Lunar Festival at Discovery Green The experience I chose for my first cultural experience this semester was the Lunar New Year Festival at Discovery Green this past weekend. I chose this event initially because I was expecting the event to inhabit a prominent Asian population and cultural traditions. However, as I share my experience, I will explain why I ended up having to do a comparison of the Houston Lunar New Year Festival, and the type of celebration that would be taking place in the one-fifth of the rest of the world in Asian cultures on the other side of the world. I chose this particular experience by first searching upcoming events at Discovery Green. This is an organization that was founded in 2008, and since opening …show more content…
It was given this title because seven time winner of best DJ in Houston by the Houston Press, DJ Sun was sent back to Qingxi China to retrace his ancestral roots. His producer videotaped the whole journey, and when DJ Sun returned he wrote music to go with the video of his journey, which was the main event at the festival. DJ Sun was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands before he settled in Houston in his teens. DJ Sun has made many influential friends since his settle in Houston in 1993. One of those friends is the Asian Society Texas Center. It was this group who decided to fund DJ Sun’s trip back to China to trace his ancestral roots of the Chinese part of his heritage. I had the pleasure of interviewing DJ Sun to ask him a few questions about his journey. When I asked him what he expected when he began the trip, he gave me a humble answer. “He hoped to embark on a spiritual journey to see where he came from, and hopefully meet some of his distant relatives.” Next, I asked him if he could tell me if he noticed any similarities and differences among American culture and Chinese culture. He told me that the Chinese culture were much more collective in their daily practices than the average daily American people. It was common to see many family owned businesses with the whole family working to hold it together in one way or another. As for similarities, he told me one example that was dishearten in his tone of voice. When he was in the city, some people were hoping to make money from his journey, and the places he was allowed to visit. DJ Sun told me that at the end of the day, all cultures are opportunist in their own way not just American culture. On a more positive note, he told me once he left the city to the more rural areas, life around China was more traditional. He meet an old poor bee keeper in the country that enjoyed what his journey was about and offered to be his guide for the remainder of the trip.
Richard Rodriguez article, “The Chinese in All of Us (1944)”, argues that many different cultures have contributed to making up the American culture. Rodriguez backs up this claim by sharing
Scholars consider Mandarin popular songs as “the first kind of modern popular music developed in China” (Lau 106). These Mandarin pop songs were developed in Shanghai in the 1920s. In Shanghai, the “trendy Chinese in Shanghai mimicked the lifestyle of the city's foreigners, engaging in pastimes brought in from the West, and this was also
Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the early 20th century, many Chinese families struggled to gain social, economic, and educational stature in both China and the United States. In the book, A Transnational History of a Chinese Family, by Haiming Liu, we learn about the Chang family rooted in Kaiping County, China, who unlike many typical Chinese families’ exemplified hard-work and strong cultural values allowing them to pursue an exceptional Chinese-American lifestyle. Even with immigration laws preventing Chinese laborers and citizens to enter unless maintaining merchant status, Yitang and Sam Chang managed to sponsor approximately 40 relatives to the states with their businesses in herbalist
The tale “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luch Wang depicts the story of three characters, Monkey, Jin, and Danny. They all have the problem of fitting into their new environments. Jin Wang has to deal with Asian stereotypes. Danny has to deal with embarrassment of his cousin. Lastly, Monkey has to deal with the fact that there is no position for him in the heavenly ranks. However, over time, these characters have to come together to fit in. Yet the question remains: what exactly about fitting in is the problem? Although Jin Wang takes the form of Danny to reject his Chinese roots, the embarrassment of Chin-Knee shows he cannot hide behind a false American identity, thereby delineating that race is the source of his problem.
