Culture Shock
Sometimes, you find it easy with the topic Cross-culture Conflict and you can get all aspects involved in your article or discussion and analyze them thoroughly. However, it may hurt even when you’re confronted with only one aspect of it.
GUA SHA the Treatment is an example right here. I wish that such culture shock will never happen to me after eing the film.
It all started when Grandpa applied the Chine traditional treatment—GUA SHA on Xu Datong’s five-year-old son, which triggered a trial for abu. And it’s the ries of misunderstanding followed that makes me feel anxious and depresd, even angry and impatient to some extent.
Maybe for most Chine, the westerners’ verdict from the court in this film ems ridiculous and we can’t figure out why Americans made such simple things so complicated. And what’s more, the way westerners interpreted Xi You Ji in the film really put us on the spot—
not only becau they emed so ignorant of Chine traditional culture, but also they tended to depreciate the figures that have been long occupying a high status in our minds.
To put it in a nutshell, the controversy intended to be reflected in the film, is a twist of our Chine concept of moral by westerners. Can you imagine a scenario where almost everything embedded in your mind is entirely negated by others around you? Can you bear it when the way you take care of your kids is regarded as abu, and even take away your kids from your side claiming for better protection from your kids’ parents? If I were Xu Datong in the film, I would have fought back more fiercely, and more desperately.
Many people conclude it as a cultural shock. Of cour it is. But as far as I’m concerned, I e more arrogance from the Americans.
I can’t stand it that America should restrict foreign cultures with what they think reasonable, and even control others’ thoughts and normal behaviors. I can’t e much so-
called mutual respect for cultural diversity on the lengthy American law. And how could Americans say that the safeguard the human rights whilst their laws destroyed a happy family in the film?
GUA SHA the Treatment rves as a qualified reflection of the so-called humanity rights and some aspects of the western culture. Americans are suppod to know that their laws, however lengthy, can never cover the Chine thousands-year-old traditions.
(Class 6 刘祎)
