Song Dynasty

In Maxine Hong Kingston’s story, Silence, she reveals a painful and strict childhood when she didn’t speak. Through reading this story one can discover the relationship she had with her silence which she conveys to the audience as comfort. The Silence of her voice provides considerable information towards her Chinese beliefs. The idea of moving can be harsh on whoever experiences the concept of leaving behind a sense of security. When traveling around the world, one can differentiate various…

How did Chinese Astrology impact society? Since the origin of the Chinese Astrology is unknown, it is a popular way to determine a person’s birth year and used in a way to count years, months, days, and hours in a calendar. Throughout the Astrology, there are twelve animals that each stand for a year in the twelve year cycle, a day in a twelve day cycle, and for every two hours in a twenty-four hour day. Along with that, the impact on society from Chinese Astrology brought many people the…

known as the Love Boat, a four-week summer program for college-aged Taiwanese born outside of Taiwan. This tour helped reacquaint participants with Taiwanese culture and language, by enrolling in brief language/art courses, learning popular Taiwanese songs, and visiting important cultural centers such as the Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA)("A More Complete Description of Loveboat."). My experience at the Beijing opera performed by the TNUA has led me to believe that every immigrant…

In the novel, River Town, Peter Hessler writes about his time teaching English and American Literature in Fuling, China. Hessler came about this opportunity by volunteering in the Peace Corps. Hessler taught classes in writing and speaking, but most of his time was devoted to teaching literature to third-year students. Throughout the book, Hessler also describes his time in Fuling. His intensive detail about the small fishing villages in the mountain, the housing situation the students have on…

The song “Someone’s Watching Over Me” by Hilary Duff is about someone finally finding themselves and becoming comfortable with who they are after struggling with their identity for some time. I feel that this song aptly conveys Jing-mei Woo’s character traits, emotions, thoughts and predicament as an adult after the passing of her mother, Suyuan woo as she too had a prejudice against her Chinese self. As a child, Jing-mei had always detested her Chinese culture and “had vigorously denied that…

The current population of China is estimated at 1.3 billion people , making the country have the largest population on Earth. China is a diverse nation with a plethora of different ethnic groups contained within its borders, the most populous being that of the Han Chinese which make up an estimated total of 91 percent of the population . With China’s growing residents, there is a significant population of Chinese citizens and those with Chinese heritage living abroad from China in different…

In the short story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, the author creates a conflict between a Chinese mother and her daughter. The relationship between the mother who wanted her daughter to be prodigy, and her daughter who refused to be prodigy is presented (43). She uses dialogue, irony, similes and metaphors to illustrate and set her writing. Tan’s main message that stands out in the story is parents-to-kids relationship, in this case mother-to-daughter relationship. With all the details given by the…

The Road to Individual Expression “If you don’t talk, you can’t have a personality” characterizes how the American culture is formed around speaking up and being different. The American culture differs in many ways from the Asian culture; the Chinese culture values family and traditional roles, while Americans value individuality. In the novel Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, the protagonist, Maxine, struggles to adapt to the surrounding American culture as she grows up in a family that…

Throughout our class discussions I was very interested in many of the reflection paper ideas. I decided to watch Fresh off the boat which is a television show is about a Chinese family who has moved to the suburbs to live the American dream. The father, Louis Huang feels that his children deserve to be Americanized. Although his wife, Jessica, still believes in the Chinese culture. She is having a much harder time adjusting, as are her two youngest sons. The eldest son has exemplified…

You are getting ready to go outside and start your day until you realize its grey outside and you don’t know what it is until you step outside to check it out. Then as soon as you step outside you start coughing like you smoked a pack of cigarettes. This problem is affecting the people that live in Beijing, China of all ages from the elder to the young babies. “The worsening air pollution has already exacted a significant economic toll, grounding flights, closing highways and keeping tourists at…