griz326

I still think you guys are playing fast and loose with the word culture. >>>Anything conceived and mass produced, and accepted and utilized by societies, is CULTURE! YIMI, your comment is the point exactly. ANYTHING conceived and mass produced? You mean that real doll (realdoll.com) is part of American culture? Do you accept drive-by shootings? Do you accept drug use? Do you accept open homosexuality? Do you accept wide-spread crime? Do you accept trash TV? Do you accept total body art? Each of those is an "American culture" that is not accepted by most Americans...and all of them are relatively new phenomena. ...accepted and utilized by societies ...so all of America is into snowboarding? A relative handful of people doing drive-by shootings or snowboarding does not make culture. We are a country of micro-cultures, we have no unifying culture that is common to all of us - thus - no American culture. I have never had a deep-fried twinkie or a deep-fried oreo... The lack of American culture is why America has been in a state of political turmoil now for many, many, many years. A common culture is a stabilizing force. America simply does not have it; instead, America is comprised of micro-cultures that divide and conquer. Again I say if America has any one belief that is nearly common it is that "all innovation and change is good" and that is not culture...however it does unify the herd on the way to the buffalo jump.

What about food? Hot Dogs Hamburgers Pizza Tacos Chili guvment cheese Fortune Cookie Chop Suey General Tzo's Chicken Freedom Fries Freedom Toast Deep-fried Oreos Deep-fried White Castles Deep-Fried Twinkies ...and much, much more I also created a sandwich for a local restaurant that sells on the average of 4,000 dollars a month. It's called the "Cajun Dutchman." A triple decker on pumpernickel, with Gouda cheese, bacon, ham, roast beef and my special Cajun mayonnaise. Yum Yum! ...and just because someone in the US conceived the idea does not make it culture; wackos putting cheese on their head and painting their beer bellies does not necessarily constitute culture. Do you really believe that deep-fried twinkies are a cultural asset? It seems to me that you use the term culture quite loosely...especially when it comes to the enduring part. Let's look at the list again in a hundred years...then maybe we'll be talking cultural assets. I would concede that baseball has become an American sport even though it was conceived in Britain in the mid-1700's. Football is not an American invention it has been around thousands of years - the first references to the game were around 500 BC; it is the spectical that is the American invention. Skateboarding & snowboarding are culture? The music forms may become cultural assets, but the forms mentioned must be associated with a sub-group of Americans; not American culture at large. Time may change that. Oh...one more thing...the asset part is important. Do you really want to consider "drive-by shootings" part of American culture?

>>>Also, keep in mind, unless I am mistaken, someone can come to the United States and in time become an American citizen. I'd be willing to bet some of my old country Irish family and old country Italian neighbors would disagree with you if they were still living. However, they would never have denied the great opportunities this country made possible for their American children. >>>I've read here that American culture is really the lack of any culture. That is absoloutly not true. We take the good from other cultures, adopt it, and make it our own. IMO people generally think of culture as being something unique, enduring and endearing about a place and its people. As a nation, America is too young to have developed something enduring AND endearing. Our nation embraces opportunity, innovation and rapidly evolving change; which is counter to what most people think of as culture.

I doubt most Hollywood stars would do as well saying lines in Chinese as Jackie Chan does speaking English...so.... Is there a source for popular movies that include Chinese sub-titles (and vice versa)??? I've come up empty on my web searches. There are half a dozen movies that I'd like my gal to see, but her English is not good enough to follow the movie without sub-titles. For instance, "It could happen to you, "Quigley down under," "You've got mail" or some of the movies I appeared in as an extra

Cultural erosion is sad. I feel fortunate to have seen China shortly after Mao's death. It was an entirely different place then.

The disparity in urban vs rural life is global. It is true even in the US. However, the US went through the change over an extended period while China is going the change in a compressed time frame. ...and the population of China dwarfs the population of the US. The Chinese people I have met in the countryside have always appeared to be happy and healthy - even on my first trip to China in 1978. Poverty does not always imply poorness of life. There should be no illusions: there will always be a disparity between urban and rural life globally.

From what the Canadian Border Agents in my town told me, your wife will need to get a Canadian visa which may not be possible without a Canadian sponsor. Her American visa is meaningless according to the Border Agents. I was investigating flying my gal to the US via Calgary and driving her home. Calgary is only 250 miles from my home, is my home office and has a small but nice Chinatown.

I must admit that my friend threw me quite a curve... I have great respect for her over many, many years. ...but I have come to the conclusion that she is ill-informed on Chinese culture, is closed-minded, maybe a little jealous given our many years of friendship or maybe a bit of all of that..... There are many REAL issues for my gal and I to overcome without worrying about these things. Of course, I will be alert to red flags...but IMO...my ability to communicate with my gal is much more substantial than the issues raised by my friend. My gal is working hard to speak and understand spoken English; she does very well with written English as long as it is simple. I am studying Mandarin; her progress is much better than mine. Communication, patience and understanding are the serious issues. I do not believe my gal has any hidden agendas beyond any woman in any culture. Time will prove our fitness for each other.

