America is NOT "The West".

Whenever I've made this statement in class there are a number of students who look either puzzled or simply seem not to understand the distinction. I don't say it because I want to separate America from the West and view it as a differently entity [living thing], but because I want you to realise that America is only ONE country of the West. There are many, many countries, kingdoms, dominions, protectorates, states etc. in the Western world. They have their own culture, traditions, history and social mores [pronounced more -Ays: acceptable behaviour and customs] which are as different from America's as are China's.

To put it another way: suppose you were to go overseas, and people kept telling you that they knew all about China: that the people there loved raw fish, that teenage fashion was crazy and over-the-top [ exaggeratedly bizarre], and that the national dress was called the kimona. After a while you would, I am sure, get heartily tired of telling people that they are talking about Japan. Especially if they shrugged their shoulders and said "Oh, well. China, Japan. Same thing: its Asia".

In Ningbo there are foreigners from all over the world: Sweden, The Netherlands, Britain, Australia, India, New Zealand, Mexico, Denmark...the list is enormous. NONE of us celebrate Thanksgiving or Hallowe'en or know anything about American Education. Here at the University there are, perhaps, more Americans than any other one country because they all come here together from the same place. However, there are also Canadians, English, Australian, French and German people living here in your world. America is as foreign to us as it is to you.

Lets go back a minute to the idea of you being in a foreign country yourself and everyone talking about the culture and history of Japan as if it was your own. I suspect that, being only human, after a while you would begin to think that the people around you were being very disrespectful to China by completely ignoring it and all its own complex history and culture in favour of Japan's.

Especially if they kept pointing to bits of Japanese history and culture, saying they were China's history and culture, and then showing you how inferior China was because of them! So, just for the record:

"The West" is not merely 400 years old
People throughout The West are not all Christians
Families in the West are not all independent
Tradition is as important to many Westerners as it is to China
Westerners can trace their ancestors back through hundreds of years
Westerners do not, in general, live on KFC or Macca's [Mackdonald's]
Many Western women are even more traditional than Chinese women
Most Western families are as close as Chinese families and put family first.
Westerners do not all live in big houses and drive big, gas-guzzling cars
Most Westerners call candy "sweets", University "University" and not "School", non-alcoholic drinks "soft drinks"...and in fact have to learn a whole new vocabulary of American-English words when they come to China!

I am proud of the fact that the ancestors on my English side built a giant stone space observatory over 5,000 years ago, called Stonehenge. I am both proud and relieved when I reflect that those same ancestors actually had running water inside their homes! Just as the Italians point to the fact that they had toilets that flushed and central heating three thousand years ago.

I am proud that the ancestors on my Romany side knew how to construct that most un-natural of shapes, the Pyramid, at around the same time: - 5,000 years ago. It was a period in history where, not only in China, but all over the world, civilizations arose. Civilizations that have endured, while advancing and changing in different ways, up to the present days. It was no longer the dawn (successful races had flourished and died and evolved since then) of Humankind, but the real Day of Humankind.

See the word Globalization actually means something pretty profound. It means that we see ourselves as all inter-connected. We do not view the progress of each country as belonging to that country - but of benefiting and advancing humankind. To a great extent, this is what many Westerners have been doing for centuries.

Yes, I made a difference between my mother's ancestors and my father's. But it was both those races which resulted in me. This is one of the main differences between China and The West: Chinese ancestors are, for the most part Chinese. But in the west the Europeans, English, Spanish, Australian, Greek, Italian (and more) races have been marrying each other, trading with, making war on and invading each other for thousands of years. Western bloodlines are often a big, global stew, with Welsh grandmothers and Latvian Grandfathers and Irish Great-Greats with Spanish Great-Greats.

Thus we are brought up knowing each other through shared histories and authors and artists. We are constantly aware of how far back our ancestors can be traced - laying claim to the age of any civilization from which even one of our ancestors came, we are all from ancient cultures. We pay due deference to China for gunpowder as we do to France for elevating food to an art form.

We count the Greeks as being the originators of our Theatre. We talk about the various French, Italian, Spanish, English etc. painters as being the Masters of our Art forms. We learn the theories of mathematicians from Greece, Italy, Germany as being those who developed our technology. The body of philosophers starting with the Greeks (as you can see, they are very important in our "Western" culture) and ranging over countries as widely separate as Germany, Italy and England are, nevertheless those who shaped our society.

Now in all this shaping of our culture America doesn't figure at all until very recently. Much more recently than most of you imagine. In fact, America did not actually start to contribute to Western culture in any measurable way until after the Second World War (1939-46). This was a time during which all the European and British countries were still suffering from the affects of war which had ravaged us all. There were food shortages and rationing right through the 1950's in England and Europe, our cities and towns were having to be rebuilt and our families had been torn apart.

Into this gloomy picture burst rock n'roll, Coca Cola, chewing gum, and the wonderful, glamorous world of Hollywood movies. America, which had had no war, (though it had lent soldiers on postings to Allied forces) was prosperous, modern, shiny bright and new. And, most of all, we knew this from movies which painted such rosy pictures of a world far removed from our own. Many women from Europe and England married American soldiers and escaped the hunger and lack of money and desperation to go and live in this strange country. Many of them found it TOO different and foreign and returned - but those who stayed wrote back glowing reports and were the envy of all their friends and relations.

The Hollywood Dream Machine [movie industry] continues to dominate the leisure hours of many Chinese, English, and Australian people. But now we are all better informed, more sophisticated and knowledgeable. We know that the Dream Machine sells us fantasy:clean suburbs, beautiful, thin women, handsome men, Happily Ever After. It still fascinates us and it still provides an hour and a half of rest from our own problems and lives.

But this depiction[way of showing something] is not even a true reflection of life for the average American, let alone all the millions of other Westerners from countries like Sardinia, Malta, Tahiti, France, England, Scotland, Brussels and all those widely different countries many Chinese students have never even heard the names of.

Ladies and gentleman. China opened up thirty years ago. We have just celebrated the anniversary of that time. The world is open to you. Out there are strange animals and fish that you wouldn't believe. There are marvels of nature like fiord's, glaciers, active volcano's. There are town and villages built underneath the ground, into the sides of mountains and underneath the sea that you can dive in and out of. There is music played on instruments you have never seen, food such as you couldn't imagine, clothes that would rock your world. There are castles and towers and tiny villages and flowers and rain-forests and multi-coloured birds that look as though they have been painted. The World, The West, has so much to amaze, to brighten, to enlarge your outlook.

When I ask in class for names of American cities that are NOT New York, every single class comes up with a few. When I ask for cities in England, New Zealand, France, Germany The Netherlands...I get blank faces. People the West comes to you in the form of teachers, visitors, the Internet, Books, Movies. It is now time for you to find the West in the same way. Yes, America is a big Western country. But it is only one among so very many. We are now a global society - some of us have always regarded ourselves as such. Get off your bums[informal phrase meaning Don't be lazy or indifferent] and find out more about that global society of which you are all a part.