but also for their family. They tend to hold on their artistic souls and customs when adapting to a new country. Mrs. Engkent hates everything about Canada, she feared losing her Chinese culture if she conformed to the “fan gwei” way (different countries culture). “If you are here long enough, they will turn your head until you don’t know who you are— Chinese” (Engkent, pg.144) Mrs. Engkent did everything in the Chinese way, she
The united States Declaration of independence states that all men are equal, but aren’t all women as well? Nowadays, the numbers for the population are at an increase for the support in gender equality, with the capture of feminist labels. The seek for equality between men and women, and criticize the privileges that arouse by gender differences. However in Old China, males control almost everything due to a patriarchal society. At that time, not only men, but also women are influenced by male chauvinism. In the Jade Peony, written by Wayson Choy, female characters are affected by an unequal perspective despite their age group.
“The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think, my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese. (179). In the story A Pair of Tickets by Amy Tan, the protagonist character, Jing-mei, finds herself in several difficult situations due to how her social and cultural upbringing has shaped her. She finds herself pulled between her Chinese DNA and her American background. While she was raised being told that she was Chinese and “it’s in her blood”, she does not identify as such, because she grew up in America and only sees herself as an American. After her mother’s passing,
In her book, The House of Lim, author Margery Wolf observes the Lims, a large Chinese family living in a small village in Taiwan in the early 1960s (Wolf iv). She utilizes her book to portray the Lim family through multiple generations. She provides audiences with a firsthand account of the family life and structure within this specific region and offers information on various customs that the Lims and other families participate in. She particularly mentions and explains the marriage customs that are the norm within the society. Through Wolf’s ethnography it can be argued that parents should not dec5pide whom their children marry. This argument is obvious through the decline in marriage to simpua, or little girls taken in and raised as future daughter-in-laws, and the influence parents have over their children (Freedman xi).
June-May fulfills her mother’s name and life goal, her long-cherished wish. She finally meets her twin sisters and in an essence fulfills and reunites her mother with her daughter through her. For when they are all together they are one; they are their mother. It is here that June-May fulfills the family portion of her Chinese culture of family. In addition, she fully embraces herself as Chinese. She realizes that family is made out of love and that family is the key to being Chinese. “And now I also see what part of me is Chinese. It is so obvious. It is my family. It is in our blood.” (Tan 159). Finally, her mother’s life burden is lifted and June-May’s doubts of being Chinese are set aside or as she says “After all these years, it can finally be let go,” (Tan 159).
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
The subject of this paper is Liz, a 52-year old, 1.5 generation female immigrant from Hong Kong. What this means is that she immigrated to the United States when she was a child, around 7-years old (Feliciano Lec. 1/4/2016 -. As a child of a family that consists of five siblings and two parents that did not speak any English prior to immigrating, the focus of this paper will be on the legal processes that the family went through to become legal immigrants and the various factors that aided in her path towards assimilation. Liz’s family is from a city called Kow Loon in Hong Kong.
The novel “The Jade Peony” is narrated by three different characters throughout the story as it progresses. In part one of the book, it is narrated by a character named “Jook Liang” but usually just called Liang while in conversation. The reader is told the setting and time of the plot, which is in Vancouver, BC and in the time of the Great Depression (In the 1930s). We also learn the names of all the members in Liang’s family. An important figure in Liang’s portion of the story is a man named Wong-Suk. Wong-Suk and Liang become great friends, he occasionally tells her tales from the past. While Poh-Poh was helping Liang tie a ribbon for her tap dance shoes, we learn about her childhood. Poh-Poh was considered disfigured and her mom sold her to a family, where she
During the time period of 1880 - 1885 approximately 17,000 Chinese immigrants immigrated to Canada in the hopes of better work, and improved living conditions. These immigrants were sadly disappointed as they were met throughout Canada with resentment and racist views. After the completion of the Canadian transcontinental railway the mainly Chinese population that had been employed as works began to disperse throughout Canada. This dispersion created “Chinatowns”, generally located within British Columbia and Vancouver. This time period of prejudice and hate becomes extremely significant as it shows the way that Canada overlo...
This is evident in the persistence of elderly characters, such as Grandmother Poh-Poh, who instigate the old Chinese culture to avoid the younger children from following different traditions. As well, the Chinese Canadians look to the Vancouver heritage community known as Chinatown to maintain their identity using on their historical past, beliefs, and traditions. The novel uniquely “encodes stories about their origins, its inhabitants, and the broader society in which they are set,” (S. Source 1) to teach for future generations. In conclusion, this influential novel discusses the ability for many characters to sustain one sole
The Jade Peony, written by Wayson Choy, is a beautiful short story about the relationship between a young boy and his grandmother. The story deals with many complicated social and emotional issues including change, death, and acceptance. As we explore the repeating conflicts in the story we begin to understand how difficult it is to assimilate cultural beliefs and traditions into a new life.
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
Immigrants' lives become very difficult when they move to a new country. They are often discriminated against due to their race and/ or nationality. This problem occurs many times throughout Dragonwings, a book by Laurence Yep. In his book, the Chinese characters who immigrate to America face many challenges in their new lives. They are thought of as inferior, have to endure many hardships, and become lonely due to the fact that they must leave the majority of their families in China. In this book, the immigrants face multiple difficulties and challenges in the new world they know as the Land of the Golden Mountain.