From Adapting To Changing

From Adapting to Changing

After reading Ð'ÐŽÐ'oTechnicolorÐ'ÐŽÐ'± by Ruben Martinez, who believes people can be multicultural, I realize I am in the midst of a culture where I have encountered many differences that influenced me and changed the way I think about the world. In the past, I have never questioned the cultural expectations, because as an adolescent, I learned to listen to parents and elders for almost everything, or I would be considered disrespectful and disobedient. I was raised in China where the culture advocates conformity, values self restraint, and expresses ambiguousness of joy and sorrow. On the other hand, I have been adapting to American culture which advocates strong individualism, strong personalities, and clearly expressed emotions. There are many differences that exist between the American culture and the Chinese culture--language, religion, political organization, and such differences create different people and shape their beliefs. Thus, while adapting to this new culture facing aforementioned and other differences, I encountered moments that provided me a chance to become independent and think about matters in many ways.

I used to be extremely dependent on my parents; I relied on them for everything I needed because nearly all parents in China raise their children thinking they have to take care of and protect their kids with extreme care, especially if you are the only child (the law says one family can have only one child), and not to mention the only son (parents prefer newly born boy because a son can carry on his family name whereas a daughter will live with her husbandÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs family after marriage). Chinese parents choose everything for their children. For instance, when applying for high schools, my parents chose the school for me without asking for my opinion, I donÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їt mean that I donÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їt like the school, but what if I like another school more than the one they chose? They believe in picking the best school they can afford would allow me to learn better and that they assume their decisions will always be the best and most accurate for me. I never questioned their decision because my peers were the same. Like my parents, other parents chose what they believed were the best for their children and therefore we would have to listen and obey. However, the independence of American children from their parents stroke me when I arrived in America. Family is second to work for most of the parents in this culture, I saw my peers went to work and discovered that they used the earnings to buy their luxury without the need to inform their parents. My parents followed the saying and adapted to cultural differences, and thus I became independent. When my parents had to work 10 hours a day to afford the rent, utility, and daily expenses, I started to truly take care of myself since they were not there for me to rely on. Thus, like many immigrants who looked for their first employment in fast-food restaurants, I was hired as a cashier in McDonaldÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs for the first job in my life. Since then, I have rarely depended on my parents and the work experience turned out to be a big first step which helped me become the independent person I am today.

The independence also altered my thinking. I remember being a student in China, we learned to memorize the process in order to get the answer, and we were told that certain things were certain way and did not know why. We did not argue, because no one argued and