What I have learnt after coming to US
During one summer holiday years before, I went to a study tour in US and lived with a local homestay family. At the first dinner with my homestay host, we talked a lot about food cultures. I introduced them some home cooking in China including egg fried rice and scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and they also told me their recipe. To my surprise, they cooked egg fried rice for me just next dinner! They explained to me that from the chat yesterday, they got to know I missed my home as it was the first time that I go abroad alone. Therefore, they downloaded Chinese recipe online, and decided to cook egg fried rice for me, a popular and famous dish in China that I had mentioned yesterday, to help me alleviate the homesick. I got deeply moved, and our relationship went much closer.
This experience made me realize that the recognition of one’s own culture is the base of the inter-cultural communication. Also, the genuine appreciation of the difference between the cultures can help to enlarge my social circle, bring me pristine perspective and establish true friendship.
Now, my fall quarter in UCSB has begun for a month. This time when I communicate with native students, I’m more pleased to talk about things in my country as I think it’s the base of the inter-cultural communication, and I know I need to respect others’ culture. For example, when I first chatted with Jalia, my room assistant who is native, she asked me to give a pronoun preference, such as “she, her, hers”. Although I thought it was a little bit strange as I think it could be easily judged according to one’s appearance, I did so because it’s part of American culture and Jalia just wanted to make sure. Later when I told one-child policy in China to Jalia, she got really interested in the topic, as such policy has only been established in China, a country with large population. She listed both advantages and disadvantages of the policy she thought, and I told her some consequences and impacts the policy has brought to China. We talked a lot, and got much familiar.
