After reading the article "Who is Irish?" written by Gish Jen, I feel strongly that how the word "family" can be different in different culture. People create language which suppose to have the same meaning for all the people from different countries, nevertheless, the culture re-offers the language different inner meanings which cannot be understood by other countries. Like in the article " Who is Irish?", the Irish family and Chinese family live in America together, and they all speak english, but they hold a different notion of "Family". What family stands for? What responsibilities should a family member take? How should they get along with each other? In the article, obviously, the Grandmother, Natalie or John gives out different answers. Here, I want to share with you how Chinese notion about family are different from Irish family or American family.
1 Husband&Wife:
Husband and wife make up the main and core part of a family. In the article "Who is Irish?", you can feel that grandmother has something not that pleasant on her daughter's husband John. The reason is because that John doesn't have a job at the beginning of the story. The big house Natalie owns is basically payed by her salary. In the Chinese family notion, man should be the one who support the family. Wife also work, but their main responsibility is take care of the children and husband, but not make money. That's why grandmother cannot be satisfied with John. She also feels weird that John goes to gym but not urges to find a job to "be a man". In the Chinese family notion, a man who cannot support the family will be considered as useless and kind of "lose face".
2 Mother&Daughter:
After coming to America, I recognize that how the relationship between parents and children can be so different. In "Who is Irish?", at the end of the story, grandmother moves out of her daughter's house to live in Bess's family. I can make sure that if this happens in China, Natalie will be criticized by the society. In China, the children who let their parents to live on their own, especially one of them has already passed away, are supposed to be not obedient and cold hearted. At the same time, in America, after children come to their 18s, they are considered as adult, who are supposed to live on their own. But in China, I feel that you are always a kid in your parents' eyes that they always have the strength of control on your life. For Natalie's family, both John and Natalie think that they should have their own life and raise Sophie in their way that the grandmother should not intervene in. This is typically an American's notion. In China. daughters should always obey their parents, not matter who is right and who is wrong. That's the rule.
3 Grandmother and Granddaughter:
In China, there are a lot of children who grow up with the grandmother and grandfather, which is kind of tradition. Your parents help you to take care of the children, which is a very common phenomenon in China. In another way, we can say that China's most Baby-sitter are the children's grandparents. So in the article, the grandmother thinks that it is she who should take care of Sophie and tells her what to do and what not to do. And as the relationship of mother and daughter, grandchildren should always listen to their grandmother. And there is an old saying in China that "Beating is a sign of affection, cursing is a sign of love". This is why in the article the grandmother uses a stick to lesson Sophie, because she thinks it's a good way to teach Sophie what she should not do. She does that because Sophie is her intimate granddaughter. On the other way around, people from other countries except Asian cannot understand this way of learning.
From these three kinds of relationships, you may understand more about how China's family notion are different from Irish and America. In this way, you can also understand the grandmother more. Even though she pretends to be OK, but I'm sure in her heart she feels very sad.
I would like to introduce a movie for you guys to watch, which is directed by the famous Chinese director An Lee---Pushing hands. It also tells a story about a gerontic father who moves to America to live with his son and his American daughter-in-law. You can also see the strong culture conflicts in that movie.
Here is some videos on youtube for you to check!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D0xj-qtD3A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlz6-nKbJNg&feature=related
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ReplyDeleteI’m not kidding, I should be Chinese. God bless America, but I really appreciate these aspects of the Chinese culture. As a kid I highly appreciated my grandparents and they were in truth my babysitter until I was about twelve or so when they moved to Las Vegas, because I guess they are a bit too untraditional at times. I know I said this before, but my grandpa is Filipino, and I don’t know if the Chinese and Filipino people share a lot of cultural similarities but in the case of family it seems so. However, I am not sure if my grandmother really ever worked. As far as I knew my grandma cooked, cleaned, sewed, and took care of me.
ReplyDeleteTruth be told I love my grandmother to infinity and beyond. My grandma taught me to tie my shoes, how to dress, she made me fabric dolls, taught me how to play card games, and so much more. I really am thankful to have had my grandparents play such an active role in my life for some period of time, because I always thought my grandparents knew best, even more than my own parents. When I grow into an official adult I do plan on my parents living with me if need be, God help me. I don’t get along very well with either of my parents, but I kind of have it in my heart that as much as I fight with either of them I don’t want them to be alone. Then again, I wouldn’t want a stranger to be alone so God help me there also.
