Western And Confucian Values

Four Chinese mothers have migrated to America. Each hope for their daughter’s success and pray that they will not experience the hardships faced in China. One mother, Suyuan, imparts her knowledge on her daughter through stories. The American culture influences her daughter, Jing Mei, to such a degree that it is hard for Jing Mei to understand her mother's culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to understanding who her

In The Joy Luck Club, the chapter "Waiting Between the Trees" illustrates major concerns facing Chinese-American women. Chinese culture is a male dominated culture that leaves women little freedom. Their only job is to make their male spouses content. Living with their traditional culture in American society, Chinese-American

Ever since, I wondered whether this impression was correct. The goal of this thesis is to satisfy this curiosity and to determine, through textual and visual analyses, if the 1986 television series also carries a Confucian message, or whether it was solely produced for entertainment purposes. This leads to the following research question:

Individualism is a habit of being self- reliant. A cultural value is a persons desired and preferred way of acting. Every culture has their own cultural values and individualism but whether individualism is their cultural value is up to the person entirely. This could pose a conflict when persuading the wrong culture especially a culture as diverse as the American culture. Poranee Sponsel is a born and raised Thai who is now a professor at a university in Hawaii and gives us the outsider’s perspective of the American culture. In Sponsel’s article “The Young, the Rich, and the Famous: Individualism as an American Cultural value” Sponsel

Another aspect of cultural conflict is that humility and obedient are considered as the traditional virtues of the Chinese culture. Children should unconditionally obey their parents because parents have the ability and willingness to teach and control their children. For example, according to Jing-mei’s mother, Jing-mei has to practice piano assiduously. She would not be punished if she devotes all her effort to playing piano. We can clearly see this point in her mother’s word in the quarrel, “Only two kinds of daughters, those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter” (461). But Jing-mei cannot understand this, because she is not familiar to Chinese culture. As a consequence of Jing-mei cannot understand her mother, she does not cooperate and has rebellious attitude against her mother. In the story, Jing-mei decided, “I didn’t have to do what my mother said anymore. I wasn’t her slave. This wasn’t China. I had listened to her before and look what happened. She was the stupid one” (460). As described above, Jing-mei cannot understand the humility and obedient of Chinese culture, even they are recognized as the

However, the Confucian culture is exclusive to the contemporary political culture. In contemporary China, although socialist political culture has been widely spread and the actually implemented with the aid of the power of the state apparatus, people are still unable to completely get rid of the influence and control of traditional Confucian culture. In Confucian culture, the unity political view had the most influence, and the divine right of authority and the benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith, combined with the Chinese characteristic of the small peasant consciousness, made socialist political system also exist some traces of traditional political culture inevitably, and a large amount of the residual traditional culture values affect the process of political development in a variety of ways (Bell, 2010). Today as you can see, the development of market economy makes profound changes taken place in people's social interest structure. Corresponding to it, while people's political consciousness is fundamentally unified under the banner of socialism and patriotism, but the concrete political tendencies such as political attitude, emotion and policy orientation appear differentiation, which

Moral and divine practices such as Confucianism have intense effect on the lives of Chinese American women.

     Money. A word that captures all peoples attention was scarce among the Asian - American community. The low wages drove both parents into the work force and changed the roles of women in the family. The Asian way of the wife being submissive in all activities and only working at home with the children changed with the move to America. The wife’s working made a more equal standing in the household but also deprived the children of a quality home life. The importance of women in Asia is non-existent. For example: women had to walk behind their husbands in Asian culture but in American culture they rose to equal standing because of their work status.

She strived for academic success, refused to cook and made herself clumsy and distasteful (Kingston, 47). When questioned for her behavior, she responded by comparing how a “bad girl” is almost similar to a boy. Yet her resistance was proven difficult because not only did she have to manage the repressiveness of her Chinese heritage but also manage the different and contradicting repressiveness of American femininity.

In Chinese history, there were three main philosophies: Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism. These beliefs helped shape Chinese culture as well as Chinese history. Not only did people believe in these ideas, but the three helped to govern the mighty Chinese dynasties. These dynasties all provided an impact to each doctrine; the philosophy that had the greatest impact was legalism because it ended the Warring States Period, provided structure, and strengthened agriculture, and the military of China. Although Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism had a few things in common and at times tried to resolve the same problem, they were very different from each other in their beliefs, character, and ways of life.

Confucianism has easily been influential in the development of the Chinese state through history. In fact, the core ideals of Confucianism have evolved. Despite the harsh repression of Confucianism by Marxist revolutionaries during the second half of the twentieth century, Confucian values continues to be influential in Chinese society and recently, Confucian political philosophy has resurfaced again. In addition, the political ideas and social ethics of Confucianism can provide the basis for a new, functional form of government in China. Confucianism can be a viable political philosophy for China in the twenty first century because many intellectuals have turned to Confucianism to make sense of such social

When Western people think of Confucianism, they often think of it in a past sense- as something only relevant to ancient China that cannot be applied to modern day society. However, what these people fail to realize is that Confucianism’s roots have been so integrated into China’s society that the values have become a part of every day life. Without having to explicitly state that they are following specifics aspects of Confucianism, most Chinese people submit to them, often times unknowingly. However, Confucian values not only exist in the Chinese society, but also permeate into other areas of Chinese culture such as architecture and aspects of Feng-Shui.

Confucius was born in an impoverished family. Throughout his childhood he was very eager to learn so his mother fostered that. He had several small positions in government in his home state, Lu. He was the first ever teacher/educationalist in the history of China. His teachings found in the Analects, discusses ethical modules family, politics, economy, and more. In his teachings he promotes humanness (ren), ritual propriety (li), and the developing of exemplary persons (Junzi). (Li pg. 87)

Confucianism is a time enduring philosophy that has stood up to invading clans, war, resentment, enforcement and infringement of new philosophies, and eventually, revival. For almost 80 years, up until the late 1970’s, Confucianism and its ideas and values have been all but wiped away from China. Though effort was made to remove Confucianism for good from China by the Communist leader Mao Zedong in 1949, the ideas and values were so deeply embedded into peoples mind and the culture that even suppression could not keep it out of the culture and practices. The main factor that has brought Confucianism back into the limelight in China and other East Asian countries is the recent

The concept of human nature is somewhat debated in Confucianism and its followers. In the absence of a personal or supernatural god in this belief system, the question of whether someone is inherently good or evil does not have the same importance as it does otherwise. For example, Christians believe that they are created with sin and must create a certain form of relationship with their god to live a moral life. However, without such a personal god, the focus is more on human behavior than and sort of dogmatic debate. In fact, Confucius hardly ever touches on this issue but noted that "by nature men are similar; by practice men are wide apart" (Confucius, N.d.).