Cultural Values Of A Taiwanese-American Culture

Many new arrivals still struggle to survive and often Chinese Americans still encounter suspicion and hostility. Chinese Americans have achieved great success and now, like so many others, they are stitching together a new American identity. As Michelle Ling, a young Chinese American, tells Bill Moyers in Program 3, “I get to compose my life one piece at a time, however I feel like it. Not to say that it’s not difficult and that there isn’t challenge all the time, but more than material wealth, you get to choose what you are, who you are.” (www.pbs.org)

Asian Americans are a diverse group of people who are among the fastest growing minority groups in the United States. Despite their minority status, they often surpass Whites in America and do so while holding on to their cultural values regarding family, education, and success.

Growing up as an Asian American, I often struggle to identify my own cultural identity. Being the first generation of both my mother and father’s side of the family, I more than often get confused between American and Asian culture when applying them to society or at home. While being raised at home, I am largely influenced by culture and traditions from Asian parents and relatives. However, when I go to school or someplace else, I am heavily judged for practicing part of my Asian culture because it is entirely different than western or American. With that being noted, I began to learn and adapt to the western culture in hopes of fitting with society as well of trying to keep my Asian culture intact. As can be seen, this situation I dealt with is the same problem the whole Asian American community faces. Mainly focusing on younger generations like me for example, the Asian American community struggles to adapt to the western culture because they were raised with an Asian influence. Wishing to fit in society and be part of the social norms, the Asian Americans community faces issues that identify their cultural identity.

Every time I come home from college, my family and I would go out to yumcha or, as directly translated from Cantonese, to “drink tea. However, drinking tea is only one component of yumcha. To yumcha is to converse with company over a meal of many small dishes and hot tea. Going yumcha is social activity brought to the United States by the people from the Guangdong region of China, also known as Cantonese people. When they immigrated to the United States, yumcha became an important tradition because it also enabled Cantonese parents to socialize their children into the Chinese culture through the language and social practices involved in the meal and the ritual and meaning surrounding the tea. However, to Chinese-Americans such as myself, going yumcha with native Chinese people also emphasized my American identity due to my food choices. Yet when I go yumcha with non-Chinese people, I become distinctly aware of my Chinese identity when they fail the language or rituals of this tradition. The only time when I do not feel alienated during yumcha is when I go with my other

What is it like to be born in one country and then grow up in another where people speak a different language and follow different traditions? And is it easy to grow up in another country where members of the native country pressure one to be "one of their own"? If anyone wishes to find insightful and interesting answers to these questions, one should go no further than read Lac Su's I Love Yours Are for White People. In this book, Lac tells the story of his child- and adolescent-hood, growing up in "urban" Los Angeles as a Vietnamese living with a "traditional" Vietnamese family. As Lac demonstrates in the book, he once was between two worlds, sometimes unable to figure out who he was, and sometimes rejecting one or the other altogether. After going through difficult and painful experiences, Lac learns to embrace his ethnic identity. He realizes that he is a Vietnamese-American who belongs to both cultures. He learns to appreciate his Vietnamese background but also acknowledges that he is partly American because some Vietnamese habits are so uncommon for him.

First of all, I am a Taiwanese American from Dallas, but I’ve also been raised in several different places than where I come from, including China, Spain and the UK. Having lived in these places made me both culturally and socially diverse. On one hand, I’ve experienced different educational systems, food, languages and knowledge about different ways of living; on the other hand, I’ve learned how to quickly adjust into new environments and thus interact with people from all over the world.

Rhonda L. Callaway’s article explores the idea that Western orientated human rights are not suited to Eastern Asian societies. Callaway discusses how Asian societies prefer to follow a less individualistic approach to life, instead focusing on the family and community, placing them in a position opposed to Western customs and rights. Yet, criticisms of the notion of ‘Asian Values’ are also included, one such criticism labelling it an excuse for the state to repress rights.

I am an Asian-American woman living and working in the global city of New York. Growing up in an international city allowed me to become a multicultural individual and develop into a young woman different from my counterparts in Asia and here in the United States as well. I was taught by my parents not only the values of a Chinese culture but also to strive to enhance my strengths and to go forth and establish a successful career in business while always relating back to my Chinese roots. These values of diligence, perseverance and selflessness influence my everyday work and personal life.

