When East meets West tag:blog.lib.umn.edu,2010-02-08:/zhao0172/myblog//11811 2010-02-07T18:30:49Z Movable Type Enterprise 4.25 When East Meets West tag:blog.lib.umn.edu,2010:/zhao0172/myblog//11811.217332 2010-02-07T17:39:34Z 2010-02-07T18:30:49Z Welcome back, prospective students for a brand new semester. Hope you all had a good time in staying with your family and cherish the special New Year. While, international ambassadors are back! We are going to continue providing you... Zhao, Bo Welcome back, prospective students for a brand new semester. Hope you all had a good time in staying with your family and cherish the special New Year. While, international ambassadors are back! We are going to continue providing you essential information that you will need for college survival.

This week's topic is ""New Cultural Value or Things You Can't Do in Your Home Countries" hence I am going to write about my own perspective of the differences between East and West.

]]> The most striking one is Western's Individualism culture. That was the most dramatic shock to me especially I came from a collectivism culture, where people view themselves as a member of a group (family, society, and nation) and the group's right is superior to the individuals. In contrast, Western's individualism culture perceives individual rights are superficial. I did not realize that the most culture shock that I had experienced were due to Western's individualism culture. This is a complicated concept, isn't it?

To understand this, let me give you an example. In China, when athletes won awards, they will always say "thanks you to my couch, he/she is the one who always supporting me and giving me courageous." In this sense, athletes attribute their contribution to the cooperative work between couches, family, coworkers and themselves. However, athletes from individualism culture will probably say things like this "I am greatly proud of my own achievement and I have show the best part of me to the world." So now you see the difference between individualism and collectivism culture, let's apply it to the daily life.

If you get the chance to have a tour around the campus, the most predominant scene you will probably see is students each carrying their backpack and with headphones in their ears. To be frank, such simple scene had shocked me when I first came here. Back in the high school, I lived in a dorm so that I always went to the classroom with my friends. But here, people have distinct schedules so it is hard to find a time to walk with your friend together unless you two are taking the same class. Therefore, I learned to walk by myself and be independent. Hence, you could see that culture shock happened in every little details of your life; it is not grant big astonishment.

To sum up this week's entry, I have to say that international students will experiencing culture shocks to different extends based on personal differences. It is not right or wrong to say that one's culture is superior than the other or vice versa. I guess these culture shocks have enhanced my understanding to the diverse between these two cultures and helped me to behave appropriately when I am surrounded by different social context.

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Picture adpated from Mind Art Map, from http://www.mindmapart.com/east-meet-west-mindmapping-mind-map-happyzy/

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