Adapting to American culture as a Chinese student
&quot;Confucian behaviorism is optimized for a Confucian society, and western behaviorism is optimized for western society.&quot;
This is so true. Speaking Chinese&#x2F;Japanese on a daily basis and regularly interacting with these two cultures, I would regularly encounter such differences.<p>In Japan, if you speak Japanese well, eventually they stop forgiving you as &quot;oh, he&#x27;s just a foreigner&quot;, and they hold you to similar standards. I.e. You should be careful how you express your opinion&#x2F;thoughts to an elder.<p>Similarly, in China, it took me a bit to adjust to how direct Chinese people were about certain topics. For example, they will call you &quot;fat&quot; or call out many personal flaws that we would not do in America. (I know this is counter to the traditional thinking that Chinese are very withdrawn).<p>Similarly, with language, Japanese people will rarely call out any grammar&#x2F;pronunciation error. Instead, they will ask a question, or give a gesture that you have to read into and infer from. Chinese people will call you out very directly, maybe even embarrass you in front of people to the point where you are too shy to speak. They don&#x27;t mean it personal, they are just more open to this sort of direct personal criticism.<p>The author also mentioned jokes. I can relate to this, learning the language, let alone the culture is hard enough. Often times, humor is even harder as it requires a deep understanding of both language and culture.<p>Like the other said, the list goes on and on, but these things take so many years to adapt to and overcome. They are huge barriers to cultural integration.<p>I have a lot of respect for foreigners who even attempt to integrate with our culture (and vice versa).<p>p.s. I admit, I have gained some weight, so the criticism is deserved :)