...Misunderstood Methods: The Positive Results of Chinese-American Parenting At the age of seven, Lulu had never been to a sleepover and was not allowed to watch TV or play computer games. Instead, she was told she would exert her efforts on maintaining perfect grades and mastering the piano. Her mother supervised three hours of piano practice every day to prepare for her weekly lesson. At one point, Lulu was working on a piece called “The Little White Donkey.” The song had complicated rhythms that easily got muddled between the left and right hands. The day before a lesson, Lulu got up from the piano and declared that she gave up trying to get it right. As she rose, her mother ordered her to sit back down. When Lulu protested, her mother threatened to take her dollhouse away and donate it to Salvation Army. Lulu continued to play, but after a short time, she put up more of a fight. The practice turned into a screaming match between Lulu and her mother, with Lulu kicking and punching in resistance. The threats continued as her mother told her she would take away Christmas and Hanukkah presents, birthday parties and meals; she told Lulu that she was being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent, and pathetic. The fight continued, but Lulu kept playing. Finally, after a night of warfare, Lulu’s hands executed the perfect rhythms. She could play the piece. That night, Lulu and her mother snuggled, hugged, and laughed in celebration of her achievement. Lulu’s mother is Amy Chua, the author...
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...Professor Liu ASIAN 231 Research Paper The life of a Chinese American Growing up in a country where you are a minority amongst many other minorities can be difficult. This can cause many mental illnesses to the families and the individual itself. The United States is a country with many minority groups, one of which includes Chinese Americans. I know myself that it’s hard living in a place where there is racism and stereotypes about Chinese people, since I have been through this. The Chinese community is one of the fastest growing communities in the United States. The Chinese first came to the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. The reason why they left their home country was due to high taxes, peasant rebellions, family feuds, and poverty. The reason they came to the United States during that time was because of the California Gold Rush and a better economic opportunities. But because there were so many Chinese coming, the people of the United States developed xenophobia (a fear of people from other countries). So 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was put upon. But many years later, Chinese Americans were able to slowly to come back into the United States. Living in a different country can be very difficult. Especially if you are a parent trying to raise your children. This can cause a lot of stress because they have to work really hard in order to provide for their family. In “Chinese American Parents’ Acculturation and Enculturation, Bicultural Management...
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...movie, my mind set are different as well, yet everything I watch this movie it brings tears into my eyes. When I was younger viewing the movie, which was very close to reality to what actually happen to women in China in the time, I think now when I view the movie, I’ve missed the whole point of the movie, it was really describing the relationship between mother and daughter in different time zone and culture background. “As cultural institutions, mass media often reflect some aspects of the society in which they operate. The critically acclaimed film The Joy Luck Club (1993) reflects diaspora experiences of Chinese immigrant women and depicts intergenerational tensions between Chinese mothers and their American-born Chinese daughters. It also reflects the struggles, dilemmas, and conflicts in the search for identity and self-development among Chinese and Chinese American women.” (Yea-Wen, C. (2007). The storyline is centered upon Jing-Mei Woo also referred as June, who struggles to deal with the recent death of her mother Suyuan Woo, throughout the movie. The movie takes place at a reception held on June’s behalf before her trip to China to meet her twin half-sisters who were abandoned by their mother many years ago. June struggles with her mother’s past which she never fully understood. Though Suyuan dies before the movie begins, it is revealed that Suyuan was forced to abandon her daughters after contracting severe dysentery on her journey to escape the Japanese invasion during...
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...Buddhism is a religion practiced by around 350 million people in the world. The practice of Buddhism is a journey that involves spiritual development, insight, and self-awareness. In fact, the word ‘Buddha’ means ‘one who is awake’. A Buddha is free from greed, hatred, and ignorance. The Buddhist religion teaches people to be fully responsible for their lives. Buddhists believe every action has a consequence, and change can be made. Buddhism differs from other religious groups in many ways. First, there is no almighty God in Buddhism. Buddhists do not believe in heaven and hell, or judgment day. The idea of sin does not exist in Buddhism. In addition, the relationship between a Buddha and his disciples is that of a teacher/student, not a God and his followers. Another difference between Buddhism and other religions is there is no savior concept. A Buddha does not have the ability to wash away impurities. They believe in cause and effect. There is an action, and a reaction. Also, the concept of “Hell” is different in the Buddhist religion. Buddhist does not believe that “Hell” is a consequence, or eternal damnation. Instead, it is one of the six realms of Samsara (the worst of three undesirable realms). Samsara is a fundamental concept of Buddhism. It is the ‘perpetual cycles of existence; or endless rounds of rebirth among the six realms of existence. Because Buddhists practice self-awareness, enlightenment, and responsibility they do not judge other religions...
