Achieving Community
Every person belongs to a community. Either by nationalities or by races. I am a Chinese and I will always claim myself as a Chinese. The existence of community not only stands for where we are from, but also, most importantly, promise us a sense of belonging. It provides us roots to go back when we are tired of floating in the clueless world, and when we are no longer young and strong. My community, China, has always stayed in the peak of controversies and debates. Some countries love us because we are strong, some countries hate us because we are way too strong. Yet not matter what it will go through, I must not and will not abandon the identity of Chinese. It is the basic dignity of being a Chinese.
Several years before I came to the US, I knew some of the American born Chinese commit themselves not as Chinese people but as American people. We were outrageous at that time. As an enormous orient cultural and economic center with over 5000 years of history, I thought China was worthy of appreciations more than judgements at that time when I was young. It is treachery! I thought. I would never acknowledge them as a part of China because they had nothing but broken spirits! However, as time went by, I gradually changed my opinion towards this. Things are not as simple as I had thought before when I was young. Decades before when Chinese first immigrated to the US, most of them are from bottom class of China. They were looked down upon because they were unskilled and not highly educated. There was a sense of inferiority that rooted deeply in everyone’s heart. As China was not tremendously developed as today, they had always been acted as a group of minority in the American society. Just as Tamil people are reluctant of speaking Tamil that would reveal their low social hierarchy, Chinese people were not proud of their nationalities, hence they want to try their best to separate themselves from it. I understand the pain behind the decision, and I cannot be mad at them anymore. Instead, I feel sympathetic towards them. Chinese people are reluctant to regard them as Chinese, and American people care nothing about their feelings because the color of their skin. They are the group of people that have no root.
However, in the 21st century as people are trying their best to stop discriminating people by the color of their skin, they no longer need to hide their identity. What is more, as China is becoming stronger and stronger, and more and more Chinese people are going towards places all around the world. We are proud of being a Chinese. I can speak Chinese whenever I can and no one will look down upon me because I speak a different language from them. I spread Chinese culture to my American friends. Despite the ridiculous stereotypical description that some American TV shows have on us, we come from a culture that have stood in the orient for thousands of years and have successfully caught up with the pace of the development of the modern society. My community makes me feel that I am protected and confident. I am from a huge community called Chinese. We have our own symbols and memes that have never bee inferior to any other culure.
The sense of belonging to one of the biggest communities in the world makes me feel that I no longer walk cluelessly in the floating world. I have my root-China.
