Cultural Immersion Vietnamese Project 3

Cultural Immersion Project

Introduction

This discussion focuses on cultural immersion activities and more importantly with respect to Vietnamese culture in order to comprehensively learn and understand their culture as well as comparing with my own culture being an African American woman. On this note, I am also a Christian.

1. For the cultural immersion activities, I attended two events whereby in each of these events, I spent an approximated two hours.

a. In the first event, I spent two hours with two families of Vietnamese that operate a restaurant and nail shop. The owner of nail shop is Vietnamese, but he is fluent in English, similar to his family that owns the said Vietnamese restaurant.

i. In this event, I paid attention in order to observe their culture, specifically with regard to family interaction as well as the manner in which they rendered services to individuals of varied cultures in their restaurant and nail shop.

ii. Apparently, the restaurant and nail shop are situated in multicultural area with people of different races, religion, nationality etc. Nevertheless, the Vietnamese seemed to have adapted and adopted in the sense that they seemed to interact very well and without any difficulties, with the customers. Again, they were courteous, humble and respectful to their clients.

b. In the second event, I attended a worship service on a Sunday which was followed by a dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant.

i. Before attending the church service, being a Christian, I prayed for guidance from God.

ii. During, the worship, for example, the teachings of that day emphasized on liberation in which the attendants were reminded of the four truths which supposedly provide the path for liberation.

iii. This included; what suffering is its causes, its end as well as the path liberating people from suffering.

iv. During the dinner, the Vietnamese family was so accommodative in such a way that I was given some minutes to say short prayer to God to bless my food.

2. There were some differences and similarities with regard to comparisons between the experience relating to the specific cultural events and the expectations that I had developed through research in my part one of the cultural immersion project.

a. Through the research, I had learned that Vietnamese mostly ask for spiritual guidance from goddesses, gods and ancestors (Malesky, 2018). This was very evident in the events as they kept mentioning their ancestors and the sun during prayers and during their conversations.

b. Again, from my exploration regarding Vietnamese culture, I had realized that most of them are Buddhists, although they still recognize Catholics, Protestants and Muslims as minority religions (Thomson, 2016). During the interaction with the family, there was no contrast to this because I also witnessed some more Vietnamese in the restaurant, some of whom I came to realize were of different religion from the Vietnamese family in question.

c. Through the two events, I also observed that most of the customers of the restaurant and the nail shop were Vietnamese. Unsurprisingly, they were coming into the restaurant in groups of at least three people, and in most cases, family members. This appeared to satisfy my earlier findings that Vietnamese are more of communists than capitalists and that they put a lot of value family and community ties (Williams & Koina, 2015).

d. Although, I had found out it is rare to find a Vietnamese who is speaks good English, the experience in the cultural events was different since I was able to interact with some of Vietnamese who were very eloquent in English language.

3. As a minority (African American) within this group, I was emotionally impacted in various ways while participating in the said events.

a. First and foremost, I felt attached to this group because of the way they treated me with respect, dignity and value throughout the events from the nail shop, the church service until dinner.

b. Secondly, I felt appreciated being the only one of the African American culture in either of the events. This was mainly because there were no issues of racial discrimination or segregation with regard to service delivery etc.

c. Moreover, I was moved by the fact that the Vietnamese seemed to accord lot of respect to family ties by sharing meals together, walking together, collaborating and coordinating effectively at the restaurant etc.

d. As much as I felt appreciated, accommodated and loved throughout the events, I also appreciated and respected their religion, culture, beliefs and values.

e. In addition, I felt honored and humbled to be in the company of a community that has a deeply-embedded cultural background and that has highly-ranked values which are universally accepted including respect, good reputation (name), learning and family ties.

f. However, I felt sympathetic with the way the teachings of Buddhism were highly valued within the Vietnamese culture in addition to the way most of the worship gods, ancestors and goddesses like rivers, the sun, forests and moon. Actually, I could not help it because I am Christian, and I have a religious faith that is completely different form theirs.

4. Upon considering my cultural background as an African American and a Christian, there are a number of reasons why I responded the way I did.

a. To begin with, there are no many restaurants or church services you will attend especially being a member of the African American community and be treated with respect and dignity the way you deserve. In America, for example, issues of disrespect, racial profiling and discrimination are so rampant that it is even possible to be discriminated just because of your skin color by a fellow member of your community (Malesky, 2018).

b. Secondly, I have been born and raised in America where the issue of capitalism is so popular that even in its history, the U.S. has entered in active war as well as cold war with communist nations like Russia and China in an attempt to dismantle communism. Therefore, to interact with a Vietnamese family that is embedded within the values of communism presented an entirely different experience. Rarely do you experience such close family and community ties within my culture, the way the whole affair is portrayed within Vietnamese culture (Williams & Koina, 2015).

c. Finally, as a Christian living in America, it is very rare to experience Buddhism religion being practiced. I essence, most of the religious beliefs are based on Christianity as well as Islamic faith. Therefore, to come across and interact with people who have deep religious beliefs on gods and goddesses is an entirely different experience especially during the first interaction (Thomson, 2016). As a Christian, you simply just have to be sympathetic.

5. On the basis of these two events, there are certain critical things that I learned including the following;

a. The first key thing is that most Vietnamese speak Vietnamese language and you will just have to be lucky to find a Vietnamese who can speak fluent English. As a matter of fact, Vietnamese would easily learn French and Chinese rather than English.

b. The other one is that communism is so much valued and embedded with Vietnamese culture with a lot of respect being accorded to family and community connections.

c. Additionally, I realized that Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism are the main religions practiced by Vietnamese and are so much integrated within their culture.

d. Moreover, I found out that Vietnamese have highly-ranked ethics and values with some of their basic pillars including family, good name, respect and learning, all which are mostly accepted internationally.

e. Furthermore, another key thing that was evident was that Vietnamese culture is so much accommodative, adoptive and adaptive. This was portrayed through the way in which Vietnamese family was serving different customers in a courteous, respectful and humble manner regardless of their expressed and implied cultural variations (Malesky, 2018).

f. Lastly, the respect for ancestors was so much depicted both at the restaurant, during worship and at dinner. This was through regular and constant mentioning of ancestral names every time a Vietnamese was in some sort of petty trouble. Mentioning their names was comparable to the way Christians keep on mentioning God’s name whenever they are in trouble.

References Malesky, E. (2018). Researching Vietnamese Politics. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 13(3):127-162. Thomson, I. (2016, May 7). About World Languages. Retrieved from About World Languages: https://www.aboutworldlanguages.com Williams, J., & Koina, A. (2015). Vietnamese: Religion, Beliefs and Values. International Journal of Social Sciences, 47: 131-146.