Similar to the research that has been done on the family rituals article I found for the paper analysis, I've observed an interesting phenomena in my Asian church. I'm in charge of the youth in the church. And there are two major groups of young people, FOB(fresh off the boat) and ABC(American born Chinese). For quite a while I kept having trouble letting two groups talk to each other or get together. Because I wanted to break the gap between these groups, so I started to find their similarities and differences. After couple months I finally realized one of the major causes of their separation, it was their cultural differences. Although they're all Chinese, a ABC has a very different character compare to a FOB who grew up in Asia. Some people call ABC "banana"; the reason is that even though they look like Chinese, their way thinking or acting are more similar toward white culture. And because they grew up speaking English, young ABCs, like other Americans, often having trouble accepting people who don't have fluent English. Therefore, ABCs tend to separate with FOBs in a group. As for FOBs, since their cultural aspects are inherited from the traditional Chinese society, many of them have the intendancy of staying with their own community, and they don't consider ABC as part of their group. Because of these reasons, ABC and FOB are having hard time entering each other's circle.
That's so interesting to hear how there is such a large culture gap between these two groups. I never knew about the gap they had between them, but by reading your blog post I can see that growing up in America can have very many influences on a society. Some of those influences can be both positive and negative, however they can can create a barrier between Americans and people from other countries that have their own traditions/beliefs.
ReplyDeleteI never really looked at it that this same backgrounds of ethnicity can be so different because of where they spent most of their lives. I can see that ABC would act like a the white culture because that's all they know because of going to school with different groups of kids.Do you think People FOB, in time start to act like the American white culture or take part in some of there culture activities?
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