September 25th, 2011 by Sophia | | No Comments »
Let me start from London, the place where Rachel and I first met each other. When I first saw Rachel in the Anthropology Department of UCL, she was talking to a staff member there for information of the coming term. I asked her to help me communicate with the department since I had some problem with downloading the anthropological films from the website of the department. This nice American girl gave me a deep impression. Her eyes were full of curiousness and patience, which told me that she was interested in talking with me and was ready to help me. The following stories between us came naturally. We became good friends, did a lot of things together and found we had a lot in common: both of us love Mexican food and shopping in Anthropologie; both of us are interested in talking about news happened in the U.S. and China and are curious about each other’s feedbacks towards these news; both of us love baking and visiting museums and art galleries. We even ordered the same food in the restaurant and chose the same clothes in Anthropologie. For me, this is really hard to imagine before I studied in London since I have never thought that two girls, one of which comes from America, a typical Western country, and the other from China, a country in the Orient which has totally different culture and history, would have so much in common to share!
During the time we spent together in London, discussing the news and issues about America and China was an important part of our daily talks. As a Chinese student who has never studied abroad, I have met a lot of cultural shocks and embarrassments when I studied in London. The political issue of Tibet was one of the sensitive topics I would encounter frequently. From being mad with students who believed that Tibet should be independent to learning to respect people who held the different opinions about this issue, I have learnt a lot during the year in London. But I still believe that we should try to understand the whole issue and the historical and cultural context of Tibet before we make our own judgement. And it is very hard for people who have never traveled to Tibet or known the history or language of Tibet and China and who just get information from mass media to judge the whole issue. Rachel was always the girl whom I could share my argument and feelings about these sensitive issues. As a matter of fact, she encourages me to write down my thoughts and share them with more people and this is one of the reasons why we create our own website. Now when I watch the news from Chinese media about America and other countries, I try to search for information from foreign websites and listen to the feedback from Rachel and other foreign friends instead of believing the one side of the story from the Chinese mass media. Rachel and I plan to share the different sides of the issues happened in America and China and write down our feedbacks on the website.
Baking was definitely the most enjoyable thing we have done together when studying in London. Rachel opened a new world for me when she taught me how to bake. I think desserts are not only part of the Western cuisine but also part of the Western culture. Baking helps me to understand people’s tastes and aesthetics of food in the Western world. The traditional desserts in China are very different from the Western desserts and although we do have a lot of Western desserts in China, they have been changed to adapt to Chinese tastes. Actually, almost all of my Chinese friends who studied in London, including me, found the desserts there were too sweet for us. I was shocked by the amount of sugar and butter we used when first made pumpkin cookies with Rachel. I will probably not eat that much sugar through the whole year in China and the traditional Chinese cuisine does not use butter at all! Another cultural shock I had when learning baking with Rachel was that she told me oven was very common in America and almost every American family had oven in their kitchen. However, oven is never to be common in Chinese kitchen. I think this is basically due to two reasons. First, the traditional Chinese dish seldom uses oven. Second, most Chinese families before 1980s could not afford oven. But with the economic development of China, Chinese people especially the younger generation choose to buy oven and begin to enjoy baking at home.
With the continuous communication, Rachel and I find that what we take for granted in our own culture may have totally different version in another one and such findings really fascinate us and we decide to have dialogues with each other through the website and the story about the American girl and the Chinese girl will continue…