Research Blog Post #1

As a senior living in Iowa City for years, I have been curious about this question for a long time--the adaptation in a totally different culture. Before I came to America, what my parents concerned most, besides personal safety, was whether I can adapt to American college life. I also thought about it a lot and was a little worried for a while. I was afraid of being unable to live or study abroad alone, or make friends with American students. So I searched a lot on the internet and found many articles talking about others' successful life in other countries. I assumed that should not be very difficult, or at least I could do that with my best effort.

College Life

In those articles I found online, the main ideas usually went to two extreme directions. One kind of them focused on how an excellent Chinese student obtained the offer from famous university which was ranked top 3 or top 10 in the US, and how well was he dealing with professors and students. The other kind of them was that many Chinese totally couldn't adapt to college life or make friends with Americans. They stayed with Chinese friends all day long and their speaking English became worse and worse. Years later, they got nothing and went back home sadly. After read these articles, I had no idea about what my college life would be. My parents became more worried than me and always asked me to try to be the person in the first kind of articles. After I came here, I found most international students were just like general students. We were trying hard to learn knowledge, to make friends with Americans, to understand what we didn't know before. And usually there was no legend or tragedy as what we read from those articles. That kind of stories happened sometimes, but not always. A lot of people in China judged international students based on a very simple ideas from those articles which were not reliable.  

Behavior in Public

Besides the articles talking about college life, there were also many articles or reviews focused on the comparison between Chinese culture and American culture. There were many examples such as Chinese usually talk loud in public space but Americans “never” talk loudly to disturb others, or Chinese people always walk across roads even there’s no crossing but Americans don't. We often felt hurt after reading these but also doubted that if it’s real. After I arrived here and lived for a while, I found all of those words were irresponsible. Maybe most Americans behave better in public places, but not all. And not all Chinese behave rude. In Iowa City, I saw more Americans crossing the road illegally especially on Friday night when people went crazy for parties. Many people talked loudly when eating at dining hall in the resident hall (Burge and Hillcrest), or in general fast food restaurants. “Never being loud” never happened unless in some high-end restaurants. But giving tags to a group of people is very attractive when writing articles, I assume those authors didn't do enough researches or have real experience. Here is another difference: Chinese are not very sensitive with academia dishonesty. So there were many people “making up” stories about living abroad experience, and misleading a lot of readers who had never been to the country.

Personal interests

Another problem is it’s embarrassed sometimes when talking with Americans and don't understand their jokes. I got lost when people made a joke using an animal, or words from a movie, or a book, or a certain person. Because I was not familiar with them or I’m not certain about the meaning. The same thing can have different meaning in Chinese culture. And many Chinese are not interested in things which Americans like, such as football, baseball, and talk show. When I talked with my American friends about the  plans for weekends, we couldn't understand each other's fun. And not everyone is interested in other cultures. People may just be curious with something and they suddenly lose interest after they get what they want to know. It seems hard to learn and enjoy another culture constantly for most people. 

From my personal experience, I possess the question if it's easy to accept and adapt to a totally different culture, or even it's possible to do that. If it's possible for a person to live the rest of his life in the culture that he didn't grow up with and belong to.