I come from a Chinese-Vietnamese background. Though I do not have Vietnamese blood in me, my parents were born and raised in Vietnam; just like how I was born and raised in America. I grew up with the privilege of learning many languages such as Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and even a bit of French. I grew up eating may different things such as dim sum, hot pot, Hong shao niu rou, and more. Growing up as a Chinese-Vietnamese-American was very confusing. I was a living contradiction. My family said one thing, yet American society said another. In Vietnam, I wasn't seen as a "true Asian" and in America, I wasn't viewed as a "true American". It was very frustrating, but as I grew up and learned about the world and myself, I am willing to

I was born in China and was adopted by Caucasian parents when I was about one year old. A few years after they got me, they went back to China and adopted another baby girl. Thus my family consists of a white mother, white father, and two Chinese daughters, none of us biologically related. Besides that first year of life I’ve lived in a small, rural Pennsylvania town. Growing up in the 1990s in this town was tough as it was severely lacking in diversity (i.e. vast majority Caucasian). I got picked on all the way through elementary school and into middle and high school, simply for looking different, for being Asian, for being non-white. My parents also had to deal with racist, ignorant questions and statements from, not children in an elementary school, but other full grown adults. Despite all of the negativity, my mom tried to incorporate Chinese culture into our lives, for example taking us to Chinese language lessons and celebrating Chinese New Year at home, but I wholeheartedly denied all of it because I did not want to be Chinese, I wanted to be white and fit in with all the other kids and people in that town. I felt isolated and outcast in such a homogenous setting, especially since there wasn’t (and still isn’t) much representation in the media for Asians for me to look up to and relate to. I’ve come to love, accept, and embrace my race nowadays, but

The culture that I chose to present is the Asian American culture. It is one of the fastest formed ethnic groups that had their population grow 63% from 1990 to 2000 (Nguyen, 1). The history of the first Asian immigrants started around the gold rush in California. Many Asian immigrants wanted to pursue fortunes in America because of economic hardships in China. Many Chinese started moving to the United States in hopes to get some of the gold in California. Many Chinese were also contracted to work on the railroads in the United States where they worked in very poor conditions for little money and recognition for their hard work. The Chinese even demanded high wages for their work in these poor conditions, but ultimately they were shot

I was born to a teenaged Chinese-American mother in 1997. At the time, my parents lived in Concord, California, but I was raised mostly by my mother’s parents in Sacramento. My mother wanted to continue her education at UC Berkeley, the university she had gotten into, and did not want having a child to limit her education. Unfortunately, as my grandmother’s mental health deteriorated and my grandfather’s career shifted, they eventually had to move away to Utah because my grandfather, who worked in the air force, was placed at a military base there. The sole responsibility of raising a child then fell on my mother, who was focused on getting her degree. Due to financial issues, she eventually dropped out and moved to Sacramento with my father.

Being a Taiwanese-American has always been my heritage, and nothing in this world could ever change that. During the first few years of my early childhood, I did not speak a word of English. Speaking in Mandarin was the natural thing to do, since my parents have spoken Mandarin to me ever since childbirth. Naturally, the first words that I had ever spoken were in Mandarin, and I did not realize how big a problem this would be until preschool…

My mother immigrated to Los Angeles from Taiwan when she was seventeen years old. Her parents emigrated from China to Taiwan for a better life before she was born. Even though I’m only half-Chinese…and a Chinese-American at that, Chinatown and Chinese culture are very much a part of my life. Eating Dim Sum- (a Cantonese specialty prepared in small portions carried over in small steamed baskets)— was a family tradition every Sunday. Chinese holidays were taken very seriously, and I always loved receiving hóngbāo, red envelopes filled with money during certain holidays. My mother made sure that she spoke Chinese to me as a baby,

I was born and brought up in a nuclear family that consisted of my parents and an elder sister. From young, my father had a full time job and was the breadwinner of the family while my mother stayed home to take care of both my sister and I. All immediate and extended family members are Chinese and my grandparents came from Anhui and Xiamen, bringing along their cultural values and traditions from China to Singapore. Chinese culture has been found to originate about 5,000 years ago (Chinese Government's Official Web Portal, 2005). It has been passed through numerous generations and continually evolving as each generation embraces it. The cultural practices of my southern Chinese ancestors, local ethnicities in