Blog 43

It was about two years ago, I sat in my high school’s café and enjoyed my first day in an American school. Several lower school students approached to me.

         “Excuse me, are you Chinese?” A little boy asked me.

         “Yes, I am.” I did not know why he asked me this question. It was not hard to see that I have an Asian face.

         “So you know Kung Fu, right? Can you show me how to fly? Can you fight with chopsticks?” He asked.

         I did not know how to answer those questions because I seriously did not know much about Kung Fu, and of course, I could not fly. All those students looked disappointed when I told them that not everyone Chinese person knew Kung Fu.

Most of my American classmates learned China and Chinese cultures from movies, especially Jackie Chen and Bruce Lee’s movies. In those movies, every Chinese people are familiar with Kung Fu. However, what happens in the movie does not equal to the real Chinese world.

In the beginning months at my new American high school, I kept be asked questions like “Do all Chinese people dress in those big robes on street?””Do you eat your pet dog?” After Disney’s Kung Fu Panda, more lower school students began to believe that all Chinese people knew Kung Fu, and we live deep in the mountains. I did not know how to tell them the truth: Chinese people have normal lives like Americans: Chinese people live in condos or houses, we use buses to go to work and use chopsticks for eat.