When you move to another country, you prefer to follow the customs or keep your own? Use specific reasons and details to explain your choice.
For most of the time, immigrants are always on the arduous journey in seeking for the sense of cultural belongings. When you move to thoroughly new surroundings, you may be so perplexed where food, language even moral values have changed that the nostalgia in your deepest heart increases ultimately. Or, you may be so curious by this exotic and stimulating environment that you just happily forget about your roots. From my personal angle alone, either is fatal.
For the former situation, you can never get involved in the new society. Like a few Pakistanis I saw in Australia. They are salesmen and all their vocabulary of English is less than fifty. Yes they can earn a living by their perspiration, but they never get the chance to enjoy the privilege of British society.
Secondly, if you are over “socially-adaptable”, you forget about your origins and backgrounds the day you step into the new world. Then it’ll be a truly loss, like a tree without roots or a man without soul.
A widely-respectable director, newly Oscar prize winner, An Lee sets up an excellent example in this respective. He demonstrates the maximum a Chinese can achieve from abroad. As a person from the Far East, he now stands in the very centre of American film industry. This is a legendary story. When being asked what is the key to his success, surprisingly, he said, “Never forget about your roots.”
I have always held the belief that the appreciation of hard work and talent is the common character of any tolerant national identity. Therefore, it is not a paradox to follow the customs while keeping your own in your heart.
