Asian and Pacific Peoples

1
Asian and Pacific Peoples

• Intergroup Differences

2
The Chinese

• The Chinese first immigrated to the US as early
  as 1785.
• Chinese immigrants, who came in greater numbers
  beginning around 1850, worked as miners and
  farmers and provided the major labor force for
  building the railroads.

3
The Chinese

• Since the end of WWII, Chinese have been
  immigrating to the US mainly from Taiwan and Hong
  Kong to study, join their families, or for
  business purposes.
• In recent years, more Chinese people from the
  Peoples Republic of China (PRC)have entered the
  US.

4
The Chinese

• Immigrants from the PRC constituted one of the
  largest groups of immigrants in the 1990s.
• Today, the Chinese are the largest group of
  persons from Asia in the US.

5
Chinese Demographics

• Population distribution and immigrant settlement
  patterns in the US indicate that the vast
  majority of Chinese are continuing to reside in
  the western and northeastern regions of the US.

6
Chinese Demographics

• Chinese, like other Asian populations, are
  generally electing to locate in communities where
  other Chinese reside, such as in metropolitan
  areas of San Francisco/Oakland, Los Angeles, and
  New York City.
• The growth of urban and suburban Chinatowns has
  resulted in different class backgrounds of new
  immigrants.

7
Chinese Demographics

• Entrepreneurial-professional middle class
  immigrants generally settle in suburban areas and
  become successful Chinese professionals.
• Chinese immigrants with limited formal education
  and English language skills make up a colonized
  labor force of low-wage earners employed as
  service workers and operatives in urban
  Chinatowns.

8
Chinese Culture

• From the hinterlands of the north, to the lush
  jungles in the south, from the mountains of
  Taiwan in the east, to the top of the world in
  the west, China serves as home to 56 official
  ethnic groups.

9
Chinese Culture

• The largest group, the Han, make up over 92 of
  China's vast population, and it is the elements
  of Han civilization that world considers "Chinese
  culture."
• Yet, the 55 ethnic minorities, nestled away on
  China's vast frontiers, maintain their own rich
  traditions and customs, and all are part of
  Chinese culture.

10
Religion and Values

• These 56 ethnic groups in China practice a
  variety of religions including Buddhism, Taoism,
  Christianity, and Islam.
• They also believe in ancestral worship and
  Confucianism.
• One of the most important ideals of the Chinese
  culture is the pursuit and maintenance of harmony.

11
Religion and Values

• Preservation of harmony is a primary value
  characteristic of heart-oriented versus
  mind-oriented cultures.
• Preservation of harmony further reinforces a
  pervasive humanistic versus materialistic
  orientation among traditional Asian peoples.

12
Religion and Values

• The least three desirable characteristics in
  Buddhism are greed, anger, and ignorance.
• In accordance with Confucian and Taoist
  teachings, one avoids direct confrontation,
  conforms to rules of propriety, and gives face
  or recognition and respect to others.

13
Religion and Values

• These guiding principles translate into verbal,
  social, and emotional restraint and the
  consistent use of politeness, tact, and
  gentleness in interpersonal relationships.

14
The Family

• Chinese culture places a heavy emphasis on
  respect for elders and the strength of the family
  as a unit.
• Each member of the family has a role that is
  clearly defined through an intricate kinship
  system.
• Traditionally, the father was responsible for all
  decisions.

15
The Family

• The mother was responsible for caring for the
  elderly.
• The oldest son or daughter was responsible for
  the care of his/her younger siblings.
• Parents taught their children to behave according
  to strict rules.

16
Education

• The Chinese believe that education is extremely
  important.
• Teachers are highly respected.
• Most Chinese families expect their children to do
  well in school.
• By excelling in school, the child brings honor to
  the family.

17
Education

• Preparing for future educational and occupational
  success further enhances the familys social
  status and ensures its economic well being.
• The principle value of education is embodied in
  the following Chinese proverb
• If you are planning for a year, sow rice
• If you are planning for a decade, plant trees
• If you are planning for a lifetime, educate
  people.

18
Language

• The Chinese language contains a multiplicity of
  dialects.
• In contrast to regional American English
  dialects, the major Chinese dialects have evolved
  into distinctly different spoken languages that
  are mutually unintelligible.
• The national language of the Peoples Republic of
  China and Taiwan is the Mandarin dialect of Han.

