Cultural Plunge

I really enjoyed being a part of this special month. I was able to have a different opinion of the Asians in the United States of America. I did not know much about the Asian community. Therefore, I am glad that I was able to meet new students and people, discuss with them, and compare the differences between the Asian community and the European community (since I am from Switzerland). We also discussed that in Asia as well as in Europe, it is well mannered to respect our elders. However, a difference I noticed is that in the Asian community, it is not appropriate to stand very close to the person who you are talking to. I would never have thought that I would have so much fun at such an event like this Asian Heritage Month.

In my opinion, overall impression of our event was very successful. I believe that the achievement of the success was from our group’s hard work and all the volunteers that helped us. I was the Executive Steward of our event and my major job responsibility was to make sure that there are enough china and equipment for the kitchen staff and ensures that all stations and surfaces in the kitchen are clean before and after service. I also assisted Executive Chef (Yue He) and Sous Chef (Emily) whenever they need my help.

What happens when two very different or even mutually exclusive cultural perspective are forced into contact with one another? In Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, there is a division between the shamanistic insubordinate cultural of Hmong refugees in Merced, California and the cold analytical approach of western medicine. In the early 1980s, the child of a Hmong refugee family in Merced, California is born with epilepsy, her name is Lia Lee. Anne Fadiman traces the interaction between these two cultures and Lia’s disease, she reviews that misunderstanding and miscommunication can have calamitous consequences for all involved. The author introduces many characters throughout the book and they all

My cultural immersion focus is on the religious war in Nigeria. One of the interesting things I found in my research was that, in Nigeria the Christian faith and the Muslim faith represents the greatest percentage of religions. I also learned that the Christians and Muslims pray every day several times a day. With that being said, I wondered if they believed in a higher entity prayed every day, who they are praying to? And what is their belief system based on? (question 1) Since their Christian faith seems to be divided into Catholic, Protestant or some other, I decided to attend a typical Catholic Church service and a Friday mid-day Muslim prayer service. Maybe I should not have used the

As an Asian American, I go to Asian markets, H mart or Komart, around three times in a month. On December 2nd I went to the bigger Asian market, H mart which is located on 2625 Old Denton road in Carrollton for my grocery store assignment. H mart is surrounded by many Korean restaurant and beauty shops.The hall is usually lightly bursting with people around at 5p.m to 6p.m. I feel the shopping space such as corridor or passage of H mart is more cramped than common American grocery stores. Personally, the way H mart categorized good items are easier and more convenient than many other American markets. H mart gathered discounted items at the entrance which customers easily notice them easily at a time. It reflect some Asian culture which put

On November 6, I went to Chinatown and I had my dinner at there. All the way down to the South, after I passed lakeshore drive and downtown, I arrived Chinatown. Usually I go to Chinatown once a week because I am from China and thus I really like Chinese food. First, I went to Little Lamb Hot Pot to have my dinner. After the dinner, I went to the food market to buy some food supplies and cooking materials. In my opinion, the impact of globalization in Chicago’s Chinatown can be reflected in food, commodity, and culture.

How and what Asian Americans choose to purchase is regularly molded by their social values and encounters as workers or offspring of migrants. Three out of four Asian American grown-ups are migrants, and numerous convey bicultural personalities. While they proceed with some shopping propensities created from their way of life or past involvement in their nation of starting point, they are additionally open to new thoughts.

Today my daughter, and I visited the LeeLee international supermarket, on 2025 N. Dobson Road in Chandler, Arizona. This market specialized in selling ethnic foods from several regions around the world. This broad selection of food and products are sold to accommodate the needs of various ethnic customers and restaurants in the Phoenix area at a reasonable price. Based on a person’s experience at an international supermarket, may it change their perspective or modify their preference on where to grocery shop? When factoring a change in an individual’s comfort zone, inability to understand written verbiage on packages or labels, and the unfamiliar products from other cultures sold in a store differently than their local grocery stores.

When entering a grocery store, most people don’t take the time to stop and observe their surroundings, for their soul purpose at that instant is to purchase what very food they may need for that day or maybe even for that week. However, through all the haste of wanting to go in and out of grocery stores as fast as one can, most are unaware of the very culture that they too are now apart of, the interactions, both verbal and through people’s body language that they are experiencing, how people look and dress, even what is considered appropriate behavior although not specifically written down. Culture is all around us, and we all contribute to it, whether it is through our norms, values, symbols, or mental maps of reality (Guest 2014, 38-43). That is why through this assignment, I took the time to observe the culture experienced in the American grocery store Stater Brothers, the ethnical Filipino grocery store Seafood City, while also taking the time to reflect on my own personal views of what I thought was “normal” through my experience working in Northgate Gonzalez Market, a Mexican grocery store for three years.

The United States has long been known as a melting pot because most of its people are descended from immigrants. The immigrants come to USA for a better life so they leave their own country and decide to call it home. Most of the immigrants live in New York in this city, so we can see the variation in people and culture. Basically the immigrants leave their country but they don’t leave their culture. They want to maintain their culture and one of the way to maintain their culture is food. Not only that but also many people want to introduce their culture to other, that’s why they open restaurant. Sometimes people open a restaurant in a diverse area and they cook food combining the recipe of different countries so the place plays an important role for the people who are not even from that culture. From that, we can see that food can easily combine any culture without changing their own culture. When given the task to find a restaurant that has represents the connection between food and culture a restaurant that comes in my mind was Sagar Restaurant located in 169 street in Jamaica, Queens. Though Sagor restaurant is a Bangladeshi, Indian style Chinese restaurant, it represents the interaction between various groups of Asian immigrants through food and it also reminds Bangladeshi people about their country.

Durian is a very special fruit, deemed as the King of Fruits by many Asian folks. It possesses a dark green color like that of a rose’s leaves, and covering the somewhat-rounded fruit’s skin were rows of sharp spikes, as if attaching a chain to it would immediately turn it into a medieval weapon. It has a very unique look among its family tree (only jackfruit looks similar, for only fifty percent, as its spikes were not as sharp as those of durian). The very first impression when people look at a durian would be “Ouch!” as if it can inflict pain just by being looked at. The King of Fruits must be handle with thick/heavy duty gloves or blood will shed from the mortal flesh and tears shall fall on the Mother Earth. And if the look does not scare you away, the smell will, the smell definitely will.

The ethnic market I visited was a local Middle Eastern market called Tehran Market. I expected to find a mixture of American and Middle Eastern brands of food but mostly American brands. When I first stepped into the store I quickly realized that I was wrong, the store was the opposite of what I originally thought. The market provided mostly Middle Eastern brands of food. I loved walking around the store and discovering foods I wouldn’t normally see at my local markets. I was so interested in all of the products they had available that I not only returned to Tehran Market but also purchased a number of new items. The items I’ve purchased were a variety of fresh produce that they had available, such as: tomatoes, cucumber, onions, lettuce, and

Eat in San Francisco and you will taste the history of its occupants. Oriental fare dominates

As an experience in cultural diversity, I chose to go to an Indian Restaurant and then shop at an Indian grocery store. I spent two hours at

Around the concert there was a lot of food carts. We ate Pizza and Yakisoba. It was very delicious. I want to go again next year. I was able to spend good a day.