I am a recent immigrant to the US, with a college education and spoke the language before moving here. I have choosen to assimilate some things and not others, like racism, because they go against my cutoms.

When people migrate during formative years they tend to get socialized with the local customs, while some may continue to have values from the homeland, some even reject them.

If people do not speak the language, they tend to stay with ‘their own’ which slows down the acculturation process.

Di.

Did these CBCs commute to school, or did they go to school out of town? What about their parents? Do their parents have university degrees, especially degrees from abroad? Also, there’s the question of *WHEN* their parents came to the country. Older generation CBCs (eary Gen Xers and baby boomers, for example) are more traditional than those who came later (post 1968). The most westernized ones are the tai-tais and their children, who came in the 1980s. At least in my experience.

Would these Canadian-educated immigrants have educated parents?

I’ve known plenty of educated CBCs even (2nd generation Chinese) who retain some of the old country values. They have only CBC friends, only date CBCs, don’t accept inter-racial relationships among their peers, marry their FIRST boyfriend/girlfriend, ask “How old are you?” (a question that is a no-no in Western ettiquette) and chew with their mouths open. In my old CBC social group, only one lady had a dog (an Anglo-Saxon tradition), and she was in an inter-racial relationship. I’ve known quite a few Chinese guys who want their wives to live with their moms.

In Western culture, we tell it like it is. I’ve found that the CBC’s had a tendency to bury their heads in the sand whenever I was blunt. However, my non-Chinese coworkers and ex-boyfriends have said that they like the fact that I say what’s on my mind.

Integration is more than watching hockey or working in a Fortune 500 company. It’s all those subtle behaviours that are a measure of one’s integration.

Education: Going to formal school (boarding school for high school, college/university/grad school)

Educated: In this case, at least a community college education

Integration/Integrated: In the case of this post, Anglo-Saxon values.

I wonder about your conclusion that career exposure influences values; one could quite easily figure the inverse, that values influence career selection. Certainly, I’m much more interested in world affairs and by extension finance, economics and law, than I am with purely “making money” or healing people. It’s interesting that you point out that doctors may be less “culturally Anglo” than lawyers or finance types; it sort of jives with the way my mother would point out medicine as a valuable profession mostly because of the high importance she (and I think many Chinese people) on health and wellness. I can see both that and the small business interest as deriving from classical Asian pragmatism, seeking long term stability and good fortune, the benefits more obviously apparent than more nebulous concepts enshrined in law and high-level finance.

Thanks & peace,

Tariq

In addition, re-reading your last paragraph, I’m not even sure what you feel there is beyond “language (speaking only), food, holidays like the Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival and perhaps one or two milestone traditions, such as a baby’s coming out/presentation at 30 days or wedding traditions” that would constitute Chinese culture? Are these not elements of Chinese culture?