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Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
91–100 of 121 posts
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this just the perceived difference in source? i.e. mocking someone for what you believe is a positive character trait is generally seen as okay (the aforementioned "study a lot"). Another vein this happens in is with regards to Germans ("being precise"). I don't think you could say that there's a similar vein of humor with African-American culture that's developed, and that's principally historical: America's s…
Aren't there a lot of accepted jokes about black men being well endowed or otherwise physically gifted?
Really, in the USA? I wouldn't have guessed from the literature or movies. I'm a European, I've never actually visited the USA, so this is genuine question about whether these kind of jokes would be considered "politically correct".
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is nothing odd or hard to understand about it. The rule for mockery or jokes in the US is generally "you don't punch down." No cop has ever flipped out and shot an unarmed Asian kid based on stereotypes about how hard asians study. There is no such thing as "driving while Asian." Asians make more money on average than even white people, they live longer, etc. They are well represented in higher academia and hig…
> If you really want to understand what makes American culture tick, live somewhere like Philadelphia or Baltimore for awhile. Baltimore here, almost two decades. If the point you're using my city to make were as obvious as you make it sound, I would not now need to ask that you make it explicit.
Most likely referring to the deeply segregated neighborhood population percentages.
http://graphics.wsj.com/baltimore-demographics/ http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/data/bal-baltimore-segregat... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/28/baltimore-segregate...
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if there isn't perhaps somewhat like an uncanny valley of language, wherein it's even more confusing when someone is using the right words and pronunciation but not quite putting them together in the normal way. Sort of like the famous Yahoo Answers query: "Has anyone ever been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?" https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100225111311A...
Nah, it is just a way for people to make themselves feel superior. It happens a lot here in America too. I think my english is fine, but say one word just a tiny bit off and some of them will make a "what?" with a face of pure confusion as if you were speaking in a completely foreign language. My main language is Spanish and when I speak with people practicing their Spanish I can usually understand them no matter the…
We have a team of non-native English speakers at my work. Hindi, Mandarin, Italian, Argentinian Spanish, and some wacky english accents like Newfie, Scottish, Irish, German...
After a while they all just become "language" and your mind handles it fine. But new people have such a hard time swapping between hearing the different languages.
But yeah some people are just jerks too.
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is nothing odd or hard to understand about it. The rule for mockery or jokes in the US is generally "you don't punch down." No cop has ever flipped out and shot an unarmed Asian kid based on stereotypes about how hard asians study. There is no such thing as "driving while Asian." Asians make more money on average than even white people, they live longer, etc. They are well represented in higher academia and hig…
> If you really want to understand what makes American culture tick, live somewhere like Philadelphia or Baltimore for awhile. Baltimore here, almost two decades. If the point you're using my city to make were as obvious as you make it sound, I would not now need to ask that you make it explicit.
Philadelphian here.. understood it perfectly.
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, we also love to give our friends shit here in America :) But to clarify, the group text began before they met me. They only told me about the texts after realizing I was Americanized and deciding I was "one of them". However, I do conclude that there was a degree of malice to their jokes. This is because while they were telling me about the texts, they voiced their legitimate concerns about living with asian pe…
"colleges were accepting way too many Asians" Some of this is just kids being dumb, but some is Americans have a weird relationship with their Empire. On one hand their parents and student loans are paying more money to fund the foreign exchange students and every foreign exchange student present is quite literally one local taxpayer who isn't getting an education yet is somehow supposed to pay for the system without…
> On one hand their parents and student loans are paying more money to fund the foreign exchange students and every foreign exchange student present is quite literally one local taxpayer who isn't getting an education yet is somehow supposed to pay for the system without an educated-level job.
A vast majority of foreign college students are not "exchange". They are just foreign students who pay full out-of-state tuition and don't qualify for any financial aid. That's why colleges are actively courting them as they bring in way more revenue.
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you really want to understand what makes American culture tick, live somewhere like Philadelphia or Baltimore for awhile. Baltimore here, almost two decades. If the point you're using my city to make were as obvious as you make it sound, I would not now need to ask that you make it explicit.
Most likely referring to the deeply segregated neighborhood population percentages. http://graphics.wsj.com/baltimore-demographics/ http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/data/bal-baltimore-segregat... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/28/baltimore-segregate...
It's odd, but while I don't disagree with those stats, as someone who grew up in philly->baltimore then moved around the country for work, I had a FAR more integrated friend group in either of those two cities than anywhere else, where it's almost purely indian+asian+white. (in that order, actually).
Likely due to net-population-availability of minority groups, and I won't disagree that many neighborhoods are almost entirely black (stayed with a friend living off diamond st one time), but I will say that one shouldn't then draw that to mean everyone in those cities also lives along the lines of such segregation. (To try and explain why the parent, and myself, had an experience that didn't always align intuitively with those articles)
What I'd also call out though that I wouldn't have noticed outside of having grown up there, is that I'd draw the lines there FAR more aggressively along socioeconomic boundaries, which just so happen to correlate with race. Not even starting to turn this into a discussion about which direction the correlation moves in, but I'm always hesitant to paint it soley it as a racial problem.
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you really want to understand what makes American culture tick, live somewhere like Philadelphia or Baltimore for awhile. Baltimore here, almost two decades. If the point you're using my city to make were as obvious as you make it sound, I would not now need to ask that you make it explicit.
Most likely referring to the deeply segregated neighborhood population percentages. http://graphics.wsj.com/baltimore-demographics/ http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/data/bal-baltimore-segregat... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/28/baltimore-segregate...
Yeah, nothing makes a body feel more welcome than being called a gentrifier. Ask me how I know. The several nearby homicides that occurred within the week after we closed on the place really helped make us feel at home, too. And I really miss sitting out on the back stoop for a late-night smoke to the sound of sporadic pistol fire in the middle distance. There are places in Baltimore you can go if you want to live around nothing but white people. I didn't leave East Baltimore for any of them. But I sure did leave East Baltimore.
It's very easy and very comforting to say that maps like the ones you linked are just a result of white people not wanting to live around black people, because white people are racist. I get that. Who wouldn't rather believe a just-so story than acknowledge that not everything is simple and not every problem has an easy solution? Just don't make the mistake of confusing a just-so story with reality, or imagining that by doing so you're very likely to be of benefit to anyone.
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, let's use the "Black Litmus Test" to see if it sounds more like stereotypical racism or just humor: "In the group text, they joked that I would go out and play basketball all day, only listen to rap and hip hop, coming back late at night, and even joked that they should all move out because of me..." Would this be an okay use of humor to ease their discomfort?
Let's use the equally arbitrary "Finnish Litmus Test": In the group text they joked that I would go out and play ice hockey all day, only listen to death metal, eat exclusively pickled fish... Just sounds funny to me. Almost like a history of oppression is an integral factor in this, and joking about the diligence and work ethic of a group that's found huge success via those is different from joking about a group tha…
Just sounds dumb to me.
I don't really understand how reducing any population of millions to two or three characteristics qualifies as humour. We can do much better!
Re: Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
#100> as being quiet and > reserved in the public This guy comes from a China that's aspirational rather than real
The Chinese grad students are definitely a different crowd than the undergrad students.