I am going to talk a bit about myself and reasons to create this blog.
I came to America last August 2006. I always had a dream to come to NY. There are a few reasons. The most important one is that I have been learning English for a very long time.
I learned English since I was little. Almost all the Asian people have a persistent craze for learning English. My mom and dad were no exception. They sent me to a kind of cram school for kids. I think my first English teacher was an American sailor. And the sailor stationed in Taiwan for a few months. The cram school didn’t care whether its teachers were sailors, soldiers, or criminals. As long as they were white, parents were happy to pay the money and send their kids there. When I grew older, I hear from other people that many women wanted to have sex with these white guys.
For a long time, I could not figure out why some women were so crazy about the white. Even though I was young, I could sense that there was something significant beyond a mere sex adventure. I gradually realized that it is a sense of superiority these women look for by either having sex or having relationship with the white. This phenomenon used to bother me.
When I was 15, I went to a private Catholic school to continue my English education. In the school during the class time, we could only speak English. Speaking like a real American is what this private school focuses on. But I had difficulty understanding what a real American was. Teachers told us that we had to have American accent in order to speak like an American. So, we listened again and again some conversation tapes in order to catch the so-called “American accent”. Imitation is vital at the beginning of learning a language. However, during this process, it is not only the langue we acquire, but also some values we assimilate. If we were called by teachers to recite a passage, we tried our best to read the passage in a kind of American atmosphere. All of a sudden, we became bold in expressing ourselves and passionate about words and sounds. We raised our voices to exaggerate and to emphasize. Speaking in English is very different from speaking in Chinese. Usually Chinese people speak in a flat tone and we rarely encourage individualism. Being modest and humble is virtuous.
By speaking a different language, we felt becoming a different person. It was a magical feeling, but real. Very real. I grew up in this kind of environment. I used to have ambivalent feelings toward these two cultures and languages. In the school, teachers encouraged us to embrace everything American. This reminded me of those women crazy about white guys. This phenomenon points out a relationship between superiority and inferiority. If we had to embrace American values, did it mean that something in our values insufficient?
Then I went to College majoring in English. I read from mythology, Yeats, to The Death of a Salesman. I could say that though I was raised up in the Chinese culture, my mentality is cultivated by Western literature. I have only been staying in the US for a year; nevertheless, I always feel that there is an inward journey longer than ten years before I came to this land.
Hence, by journey I mean something more than just physical distance. In this blog, I want to share my life in American with other people, and bring some of my culture. Sometimes, we may go through a journey by reading other people’s travel journals. Most important of all, by confronting two different sets of values and cultures, one can see himself more clearly. As I grew up in the environment which embodies conflicting values, I learn to appreciate the beauty and advantages of each side. I truly believe that people have a persistent desire to see and experience other people’s lives. We need to travel, to go through a journey and eventually to see ourselves.
I am taking a class about The Canterbury’s Tales in Brooklyn College now. We talk about different pilgrims. One day during a class, there was a question coming into my mind: how do pilgrims look like in Taiwan? All of a sudden, I had all these images concerning pilgrimage which has a very deep connection to cultural aspects.
