Thursday, April 5, 2012
Place and Identity
My initial thought about Place and Identity is that there must be some connections and relations between where we live and our personalities. There are so many people who have different cultures and backgrounds we interact with everyday. In my point of view, different places create different social and culture environments round us. That creates our background and shapes our personalities to become who we are today. Therefore, places where people live play essential role in our life. Places have some influences on our characteristics, interests, and thoughts. In other words, once our living environment changes, our identities will be also affected by external environmental conditions. For instance, when I was a little child, my grandparents looked after me. We lived in a pretty rural area in my hometown, China. Our house was surrounded by hills and lakes. During that time, I was an outgoing girl who was just like a tomboy. I often climbed trees to enjoy the beautiful sight and caught fish, shrimps with my friends almost everyday. However, when I old enough to go to school, I moved to the large city, Beijing to live with my parents. People who live in the city have faster pace of life. They are busy working so people have fewer connections with each other than rural people do. New living environment changed my personality a lot. I started to learn how to act like a girl, and I became much quieter than I was a child. Even though I made a lot of friends in the new environment, I lost the joy of enjoying nature. Therefore, I really miss my childhood life sometimes so I usually come back to visit my grandparents during the summer vocation.
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Its so interesting to hear how not only is your identity formed by place but it is also changed by moving to a new place. Coming from China to the U.S. must be be a massive change in culture and it would be interesting to hear how that must have affected your identity and lifestyle. I've always wondered what that would be like as i've never been outside the U.S. Moving outside of the U.S. seems scary to me due to the fact that its the only thing I know.
ReplyDeleteIf you ever have the opportunity to visit outside of the U.S. take it ! Don't pass it up. My family is from southeast Asia, and I had the chance to visit a few years ago. It was pretty scary when I went. I wasn't super fluent in the language, but I did understand everything. But being brought up in the United States, going there was a real culture shock. Coming back home (to the US) it made me appreciate how I live here. Most of my family there live in the rural areas, and like Lu Yuan said, it is fun in those areas. just being out in the country side there is a refreshment. But I still prefer living in the city here in the US. :)
DeleteTo move from a small rural community to a large city must be a really big change in lifestyle and can certainly change someone's personality. Then to move to a whole new country on the other side of the world, it must be a very difficult change. I've always lived in a city, and have always lived in Ohio, so to me, I don't know if I could really relate to that. However, now that I am thinking about it, even though where I have lived is the relatively the same place, the way I have identified with it has changed quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteIt is so crazy because I never even knew that China had rural areas. I thought China was just a fast living country. I guess that is very interesting to know that fishing and catching sea food is a similar activity in the United States
ReplyDeleteWow~~catching fish, climing trees..that's so interesting~ your experience reminds me of my childhood, I did a lot of crazy things with my playmates back then~~ I think childhood has always been the happiest time in my life~~
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