Toward the North: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Experiences of the Characters

Toward the North
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Toward the North
“Growing Up” is a story by Xi Yu about the cross-cultural and transnational cultural experiences of Jiang Xue and her daughter Wenwen. Transnational cultures are shared cultures that are learned through socialization. Jiang Xue accepts the Western world’s cultural practices that dictate that children become independent as early as 15 years. She learns this from her colleagues and becomes weary of the possibility of losing control of her daughter. Cross-cultural experiences enable characters to challenge their cultural presuppositions to understand the meaning of culture and its meaning. Jiang Xue challenges herself to accept the possibility of losing her 15-year-old daughter as this is the cultural norm in North America.
Jiang Xue learned from her colleagues the significance of age 15 and offered to organize a party for her daughter. However, the generational difference could not enable her to understand the needs of Wewen, who mocked her idea of a birthday party. Her fellow student had socialized Wewen to have a different version of a birthday party, contrary to her mother’s perception of an ideal birthday party (Khanal & Gaulee, 2019). According to her mother, a birthday celebration entailed sitting down at a round table and cutting a cake. However, Wewen had been influenced by her friends to adopt the Western version of a birthday celebration where revelers drink all night and spend the night together.
Jiang Xue had to accept other people’s cultural practices and embrace them as they had affected her through her daughter. As Xi Yu explains, “She knew that her daughter’s growing to maturity would come with some problems that would be difficult for them to handle, but she didn’t expect that the challenges would be so daunting, so urgent, or so unreasonable” (Hua et al., 2018). Thus, Jiang Xue had to accept the changes in practices brought by her daughter’s exposure to an alien culture. Jian Xue learned from the westerners the importance of talking publicly about topics such as sex which Chinese culture forbade from being discussed in public. The Chinese believed in control over the lives of children, and children were not supposed to confront their parents (Dal, 2018). However, socialization enabled Wewen to talk to her mother and tell her about her boyfriend and her intention to spend the night at his place.
The Abandoned Cat is a story by Lingh Zhang that narrates the experiences of Xiaokai, her husband Shangjie, and their cat, Huang. Xiaokai is a disempowered Chinese woman who babysits her husband’s children as he pursues his education at the University (Khanal & Gaulee, 2019). She dedicates her time to her husband’s ...