Culture is a highly subjective topic; it appears in all sorts of forms all across the globe and comes from every human on it. Nearly 0% of that culture is Chinese culture, and so in general it is a quite well known culture, and most people should have heard about this before, and many are a part of it.
I am Chinese. That should be obvious, given that if I were to be writing this without that statement being true, it would be a lot more difficult. However, I was born in Delaware and now live in Maryland, and so I have not been exposed to a variety of things related to China and thus I am now what most people describe as the majority of Rockville, or Chinese-American.
Even though this may seem to be a slight disadvantage, it means every visit I make to China and every interaction I have with their culture, people, food, and my family there is that much more special and means significantly more than if I had grown up in China.
This summer, I went to China. It was a greater amount of special than normal due to the lack of anything happening for 5 years prior from the pandemic called COVID-9. I had not seen any of my Chinese relatives and truly connected with the elements surrounding them since pre-COVID. This time I was visiting my dad’s side of the family, who all live in Shanxi.
Prior to this we actually went to Hong Kong and Chengdu. The first major thing that happened was going to see pandas in Chengdu. My parents and I had a very fun time, except that it was really crowded. But that just shows how valuable it is to be there because pandas’ native habitat is China only. The videos I recorded were very good, but to be there was an experience on its own; it was truly special to see the animals in their native habitats almost 8 thousand miles away, and some of the funniest and cutest ones at that. Watching them in their enclosure and visiting all the stores around us full of panda merchandise was something exclusive to China. You don’t get the same experience and knowledge of the pandas around you anywhere else.
The final section of our trip was to my dad’s family, as stated above. I remember sitting in the car on the way there, looking out from the car at all the nature that I could see in the deserted areas and thinking about whether this was the reality that their home had turned into. When I arrived, it was thankfully not deserted but a bustling community and my aunts waiting for my family.
Having not seen this part of my family for so many years, they noticed some pretty obvious changes, like the fact that I had grown a foot or maybe that I looked so old. Over the course of the next weeks I spent lots of time with my family and had trouble understanding their dialect a lot, but it was very enjoyable just to be around them and their own culture.
The trip was interesting, yes, but the main event was a wedding that I was attending for my cousin. It was a day event, where the first night would be a sort of gathering of everybody and the second day would be the wedding day. As I walked into the room where we ate, I saw the vast, open room full of tables for both families of the bride and groom to eat their meals. Apparently, when we have these kinds of events, there is a lot of food to celebrate, which is one aspect I like very much. This part of the culture I have much appreciation for as I enjoy eating meals like this with my friends, but with my family it’s much more special because I see them so rarely.
The next day was the wedding, and just a few hours after I had awoken, I heard loud booms go off. It made me jump the first few times and then became a really loud, annoying sound. I asked my dad what happened, and he told me that they did this as a part of the wedding culture. I was really taken back at this, and I remember almost jumping back in real life. It blew me away that the wedding could be so indescribably big, even bigger than events in the USA, which are known to be huge events.
Another thing that happened is the amount of cars that showed up to their residence. This doesn’t sound very special, but the amount of fancy things that appeared overloaded me a little bit, but it was also my first time seeing something major like this and to be around so many people that I never see made me realize how lucky I was.
The most surprising thing to me was when I walked into the venue where the wedding would take place. It was, for lack of a better word, grand, more than the other room we had eaten the day before. Everything during the wedding was beautiful to watch and their music was happy and lively. It was so different from the things I see and do here in America. The trip reminded me of why I’m proud to be Chinese.
All this is to say that my culture is what shapes me. It shapes everyone, Chinese or not. Saying someone’s culture is better than another doesn’t work out since people can prioritize whatever they want, and that usually boils down to someone’s culture and past experiences. It’s not so black and white when a Chinese person like me values fortune and something like the color red while the totally different American values freedom so heavily. Your culture is your culture, so use what you have and don’t worry so much about it.