19
Language

• Approximately 70 of the population speaks the
  Mandarin dialect of Han.
• Mandarin includes various northern Chinese
  dialects and is spoken in the north, northwest,
  west, and southwest regions of China.
• The Wu dialects of Han are spoken in the east.

20
Language

• The most widely differentiated dialects, such as
  Cantonese, Min, and Hakka, are spoken in the
  southeast.
• Among recent Chinese American immigrants, the
  greater number have been from Cantonese-speaking
  provinces of countries such as Hong Kong.

21
Language

• Another popular dialect among immigrants is
  Toishanese, a Cantonese-related dialect from the
  Taishan province in the PRC.
• Taiwanese immigrants typically speak Fukienese
  and Mandarin.
• Chinese is a tonal language.
• Each syllable of every monosyllabic word or a
  compound word has a distinctive pitch or tone.

22
Language

• Each character is phonetically represented by a
  single syllable, with each syllable having a tone
  mark.
• In Mandarin, there are four basic tones
  Cantonese has 10 tones.
• The first tone has an flat level, the second tone
  is rising, the third tone is falling-rising, and
  the fourth tone is falling.

23
Language

• Tones do not refer to individual speaker
  expression and have nothing to do with the mood
  or personality of the speaker.
• Instead, they convey different meanings for the
  syllables to which they are assigned.
• For example, depending upon which tones are used,
  the Mandarin word ma has at least four possible
  meanings mother, hemp, horse, and scold.

24
Language

• Apart from tonal pronunciation, the linguistic
  structure of Chinese differs significantly from
  English.
• There are only two final consonants in Mandarin,
  /n/ and /?/ and only seven final consonants in
  Cantonese, /m/, /n/, /?/, /p/, /t/, /k/, and
  glottal stop /?/.
• Chinese speakers often omit final consonants when
  speaking English.

25
Language

• There are also no consonant clusters in Mandarin
  or Cantonese, making the double and triple
  consonant clusters such as /spl/ and /str/
  difficult for Chinese speakers, sometimes
  resulting in consonant deletion.
• Unlike English, Chinese is noninflectional and
  does not use plural markers, tense markers,
  copulas, the verb has, the auxiliary do,
  articles, or conjunctions.

26
Language

• Gender, time, and quantity are denoted by word
  additions rather than through the modification of
  words as in English.
• Words are thus very context bound.
• The pragmatic rules of the Chinese language such
  as turn-taking, greeting, social distance,
  proximity, and politeness are also different.
• Chinese speakers generally do not interrupt to
  ask a question.

27
Language

• A socially appropriate Chinese greeting is Have
  you eaten? to which the accepted response is
  Yes.
• This is similar to the English greeting How are
  you? and the answer Fine.
• Social distance is determined by age, class, and
  marital status.
• Chinese may not express emotion in public, and
  hugging, kissing, and touching are not frequently
  observed.

28
Language

• A giggle can be used as a sign of embarrassment.
• Also, intonations tend to rise at the end of a
  sentence in the Chinese language, in contrast to
  English, where they tend to fall.
• All dialects of spoken Chinese share the same
  written language.

29
Language

• The Chinese written language consists of
  approximately 40,000 ideographs, or characters
  that represent an object of idea.
• There are over 100,000 combined compounds.
• A knowledge of 1,500 to 3,000 characters is
  adequate for basic literacy.

30
Health Beliefs

• Throughout centuries of isolation from the rest
  of the world, ancient Chinese scholars developed
  a distinctive and extremely well-organized system
  of medicine that continues to dominate medical
  thinking in China up to the present time.
• This unique system has further influenced the
  medical concepts adopted by the people of Korea,
  Japan, and Southeast Asia.

31
Health Beliefs

• Fundamental to traditional Chinese medicine is
  the philosophy of Taoism, the cosmic forces of
  yin and yang, and the five elements metal,
  wood, water, fire, and earth.
• Chinese concepts of health and disease are
  closely related to these principles.

32
Health Beliefs

• Since man and the universe have been created by
  the same elements, man is subject to the same
  forces that govern the universe.
• If man remains in harmony with the Tao, and yin
  and yang and the Five Elements are in proper
  balance, he can enjoy good health and longevity.
• Imbalance will result in illness and death.

