Cultural Crossroads

After nearly two months in China, I'm starting to become numbed to the environment around me. What might have once struck me as odd or amusing (like how Beijing plans to ban 1/3 of its cars for the Olympics), now just seem commonplace. I dismiss things with an oh-that's-Beijing, that's-China sort of attitude. On one hand, I am blending into the culture much more than I ever have before, but on the other, I am losing my drive to evaluate the world around me. Instead of just accepting things as they are, I've stopped questioning why they are the way they are.

It was refreshing, then, to go to lunch yesterday at the home of a fellow IUPer and talk about East/West differences - in education, in business, in values, etc. All of us were 1.5 or 2nd generation immigrants straddling two cultures. While I've always realized how unique of a situation it is to understand two cultures, I never recognized my role in light of that knowledge. This couple, though, being older and married, was discussing how they should raise their kids: where to raise them, which traditions to carry on, which new ones to adopt, which ideals to merge... Having grown up in both worlds, we take them as they are, but when you need to process and pass them on, you realized how complicated navigating a middle ground can be. To borrow from (and reword) Spiderman: with great knowledge comes great responsibility.