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...generation) and their children (second generation). In history, during the nineteenth century, Chinese travel to America for financial solutions, with hopes to return to their home with money. As time moves ahead, Chinese immigrants to America searching for a better life, for instance, my parents immigrated to America, who then conceived us as the second generation. With pressure from the parents, children of the second generation were forced to perfect both the American and Chinese culture to their very best. The second generation Chinese Americans were American born, but were still outcasts of the American society because of their skin color. The lives of the children of immigrants who immigrated to America have had stressful impacts from their parents and society because of their parent’s expectations of a perfect child who succeeds in school, and the society’s rejection of their ethnicity. From the old days until now, millions of people around the world have decided to immigrate to the United States in search of a better life. The reason why Chinese people immigrated to America due to the rumors of opportunity to gain higher wages jobs within America which would help support their families who were struggling to survive in China. According to Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1848, the Chinese immigrants came to California for the opportunity to obtain gold from the Gold Rush (32). The Chinese immigrants had not planned to stay in America, but were there only to obtain enough gold to...
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...Chinese Language in America Chao Liang Kansa State University 12/7/11 Author Note Chao Liang, undergraduate student, Kansas State University. Chao Liang is major in Finance Management in Business College. This report is a summary of study of Chinese language; experience of teaching Chinese with American student who is taking Chinese class. The culture of Chinese language develops in America. Abstract In this report, it includes 5 main points refer to the Chinese language and personal experience. 1. From learning the Chinese language, grammar, pronunciation, to understand the Chinese language situation in America, Chinese America experience in America. 2. Conclude the experience through teaching Chinese. 3. Compare Chinese cultural and America cultural. 4. Analysis what classmate sharing in class, the importance of team work. 5. Suggestion for the future class. These five different points connected by one common thing, Chinese language. The whole report emphasizes the development of Chinese language in America. How these two different cultures occur chemistry reaction. The improvement of teaching skill make a big contribution on develops of Chinese in America. Chinese Language in America As a Chinese, with more than 10 years of Chinese learning, we cannot image how the foreigner learn Chinese. After study in America, we can see lots of natives are willing to learning Chinese even though it seems extremely difficult to them...
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...work and determination. Chinese immigrants differed from Italian and Russian based immigrants greatly therefore they were targets of suspicion and even hostility. Asian immigrants often found that the path to acceptance was especially difficult. Some immigrants did get rich, but most spent their lives carving out a decent life for themselves and their families. Life for an immigrant was ghettos, physical exams, and never being truly accepted. Crop failures, famine, rising taxes, shortage of land and jobs, and religious and political persecution were all pushes for immigrants to level their home land.. Life for an immigrant was hard but being a Chinese immigrant was harder. In the mid 1800’s American railroad companies recruited a quarter of a million Chinese workers. Many Chinese immigrants had to work to pay of the debt of their passage and upkeep. The main Chinese occupations during this time included mining, farming, fishing, factory work, food preparation, and laundering. American labor unions fought really hard to exclude Chinese immigrants. Chinese accepted low wages so they affected the rates of all the workers, so most were getting aggravated. The unions maintained that if Chinese laborer kept coming to California wages would continue to drop. Other groups claimed The Chinese simply were not worthy of being Americans.Anti Asian movements claimed that Asians were physically and mentally inferior to white Americans. These claims spread racism...
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...14 April 2013 Gish Jen: “In the American Society” American Prose Project “In the American Society” is a short story wrote by Gish Jen. It was first published in 1986 in The Southern Review (Hunter,”MELUS Interview” 6). The short story “In the American Society” was the spring board for her novel Typical American. The author Gish Jen was born Lillian Jen in 1955 in New York. Her pen name Gish was her nickname in high school. Gish is a second generation Chinese American. She is one of five children. Her parents were educated in Shanghai and emigrated separately to the United States around World War Two. (TuSmith 1) Her father was a hydraulic engineer who had been invited to the United States to assist in the war effort and her mother was a young socialite who had been sent to the United States for graduate education. Neither was able to return to China following the communist takeover there. Now permanently in the United States, her father felt he was living “in no world”; he did not become a U.S. citizen for many years. (Lewis 1) Gish Jen’s work has been instrumental in introducing Asian American cultures to a reading public that, for the most part, has been casually familiar with an ethnic community that remains stereotyped in the United States. Jen’s presentations of Chinese families in the United States are so fully human, humorous, and admirable that they counteract bigoted preconceptions. (Lewis 1) When “In the American Society” was first published Gish...
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...How did the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act influence Chinese Immigrants life for almost twenty years until now? American’s protests to Chinese immigration took numerous forms, and for the most part originated from financial and social pressures, and additionally ethnic separation. Most Chinese workers who went to the United States did as such keeping in mind the end goal of migrate to USA was to send money to China to help their families. non-Chinese immigrants felt that Chinese migrants were taking they employments, which prompted non-Chinese to loathe about Chinese workers. Moreover, as with most immigrant societies, a lot of Chinese settled in their own neighborhoods, and stories spread of Chinatowns as spots where extensive quantities of...
