paper 1

Donghui Wang

Dr. Keunah Han

First project

04/22/2015

Still Do As “American’s” Do ?

Sometimes people will say, “do as Roman’s do”, which means just do something like others do, that will make you feel not awkward. Then for a period, you will get used to do that like local people. Each country has its own traditional culture, which was becoming from different historical factors for a long time. As we all know, China has a long history with about five thousand years and it is one of the four ancient civilizations. However, now I do not think our traditional cultures were more distinctive than others. With the progress of the technology and the development of the national relations, the culture has no borders among countries, so people will get more different art, music, and literature from other countries. Now, the United States is a power country in the world. Its economic, industry, political and other factors will be one of the reason why the Americanization influence our country even though we are not living in America. The United States can use many ways to affect our traditional culture. The first area is the entertainment many people in China like to watch the programs or movies from the America, especially to the young people. Secondly, many girls and women like the luxury brands they will spend lots of money on the expensive dolls and cosmetic. Thirdly, our traditional food is affected by the fast food and western diets; the eating habits will be changed little by little. The last one is language, the English makes a heavy influence to our mother language, and many teenagers will pay more attention to the English than Chinese. Thus, this is why I think Chinese culture is influenced by the Americanization.

For almost young people, everyone wants to be a cool guy or a beautiful girl, so they will get more influence from the Americanization by the entertainment and fashion products, because I think there are lost of fashion arts and new technology will together in the America, and some of them almost think the America stands for freedom, the rich people and the forefront of the trend and so on.

For the young boy, the entertainment shows them lots of American culture. They always watch the basketball game from NBA and they will simulate the player who is their favorite to play the basketball, but as we all know, Chinese people was good at playing Ping Pong ball and badminton, and so many traditional sports something like Kick Qianzi or Martial art. And here a good example from the article wrote by Mark Rice-Oxley. As his point, Baseball has long since taken root in Asia and Cuba. And Chinese young people are becoming more mesmerized by American football and basketball, some even printing the names of NBA stars on their school sweat suits. And the NFL make a plan to release a Chinese version of its website per month. (P.164) They use the satellite to broadcast every live game to satisfy the Asian subcontinent with their heavy traffic of U.S. audiovisual content.

For the young girl they are affected by the fashion product, they will buy many kinds of cosmetic, clothes, and bags and so on, most of the brands that make these stuff are from America. With the improvement of living standards, parent will spend more time and money on their children, especially on the girls, so they will buy everything if their children asked them to buy for them. And children know those products from the television or the advertising of the super market. I think almost young women like beautiful and fashion since they are children, because every girl would has their own Barbie doll in their childhood period. For this kind of toy, they can buy lots of small dresses for them to change to what they like. This way will make the doll more special and beautiful. After they dress up the doll, they will have comparisons with other girls so that’s why as they get older, they still have a strong awareness to buy the American’s products. Each girl always has a perfect Barbie doll in their heart. Since this phenomenon, many young women will buy the luxury products, like the Versace, Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs with no thinking. However, in my opinion, they lose our traditional virtues-thrifty. According to Brendon O'Connor’s article, he gave me a good agreement with this point that he said he worried about the consistency and weakness that comes with much American popular culture. He added to this against unease with the power of American advertising and marketing. (P.162) Because of this, parents feel pressured about buying their children expensive label clothes. Teenage girls starve themselves to look like Video Hits dancers these insignificances aren't exclusively the fault of American culture but they do not deserve amounts of the blame. Thus, for me the Americanization reflect a worrying conformity in our culture and the influence on the more and more young age.

Now I think our food culture will stagnate by Americanization. All the people who live in their own homeland will have their own traditional food. During my young period, I was so proud that I was born in China, because I can taste lots different types food in a special dishes restaurant. After China accessed into WTO, China gets a great opportunity to develop its own marketing, economy and other fields. So this is a reason why lots of foreigners come to China to get a higher wage jobs. At the same time, they also bring their own diet to their work place. For example, many American workers do not have enough time to enjoy a great lunch or dinner when they are working, so they will have the fast food, some like the Subway, the KFC and so on. Now the American fast food will encroachment our body little by little. In these junk food, it has lots of heat and fried food which is not healthy for young people to thrive. Maybe in one day our countries’ children will like the Americans’ to get fatter by eating lots of fast food such as the McDonald’s.

(Graph.1 Families stand in line for McDonald’s)

From Vicente Verdu’s article, “we are all Americans”, he said to give itself some local color, McDonald's in France aids special Salad along with hamburgers; in Greece, it operates feta cheese; and in Singapore, it serves fried chicken. In Norway, McDonald's uses salmon instead of beef, and in China, it serves Chinese fritters with gruel in the morning and it also rice and soup for the lunch and diner. (P.24) But it is still McDonald's, and as it is well-known by now. Since 1986, Big Mac has been the term used by The Economist to express the varying values of the world's currencies. In addition, now many people like to taste the western food, which is so expensive to the ordinary families even though some of families will cook the western food at home as well as American families. I want to say that this is not a racial discrimination. It is just a worry about our culture get weaker even disappear with a long time.

“The American English has an important status in China and it is almost to be our second native language.” (Lian.2015) From this teacher article, the English study got more imperative and difficult for young children to accept. With the improvement of living standards, many parents will send their children to abroad studying and the America is the famous country in their best wishes. Thus from a long-term perspective, parents will sent their children to the international school at an early age. The teachers will teach them by English so that the Chinese will be like second language which is the truly mother tongue for them to learn. On the other hand, from the textbook, the Mark Rice-Oxley also thought the American English is the language of choice for world just like the pop stars in Europe, software programmers in India, and Internet surfers everywhere. (P.166) With the reform and opening in China, English has a larger proportion in each level of our citizens. And some of the kindergarten teaches children with speaking English and Chinese at the same time. When they grow up, they need to get a great grade for the English, because it is an important subject and skill to get higher education in the future. This is also the reason why parents pay a great attention to the English study not appreciate that it is just a language to communicate with other people.

In conclusion, the Americanization is like a power wind, no matter where you are, you will be affected by the American food, the social media, the entertainment, the brands and so on. Even you do not want to lose your own culture, but the truth it is. Every country must to protect them own traditional culture so that it will not totally turn to be part of the United States, do not still do as “American’s” do.

Work Cited

"McDonald's National Breakfast Day." McDonald's National Breakfast Day. Http://www.ycwb.com/, 18 Mar. 2013. Web. 4 May 2015.

Lian, Jiaqi. "The Influence of the English Study." Jiangxi Teachers, 13 Feb. 2014. Web. 4 May 2015. 

O'Connor, Brendon. “Bored with USA?” International Views: America and the Rest of the World. Ed. Gumery, Keith. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. 160-162.

Print.

Verdu, Vicente. “We Are AU Americans.” International Views: America and the Rest of the World. Ed. Gumery, Keith. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. 23-25.

Print.

Rice-Oxley, Mark. “In 2,000 Years, Will the World Remembe'r Disney or Plato?”

International Views: America and the Rest of the World. Ed. Gumery, Keith. NewYork: Pearson Longman, 2006. 163-167. Print.

Lam, Andrew. “All Things Asian Are Becoming Us.” International Views: America

and the Rest of the World. Ed. Gumery, Keith. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. 36-40. Print.