33
Health Beliefs

• Diseases are thought to be caused by both
  internal and external factors.
• The body is traditionally divided between the
  yang-related surface organs and the yin-related
  internal organs.
• The five viscera, heart, spleen, lungs, liver,
  and kidney, are the main organs corresponding to
  the five elements, which when out of balance
  result in illness.

34
Health Beliefs

• The hot/cold classification of various disease
  provides a means of both diagnosing and treating
  selected illnesses and medical conditions.
• For example, excessive heat or yang illnesses
  are generated from within the body itself and
  include such conditions as skin eruptions, cold
  sores, fevers, and ear infections.

35
Health Beliefs

• Cold or yin maladies are caused by intrusion of
  cold or bad wind into any part of the body and
  may contribute to symptoms such as coughing,
  headaches, muscle aches, diarrhea (from a cold
  stomach) and infectious airborne disease as well
  as cancer.
• Yin illnesses may also be produced by loss of
  blood and improper diet.

36
Health Beliefs

• Among internal factors believed to contribute to
  illness are excessive emotions, including joy,
  anger, hate, jealousy, sorrow, worry, and fear.
• Although a great value is placed upon the ability
  to control emotions and subjugate them to reason,
  when selected emotions are not openly expressed
  and accumulate in intensity within the body, they
  are manifested in the form of physical illness.

37
Health Beliefs

• This tendency toward somatization corresponds to
  the holistic philosophy of Chinese medicine that
  des not separate mental illness fro physical
  illness.
• Health maintenance entails ensuring harmony
  between the yin and yang forces of the body,
  mind, and emotions.
• Illness is an affliction of the whole persona
  generalized lack of well-being.

38
The Koreans

• Koreans have one of the oldest surviving
  civilizations on earth and have maintained a
  significant number of their cultural traditions.
• Korean immigration to the US began in the early
  20th century, when Korean laborers went to Hawaii
  to work in the pineapple and sugarcane
  plantations,.
• Later many moved to the mainland.

39
The Koreans

• Before WWII, the Korean community in the US was
  not visible because of its small population.
• In 1990, there were approximately 800,000 Koreans
  in the US.
• More Koreans have emigrated in the last two
  decades.

40
Korean Demographics

• The largest proportion of Korean immigrants have
  settled in California, particularly in the Los
  Angeles area.
• New York and Illinois, and their respective
  metropolitan areas of New York City and Chicago,
  have the second and the third largest Korean
  populations.

41
Korean Demographics

• Within these and other population centers, Korean
  newcomers have shown a tendency toward rapid
  suburbanization and residential/geographic
  dispersal.
• Korean adaptability to a new life setting is
  related to their relatively high educational
  level and occupational preparation.

42
Korean Demographics

• Despite the fact that Koreans exhibit one of the
  highest levels of education among all ethnic
  groups in the US, many recent immigrants are
  initially unable to practice their profession or
  at their level of education.
• Thus, they frequently turn to self-owned small
  businesses.

43
Korean Demographics

• Their willingness to sacrifice for the future by
  working extremely long hours and not taking
  vacations has helped build many highly successful
  enterprises.
• Korean small businesses, such as green grocers,
  liquor stores, and markets, are proliferating in
  white suburbs, shopping centers, rural areas, as
  well as inner-city sections of large metropolitan
  areas.

44
Korean Demographics

• Nationally, Korean Americans own 20 of all
  dry-cleaning businesses.
• In Southern California they own 45 of liquor
  stores, 46 of small grocery markets, and 45 of
  one-hour photo shops.
• On a segment of Broadway in Manhattan, Koreans
  owned 75 of the groceries, and 78 of the owners
  had college degrees.

45
Religion and Worldview

• One of the earliest religions of Korean was
  shamanism or spirit worship.
• As a system of beliefs about the supernatural
  world, shamanism originated in the tribal
  communities and continues to be practiced in the
  rural areas as well as by many older Koreans.

46
Religion and Worldview

• Shamanism is concerned with the relationship
  among people, spirits, and the universe.
• A great number of spirits are the objects of
  religious worship and each has a specific
  function.
• A persons life, death, happiness, and misfortune
  are dependent on the spirits.

