By Li Hua
One word I learned before going abroad was "multicultural". It's
arguably the single most popular word to pop up in an IELTS (an
English proficiency test for overseas-bound Chinese) essay
question, and I got it down. I was able to dissect multiculturalism
with reference to diversity, universality and assimilation, even in
my sleep.
But it wasn't until I got to London that I got a taste of
"cultural diversity".
It started at the home of the Korean family who rented me one of
their spare rooms. The wife, my landlady, spent her waking hours on
the Internet weeping over tragic goodbyes in Korean soap
operas.
The 18-year-old British-born Korean daughter, with her
fashionable punk look, probably wouldn't know her Asian roots even
if she was looking in the mirror. Her mother's traditional Korean
cooking didn't do it for her anymore, she made salads and chatted
to her friends on the phone while her parents blared out Korean
karaoke in the next room.
The real battle went down when the topic of boyfriends came
up.
The parents could not stand the idea of their daughter having a
"foreigner" boyfriend. That ruled out 75 percent of Londoners. Of
the remaining 25 percent, Australians, Spaniards, Mexicans and
Indians were out. The scope finally tightened around the local
Korean town neighborhood. Neither side would budge and the battle
reached a climax when the daughter started screaming obscenities,
throwing around chairs and pushing over shelves.
The parents, steeped in the Eastern philosophy of "keeping one's
family quarrels to oneself", simmered down. But their neighbors,
ignoramuses when it came to Eastern philosophy, called the cops
when they heard high-pitched cries and the sound of blunt objects
hitting walls.
The cops, also lacking in knowledge of Confucianism, did not let
it go when they found out the "family" nature of the dispute.
Someone from the city council was called, and everyone sat down to
get to the root of the problem, which turned out to be: language
barrier.
The daughter only knew basic Korean, while her parents' English
remained rudimentary, despite living in London for decades. The
daughter had to resolve to "body language" to communicate, and it
wasn't quite as violent as it sounds. Perhaps.
Multicultural was also one way to describe my class. The 34
students and four supervisors came from 16 countries and spoke 12
different languages.
When group discussions heated up, we often resorted to attacking
one another's English skills: "Do you not speak English?" "It's
your English that's the problem" - or even cultural backgrounds:
"Maybe that's what you do in China, but it's not going to cut in
back in the Netherlands." The leaders of the group discussions were
the diplomats, resolving international crises on a daily basis.
But it never gets serious. What was serious was the pub sessions
after class. Like true Londoners, we tried to solve our problems
over pints and bottles of beer. Not only were we able to make
friends again, a few romances even sprang up between us. In my
class alone, we were proud to have a Chinese/Spanish couple, a
Greek/Korean couple, and a British/Lebanese couple.
(China Daily December 11, 2007)
