Western guy living in a Chinese family

Let me share my experience

Let me share a unique experience with you. I happened to live in a Chinese family for three months and I wanna share my observations with you. This may be useful for those Westerners, who don't know a lot about Chinese culture and wants to know more. First, the facts:

How big is the family?

Ok, first I must say, I live in a quite big family for these modern times. It's a middle class family, consisting of parents, grandma, 1 grandchild and 5 daughters, of which the youngest is 17 and the oldest 25. Three daughters are already married and live on their own, but visit every day. So all together there is 8 daughters (between 17 and 30 years old). Two of which have already children, so sometimes there's 4 grandchildren at the house.

What did I notice?

A Chinese family of this size and consisting of so many women can be very noisy. But that's only at the first glance. Soon I realized that they are very friendly and hospitable towards me. Food is the central part of the family. For Chinese in general, the food is the most important thing. I saw them spend a lot of money on all kinds of food. They would even travel more than 100km just to go eat into a restaurant that has some unique and delicious food. Chinese are very genorous. They treat me so much, I stopped counting and I accepted it as normal. In my country, you always remember who treated you and you seek to treat him back. I can't keep up with my new friends here. They are too genorous. Even when I tried to treat them back, they refused by saying: When I'm in your country, you treat me. It's very unlikely that this will be the case. But I accept it and if really that was to happen, I would gladly return the hospitality at home.
Besides food, Chinese are very traditional. When it comes to family values and friendships, Chinese tend to have very good relations and they respect the elderly more than the Westerners. They also respect their ancestors by lighting sticks every day at the domestic temple and by praying every day and following all other traditional celabrations, of which the most important is Chinese New Year.
Chinese here (Johor, Malaysia) don't have many encounters with Westerners, probably because it's a small town and a rural area. That's why they are curious to see me. Most of them are not fluent in english. The few who are, have many questions. The first one is usually 'Where are you from?' followed by 'Have you eaten already'? As mentioned before, food is very important in the daily life of Chinese. That's why when they have 'small talk', usual question would be: Have you eaten already? ( 你吃了?)
If you consider all the facts, Chinese people can be seen as conservative, but in some cases very progressive and modern. Especially the young people copy the fashion styles of the West or Japan. Older people are naturally more conservative, but most of them allow the young people their way of life and they are non-judgmental. Somehow all generations can find a common ground and stick together as a family. Chinese don't like to talk about their family problems to outsiders. It stays in the family.

In conclusion.

I'm glad to see a culture as complex as Chinese from so close and learn so many new things about it and correct my perception or stereotypical thinking. I hope I will learn more and get to see many more aspects of Chinese culture in the weeks ahead. I especially look forward to Chinese new year 2009.

[My MALAYSIA page][All photos by MKL, 2008]

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