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...first racially restrictive immigration bill in American history that that prohibited Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. known as the Chinese Exclusion Act. All in all, it was an unsurprisingly development considering that anti-Chinese (and other Asian minorities) sentiment had been culminating since the flood of fortune-seeking immigrants during the 1848 California Gold Rush. That said, white resentment of the Chinese had largely arisen from two main factors: the perceived “job-stealing” of the Chinese immigrants and their refusal to assimilate into white culture. In the years following the Gold Rush, the Chinese population within the United states shot up from seven total Chinese...
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...Within Canada in the 1900s multiculturalism events helped form the country we know today. In the Draft letter from the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) in 1886 written for Chinese laborers in Canada to the Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain. When Chinese laborers were no longer needed in Canada, Canada enacted a new part to the Immigration Act. Chinese immigrants began being required to pay a head tax to live there, in a desperate attempt to not pay this tax, they reached out to the Chinese Ambassador. Pleading to get help from this decimation, this draft letter reveals that after the laborers were used to complete dangerous jobs to create the railway that connects multiple parts of Canada. The Chinese laborers believed they...
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...For the first time in American history, a national group was being restricted from entering the United States. In 1882, the U.S. Congress officially passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. This act suspended the entry of Chinese immigrants to the United States for ten years (Kwong, Miscevic 101). The west coast cheered in happiness; their efforts were coming closer to a solution. However, anti-Chinese agitators were still not fully pleased because the Chinese Exclusion Act was to only temporarily stop the immigration of the Chinese; the anti-Chinese supporters wanted full extermination of any Chinese presence in the United States. Anti-Chinese reformers only worked further to diminish any of the Chinese left in America. Discrimination and segregation...
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...Becoming American: The Chinese Experience SOCY 100 February 18, 2012 Introduction The Chinese Experience records the history of the Chinese in the United States. The three-part documentary shows how the first arrivals from China, their descendants, and recent immigrants have “become American.” It is a story about identity and belonging that is relative to all Americans. The documentary is divided into three programs, each with a focus on a particular time in history. Program 1 describes the first arrivals from China, beginning in the early 1800’s and ending in 1882, the year Congress passed the first Chinese exclusion act. Program 2, which details the years of exclusion and the way they shaped and distorted Chinese American life, opens in 1882 and ends soon after Congress repealed the exclusion acts in 1943. Program 3 examines life during the Cold War, in the wake of immigration reform in 1965, through the years of the Civil Rights Movement, and to the present day with new opportunities and new challenges for Chinese Americans. These three themes discussing the history will be the focus of this paper documenting the journey of the Chinese American dream. Becoming American: The Chinese Experience Program 1 begins in the mid-1800s a time of civil war and famine in southern China. Young Chinese men left their villages to search for better opportunities in other parts of the world. When the news of a gold rush in California reached China in 1849, thousands headed...
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...about 40,000 Chinese immigrants have come to the U.S (Holland, 2007). But, how much truth is actually found in these widely used phrased? Sui Sin Far has proven through her story “In the land of free” that America is not the magical place everyone expects it to be. In the story, Hom Hing and Lae Choo were immigrants from China who also were attempting to build a family here in the United State. Hom Hing were running a grocery store in San Francisco while his wife Lae Choo was giving birth to the little one in China as well as taking care of her in laws until they passed away. Hom Hing and Lae Choo were supposed to reunite afterward. However, US government decided to make the life of Chinese immigrants difficult by taking away little one when the couples could not provide any official documents to prove the identity of their baby. Hence, little one was being sent into the missionary school. Lae Choo had fall into depression being apart from her son. In addition, in order to get back little one, the couples had to go through difficulties, to be ignored for months from the government, and to be taken advantaged by the lawyer who took all of their money and Lae Choo’s jewels as payment for his help. The saddest part is that after ten months, little one could not remember his language or recognize Lae Choo, his birth mother, anymore. Hom Hing and Lae Choo’s experience is one of the examples revealing the inhumane and discrimination policies of U.S government toward Chinese immigrants...
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...July 3, 2010 Dear Diary, My life as a Chinese American Many of my ancestors paved the way for me to become a Chinese American. In the late 1850’s is when the first wave of Chinese immigration entered into the United States. The Chinese who entered the United States were called the Gold Mountain Guest. The Chinese called the United States, Gold Mountain, in the event that they may become rich. This gold rush started in Sutter’s Mill, Sacramento, CA. As the gold diminished, they just came to simply work. They were discriminated against in their wages, they were paid less than everybody else and was treated with violence. My name is Kim Lee, and I was born to Su Lee and Chang Lee on December 24, 1985 in China. When I first came to the United States, I did not know what to expect. My parents told me of the many struggles that the Chinese had to overcome to become Chinese Americans and I felt very afraid. My parents still live in China, while I came to the United States to attend College. I was accepted into the University of San Francisco, where I am currently attending school. I live in a small part of town called China Town. China Town is a segregated part of San Francisco where the Chinese Americans such as myself live. Most Chinese who come to the United States settle here on the West Coast, California being one of the biggest states to house Chinese Americans. Some of the same prejudice that my parents warned me about, still exist in the United States today....
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