I am fascinated with the idea of the traditional Chinese family, so thank you so much for sharing your insight. I would honestly love to go to China, or somewhere very un-American and experience their culture. America is so boring to me, and I don’t really feel as though the stereotypical Americans have the same mindset as I do. I am all for equality and blah, but I wish I had more. I always wanted to be a part of a place where my religion was intertwined with the government and so on. Not to bash America and maybe I am just so spoiled here and don’t realize how lucky I have it, I just feel like America’s culture is so diverse and I kind of want everyone to be the same, or at least have that experience.
Sophie,
ReplyDeleteLike Jessica, I too am very glad that you posted information about Chinese family structures. I know a bit about Asian Cultures, but having information from a primary source (you) makes it so much easier to understand the differences between our cultures. You hit the nail on the head when you said that American Culture expects the children to be completely independent when they reach adulthood. I think this ideology stems from the desire to be an independent nation and from the capitalist society we live in where everyone does for him/herself and not for the collective group.
I find it very interesting how the mother/daughter relationship works in China. The idea that the child is obligated to take care of the parents is completely switched from the parent taking care of the child scenario in the story. I now have a new found sympathy for the grandmother when Natalie kicks her out of the house. By making her mother move out, Natalie is opening up herself to shame and is seen as cold-hearted. Not only does this reflect on Natalie, but also on the grandmother. How could she let her daughter do such a thing? Was she a bad mother?
I also found the grandparent/grandchild relationship interesting. The idea that 'beating is a sign of affection' helps make sense of why the grandmother feels so strongly towards spanking. In America, spanking is getting a bad name because of the use of physical harm to discipline. But a generation ago, spanking was seen as an effective way to discipline a child, and it seems so in the story as well. So, by spanking Sophie, the grandmother is trying to show Sophie that she cares about Sophie and her behavior.
i love the story between the grandma and granddaughter because Grandma is with traditional Chinese philosophy and educational approach to the granddaughter who was growing up in the environment of Ireland.This is the transfer of love, renewal.
ReplyDeleteThis story reminds me of my grandmother, she is an ordinary but great woman, she has five children, in the time when China was just independent, my grandmother brought up five children, at that time Many people abandoned the child, or give someone else but my grandmother persevered
After that, she brought up me and my brothers and sisters, my grandmother was a strong woman character, like men, as workers, but can the same as the family accountant, plan how to use every dollar. Rational allocation of resources to the brothers and sisters. This may seem no big deal today, then in that particular era, it was great.
Grandma cooking delicious, even eat potatoes every day, also for a different pattern. Perhaps because once poor, so when at home, after becoming rich, but she still very saving, she often said, time to think about the future prosperity might one day change, whatever kind of life you all should be able to adapt.
Yini,
ReplyDeleteGood comparison about Rico and Buddy, who shared the same memory about their childhoods, but performed throughout different on almost anything. Your descriptions about Rico and Buddy are all in details, which really make sense.
Your view about Rico’s and Buddy’s persues are both correct. Buddy is truly someone who’s looking for a peaceful life. Or even I would like to say Buddy is doing what a normal person do usually. He, without doubt, would go to college and find a job after education. However, unlike what usually people do, Rico doesn’t care about his future and what kind of person he will be. What he cares about is what he is doing now and whoa he is now. From our narrator, I guess Rico is a person without confidence. He didn’t want to go to college like people usually do because he thought that he could not make it happen. So he didn’t want to hope for that, which he treated as impossible to do.
I also like your comment that he chose to go to Viernam because he was just chooing a way to be away from that place he had been always living in. Linking with my previous part of comment, Rico needs to find himself, so he left, so he went to war. That’s it. He was not confident about himself.
Well, based on your last paragraph, I want to say, Buddy stopped Rico for war because Buddy wanted Rico to wait for him and go together, rather than fearing about the war. It was dangerous, but the two main characteristics in this story are both heroes that they both wanted to go for fighting. However, Buddy has things, more important than this was, to finish up, like his education. So Buddy stopped Rico was not because he was afraid to go, but he wanted to be with his “brother” all the time. So I more like to treat this story like a love story between Buddy and Rico brothers.