Family life is a big part of human life. Every culture has to deal with this. From my experience, family life is a problem in both the west and the east. It is hard to have a normal mind about it. In the west, if I understand it correctly, it is called Family Baggage. In [...]
Archive for the ‘Cross Culture Communication’ Category
How to treat family life
Posted in Chan/Zen, Cross Culture Communication, Natural Learning on September 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Zai Jian, America
Posted in Cross Culture Communication, Learning, Natural Learning, unschooling on August 19, 2009 | 1 Comment »
This is just a very short version of a very long story.
It is said in an ancient Chinese poetry that the saddest thing in life is to depart from friends.
I came to the states to explore how web can help unschooling and bringing out the true face of learning. I now call this effort Open [...]
Trip to China — part 3: where am I now
Posted in Cross Culture Communication, Essay, Natural Learning, Open Project on July 5, 2009 | 6 Comments »
This is more about things after the trip to China.
While I was in China, many times I have to multitask. It is not real multitask since at every moment I am still just doing one thing. But there are just many things coming at you almost the same time. My father just gave me the [...]
Trip to China — part 2
Posted in Cross Culture Communication, Essay, Natural Learning, Open Project, life on July 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I put off for a long time to write about my trip to China, despite some friends’ request. They don’t know how despaired I am from this trip. I am in total despair, knowing that it is impossible for me to do what I want to do (Open Source Learning) in China. But coming back [...]
Trip to China — part 1
Posted in Cross Culture Communication, Foreign Experience on April 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I write this as a journey of consciousness. The whole thing might seem to be very strange to you. I guess you can just read it for fun.
I had thought that I might have overwhelming emotions when the horizon of China appeared before me, just like the last time I went back 7 years ago. [...]
Community vs. Networking Part 2
Posted in Chan/Zen, Cross Culture Communication, Culture, Grassroots on November 9, 2008 | 1 Comment »
In China, the media is very much controlled (in a different way the media in US is controlled), so it is hard to get to know what is going on at the national level. You read the reports in the news. You doubt what really happened. You read in the news that there is food [...]
A list of modern Chinese writers
Posted in Chinese, Cross Culture Communication on September 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Now here is a list of modern Chinese writers that I have learned quite tremendously from:
Wang Xiaobo: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Xiaobo ) He died in 1997, only about 45 years old. In my opinion, he is the greatest writer of modern Chinese. He has found the way to write beautifully with the plain Chinese. His novels [...]
Two different philosophies of life and society
Posted in Cross Culture Communication, Grassroots, Random Thoughts on September 23, 2008 | 2 Comments »
In the east, the philosophy is how individuals can best utilize the resource of their own limited body. So it emphasizes how you can reach your best potential through training of your body and mind. It emphasizes the maximum use of the resource available and not to waste any. Thus even in a society of [...]
A world of feelings
Posted in Chan/Zen, Cross Culture Communication on September 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
In Chinese Buddhism, we say that the human world is a world of feelings while the rest are the worlds of no feelings (not sure how to translate this exactly). When we see anything, a building, a tree, from human being’s perspective, we see them through feelings. They invoke our feelings.
However, coming to a foreign [...]
Peace: What is peace? How do we build peace in our world?
Posted in Chan/Zen, Creativity, Cross Culture Communication, Essay, Featured Essays, Grassroots, Natural Learning, Open Project, What is Learning on September 16, 2008 | 3 Comments »
We human beings, like everything else, are just like simple objects, which have both inside and outside. Deep inside of us is an inner core. On our outside, we have an outer layer that is in touch with the outside world. Various forces are acting upon us through the outside layer and are transformed into [...]
Collective vs. Individual
Posted in Cross Culture Communication, Grassroots on August 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
See the article Harmony and the Dream by David Brook.
He did touch on a deep distinction although I don’t quite agree with the way he phrased it. A short response is that I want BOTH ( Collective and Individual), and you should too. But I need offer more specifics.
First of all, collective values have been [...]
Two ways to help China
Posted in Chinese, Cross Culture Communication on August 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
So for people in the west who do care about people in China, here are two ways to help.
One is as mentioned in Chinese Renaissance, the bottom level cultural communication and engagement.
The other way is to stop the empire (quoting Blessed Unrest) right here in America. See the post On American Foreign Policy. Also [...]
The Chinese Renaissance
Posted in Chinese, Cross Culture Communication on August 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This article is written for people in America who really care about situations in China. With this article, I hope it can give a basic stretch of the cultural thread that China is coming from, e.g. China’s growth path, and thus might help Americans understand the real needs of China.
Every culture has its own growth [...]
Watching the Olympics opening
Posted in Chinese, Cross Culture Communication on August 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As I said, I didn’t pay much attention to Olympics. So until I started watching it, did some questions come up to me. Now China is before the eyes of the world. This is the chance for China to express herself. How will China express it? For me, I am always looking for individual expression. [...]
The myth of Chinese population
Posted in Chinese, Cross Culture Communication on August 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This came up a lot at last night Olympics watching party. I feel there is some misconception here. People wonder why China and India have so many people.
Actually if you combine all the people in Europe, North America, South America and Australia together, you count all the European descents, the number might be about the [...]
Human world Inside Biosphere 2
Posted in Cross Culture Communication on August 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I went to a talk by Jane Poynter, a crewmember of first Biosphere 2 enclosure. As this talk was given at a Buddhism gathering, interestingly most questions were drawn to the conflicts the crewmembers had living inside biosphere 2. Although the crewmembers knew each other very well (many of them were even good friends before [...]
Development and Environment
Posted in Chinese, Cross Culture Communication on August 6, 2008 | 1 Comment »
This is the third installment based on a conversation with a friend today regarding China.
As in the previous post, I said the stories in China are following a different thread than the ones in the west. The same is the issue of environment protection.
If we treat a country or a culture as one person. For [...]
A brief rundown of Chinese modern history
Posted in Chinese, Cross Culture Communication on August 6, 2008 | 4 Comments »
This is to continue the last post, which is actually a conversation with a friend.
The stories in China have a completely different thread than those in the west. To understand China and things happening there, you have to have some knowledge of this thread. Here is a brief rundown of Chinese recent history. (I don’t [...]
Olympics and China
Posted in Cross Culture Communication on August 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
A lot of conversations related to Olympics and China came up recently among friends. I didn’t really pay much attention to Olympics. I wasn’t really excited about it. (However, I was very excited about China’s entry into WTO, and I could hardly sleep for the whole night because of the excitement. I deemed it an [...]
