Cultural Identity
Name: Yifei Gao
Date: 09/26/10
Cultural Identity
Cultural identity is something special which distinguishes itself from other cultures. Generally, as society develops, its certain culture prospers and gradually becomes different from others. When we focus on certain individuals, it seems that everyone does have his own cultural identity no matter where he comes from.
Culture is a broad term, and it's summed up several different sections. Culture contains not only books from which we have learned culture, but includes food, politics, and folk customs as well. Compared to culture, cultural identity nevertheless is a quite restricted concept. It only refers to remarkable characteristics which make a person exceptional among others. Typically, people living in a big community ought to be more or less influenced by his group. For most of them, cultural identities gradually become assimilated to the popular ones in the community after living there for a period of time. Inevitably, there would still be some obstinate people in the group, who refuse to be assimilated by others. They remain with their cultural identities which are partially different or even opposite to the fashionable ones.
Let’s zoom in from the big picture to focus in on my cultural identity. I am a typical Chinese person, who even didn’t leave Beijing for more than fifteen days until I came to NMH. When I live on this campus among plenty of American students, I strongly feel that most of my cultural identities are due to my Chinese background.
As I have mentioned before, people are easily assimilated by others when living in a big group. For me, the group is a county with an extremely long history-- China. In China, national cultural identity has so many aspects that it becomes difficult to totally understand. 5000 years ago, in ancient Chinese domain, the first dynasty, Xia, was set up. Since then, Chinese music, literature, traditions, and other admirable traits have all been developing and
Date: 09/26/10
Cultural Identity
Cultural identity is something special which distinguishes itself from other cultures. Generally, as society develops, its certain culture prospers and gradually becomes different from others. When we focus on certain individuals, it seems that everyone does have his own cultural identity no matter where he comes from.
Culture is a broad term, and it's summed up several different sections. Culture contains not only books from which we have learned culture, but includes food, politics, and folk customs as well. Compared to culture, cultural identity nevertheless is a quite restricted concept. It only refers to remarkable characteristics which make a person exceptional among others. Typically, people living in a big community ought to be more or less influenced by his group. For most of them, cultural identities gradually become assimilated to the popular ones in the community after living there for a period of time. Inevitably, there would still be some obstinate people in the group, who refuse to be assimilated by others. They remain with their cultural identities which are partially different or even opposite to the fashionable ones.
Let’s zoom in from the big picture to focus in on my cultural identity. I am a typical Chinese person, who even didn’t leave Beijing for more than fifteen days until I came to NMH. When I live on this campus among plenty of American students, I strongly feel that most of my cultural identities are due to my Chinese background.
As I have mentioned before, people are easily assimilated by others when living in a big group. For me, the group is a county with an extremely long history-- China. In China, national cultural identity has so many aspects that it becomes difficult to totally understand. 5000 years ago, in ancient Chinese domain, the first dynasty, Xia, was set up. Since then, Chinese music, literature, traditions, and other admirable traits have all been developing and