Thank you all for reinforcing my gut feelings and my understanding of Chinese life from reading. It is worrisome when a dear friend expresses such grave misgivings. It took me a while to shake the feeling after the telephone call. I have decided that it is just another case of a westerner judging another culture's way of life. I've never thought of my good friend as closed-minded, but it looks as if she is.

Thanks Don for reinforcing my gut feeling. I've read quite a bit about China over the years, so I really never thought about it until my friend made such a big deal of it today. Still...I must ask more about this matter rather than hope my feelings are correct.

This takes the "have you got rocks in your head" discussion to a new level. My dear friend called me today and I told her my plans to marry my gal in Nanning. As an attorney one of the first questions she asked was: "Have you locked up everything in a trust yet?" The answer to that question is no, but with reluctance I will. After that we continued to chat until I mentioned that there is a 17 year old girl involved. This set her off in a way I have never seen before. Taking it to the bottom line, my friend questions the true character of my gal for the following reasons: - her involvement with me rather than finishing the rearing of the child - the current split living situation in which the child lives with her grandmother on the father's side during the school week (closer to the school the child attends) --- a side bar...what sort of woman would not commute to work to be able to live with her daughter - what sort of woman endangers her child by exposing her to a strange man (me - I never considered this, but then I am not a risk - my gal does not know that for certain) - what sort of woman would turn her child's life upside down just to come to live in America Long story short, the points must be considered. While I think the comments judge the Chinese by American standards, in fact, an American Catholic convert's standards, I cannot ignore a good friend's concern for me. In my 20+ years as a single man, only twice did I seriously date women with children. I never became involved with the children because until the deal is signed, sealed and delivered all that I could possibly do to the children was harm them; break-ups are bad enough for the adults - but if a kid gets to like you - they get crushed too. I did not even consider my own standard with my gal's child. The matter that most concerns me after the call today is the child living with her father's mother most of the time. I think the "whys" and "what fors" around that are important. She's told me that her mother-in-law loves her and is shamed by her son (my gal's ex). That situation would be a HUGE red flag were I planning a future with an American woman; it probably requires a much closer examination than I have given it so far. My friend closed the conversation saying "If this woman is so selfish that she does this to her child, what might she do to you?" A tough call from a good friend. Could I possibly have so misjudged my Sweetie?

I am not concerned by off-handed comments; I will teach my gal and her child that mean words only reflect the ignorance of the speaker. I am concerned about physical harm coming to my fiancee and her daughter. This is so worrisome to me that I may move to a big city so that my two young women are not such stand-out targets.

Here in Montana I'll have to wait for the DVD.

I imagine we may have a few rich guys on this board, but most of us probably just make a good living. I do not want my SO disappointed when she arrives, so I've tried to explain to her that I am not RICH and that we will live a modest life in the US. She either doesn't understand or does not believe me. Are you/where you concerned about that issue?

I understand that you cannot attend the interview with your SO. My question is...does it matter at all to the visa agent if you are in Guangzhou to offer moral support?

When my fiancee arrives in Eureka, Montana I am concerned that having more animals than people will alarm her. I have tried to prepare her, but I guess she will need to experience it for herself.

It sounds to me as if you've just excused the American educational system, the teachers and parents ShaQuaNew.

I am afraid I do not agree with your 123's of education. While teacher quality is important, parental involvement with lesson learning is far more important. My order of importance is: #1 parental involvement with lessons every night #2 discipline starting at home and continuing into the school #3 sound and focused courseware limited to reading, writing and math until a solid learning foundation is established #4 competent teachers 20 years ago it would have been difficult (maybe impossible) to baseline students in order to perform correlative analysis of teacher effectiveness; today the technology is readily available. Teachers could and should be evaluated and paid based on results they generate; unproductive teachers should be removed from the educational system.

Thank you for all of the good suggestions. The "turn-around" time for the visa to the US and enrollment in a university will be VERY SHORT if my projections are accurate. The girl is painfully shy, speaks very little and behaved as if she was afraid of me when we first met. I took her to dinner with her mom and did some close up magic for her before she smiled (I was a close-up magician in another life). Perhaps increasing the "turn-around time" is the first step...along with those situational conversations. I cannot imagine any thing worse than having some drunken bad man rape and murder my SO's girl because she is Chinese. I am concerned about that for my fiancee too, but not nearly so much as for this child. I know bad people are everywhere. But in Montana, you can see the members of the Witness Protection Program - they don't fade into the crowd; and many bad people come here to evade law enforcement - they are proud to be outlaws. I doubt that living in a big city would be any safer, but my fiancee and her daughter would not be such prominent targets.

My SO's daughter will attend a university in America when she arrives. She will be 19 by the time she gets her visa and ready to go to school. My concern is for her safety: she speaks the language pretty well, but she is so naive it puts her at risk. I believe she should live at home for the first few years of school which would require that I move from a rural area to a city. Her mother just wants to push her daughter out of the nest and I have been unable to convince my SO yet that we should be close-by. First, am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? Second, without scaring the crap out of my SO, how can I make her understand the danger?