Commonly, culture is considered large and extravagant events and holidays, such as Diwali, a wedding, or the Fourth of July. Each event and holiday have specific traits and rituals that occur to distinguish the event from everyday life, but culture isn’t exclusive to lavish events such as these and include everyday activities such as watching a football game and listening to a speech. Every belief, behavior, and symbolic system that a person shares with another is an example of culture. Authors Anne Fadiman and Joshua Reno explores the different aspects of culture and ethnography in their two books, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, and Waste Away: Working and
Preview: Now let’s take a look at the Origin and description of Mardi Gras, and why it’s culturally important.”
In “The Chinese in All of Us,” Richard Rodriguez describes multiculturalism in America in the 1950’s and how people of different cultures reacted to it. Rodriguez was born of Mexican descent from immigrants who moved to California in an attempt to find a better life. Being raised in America, Rodriguez was exposed and influenced by the various amounts of cultures surrounding him; he explored and developed as a person with a culture that went beyond his Mexican roots. Due to his embrace of multiculturalism, critics and people in general mocked and defamed him by saying to him “you have lost your culture” (Rodriguez 729). In “The Chinese in All of Us,” Rodriguez makes claims about the definition of culture and about how people reject multiculturalism in order to preserve their own culture.
“Rules of the Game” written by Amy Tan is a short story that focuses on the conflict in identity that Chinese Americans face when growing up with influences from both the cultures. The physical and social settings of “Rules of the Game” create an atmosphere which helps to bring out the true essence of the story. Amy Tan’s “The
Culture Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Blaxicans and Other Reinvented Americans” claims utilizing race as a basis for identifying American is not valid, culture should be what defines a person’s identity. Rodriguez emphasizes how he “declares himself as a Chinese because he lives in a culture of a Chinese city” (Rodriguez 91). This demonstrates how Rodriguez is involved with cultures of many different races, including the Chinese. Because he lives in San Francisco where there is many Chineses around him, he see’s himself as part of Chinese. The essay also mentioned that “[Rodriguez] come to the individuals as having multiple cultures, such as being a Chinese person” (Rodriquez, 92).
The importance of a strong relationship between the African American community and China is for the relationship to be ongoing. The relationship between the two must consistently continue to grow. They have to continue to develop new ways to interact with one another, understand culture and break down barriers between them. Throughout history, the acceptance for African American was not quite ideal. They had many hardships that created downfalls for them. Reconstructing the truth of being African American was hard for them. That’s why the significant relationship between China and the African American community is important. African Americans today make major contributions to China historical and today society— business, arts and entertainment,
The focus of our group project is on Chinese Americans. We studied various aspects of their lives and the preservation of their culture in America. The Chinese American population is continually growing. In fact, in 1990, they were the largest group of Asians in the United States (Min 58). But living in America and adjusting to a new way of life is not easy. Many Chinese Americans have faced and continue to face much conflict between their Chinese and American identities. But many times, as they adapt to this new life, they are also able to preserve their Chinese culture and identity through various ways. We studied these things through the viewing of a movie called Joy Luck Club,
YANG, Kou. An Assessment of the Hmong American New Year and Its implications for Hmong-American Culture [on line]. In: Hmong Studies Journal. Volume 8, 2015, 32 pp. Available at : < http://hmongstudies.org/KYangHSJ8.pdf> (Accessed November 25, 2016).
Moon Cake Festival: A Mid-Autumn Festival (Chung Chiu), the third major festival of the Chinese calendar, is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month. This festival corresponds to harvest festival s observed by Western cultures (in Hong Kong, it is held in conjunction with the annual Lantern Festival).
Central Idea: Festival culture has transformed into a global phenomenon that began in the 50s-60s.
A cultural event that I have attended in the past that has had a memorable affect on my life was a Native American Powwow. This event takes place every year, Thanksgiving weekend in Tucson, AZ. I arrived in the late afternoon, as the sun was going down. I remember seeing many different types of people, from tourists to the different Native American performers. The physical setting of this particular celebration was outside, and based around, one main circle. Drums were beating so loud, you could feel the pound inside your chest. Different activities were going on all around, such as dancers, vendors, and a huge variety of foods to choose from. The circular dancing arena is known as the arbor, this area is blessed before any of the events