47
Religion and Worldview

• Spirits, which are immortal, must be worshipped
  and well served to prevent misfortune and to
  bring good fortune.
• Animism, the basic principle of shamanism, is a
  belief that all forms of life and things in the
  universe maintain their existence by virtue of
  anima (soul).

48
Religion and Worldview

• The universe is composed of the heavenly world,
  the earthly world, and the underworld and
  everything is interrelated by shamanistic laws of
  cause and effect.
• Therefore, nothing is accidental.
• Shamans serve as intermediaries with the spirit
  world and are believed to have the power to
  prevent, diagnosis and treat illnesses.

49
Religion and Worldview

• They can also bring good luck and predict change
  in a persons fortune/misfortune, and assure
  passage from this world to the next.
• Of the three teachings, Confucianism exerted
  principle influence and provided the foundation
  for the development of Koreas educational,
  social, and political systems.

50
Religion and Worldview

• Confucius ideology serves as a key to
  understanding the Korean culture.
• The introduction of Christianity into Korea by
  missionaries in the late 1800s resulted in a
  period of cultural and social transition.
• The missionaries promoted modern education and
  Western work ethic.

51
Religion and Worldview

• They also encouraged thousands of Koreans who
  converted to Christianity to emigrate to America.
  
• Since that first wave of immigration, Korean
  immigrants are primarily Christian.
• As many as 60-70 of Korean Americans are
  affiliated with Christian churches.

52
Religion and Worldview

• Many Christian churches in Korean communities
  conduct services in the Korean language, as well
  as provide social and emotional support, and
  informational help.
• They also serve as acculturation agents.
• Wherever there are Koreans there are churches, a
  pattern that clearly differentiates Koreans from
  other Asian immigrant groups (E-Y. Yu, 1983).

53
The Family

• As with other Asian cultures, Koreans value the
  extended family, which typically includes three
  generations.
• Traditionally, the father is the head of the
  family and represents the family honor.
• He is responsible for the welfare of the family
  and is typically the sole provider.
• The father or other men in the Korean family do
  not typically help with household chores.

54
The Family

• The Korean mother, who centers her work on the
  home, usually represents the family in dealing
  with the school.
• Elder family member receive a great deal of
  respect from younger family members.
• Parent-child conflicts based on language and
  cultural differences have increased between
  immigrant children and parents.

55
The Family

• About 90 of first-generation Korean parents list
  Korean as their major spoken language.
• They actively encourage their children to learn
  it.
• Despite their efforts, the children are mainly
  English speaking and the differentiated language
  pattern between generations complicates family
  life.

56
The Family

• Even more recent adult Korean immigrants are
  profoundly proud of their natural heritage, rich
  culture, language, and distinctive history of
  nearly 5,000 years.
• They are invested in teaching their children to
  become proud Koreans as well as successful
  Americans.
• Due to economic pressures, the size of the Korean
  family has decreased in the US.

57
The Family

• Children have begun to question the traditional
  role of the father and to challenge his
  authority.
• Typical immigrant family parent-child conflicts
  thus arise from loss of parental authority and
  respect due to basic communication problems,
  acculturation clashes, unrealistic expectations,
  and limited availability of many parents and
  family members who work long hours.

58
Education

• Since 1945, the educational system in South Korea
  has been patterned after the American educational
  system of elementary school, junior high, senior
  high, followed by two years of junior college or
  four years at a university.
• Teachers have a great deal of authority and
  Korean classrooms are orderly.
• Going to the best schools is highly valued.

59
Education

• Korean children are accustomed to working
  extremely hard to obtain high scores on college
  entrance examinations to get into the best
  colleges.
• They are directed from the beginning into
  specific fields such as business, science,
  medicine, or engineering and are not typically
  encouraged to go into fine arts and human
  services.

60
Language

• There is a consensus among linguists that Korean
  is a member of the Altaic family of languages,
  which originated in northern Asia and includes
  the Mongol, Turkic, Finnish, Hungarian, and
  Tungusic (Manchu) languages.
• There are several Korean dialects, but unlike the
  major Chinese dialects, they are mutually
  understandable.

61
Language

• Korean, unlike Chinese, is not a tonal language.
• It consists of a phonetic alphabet, hangul, with
  24 phonetic symbols/characters19 consonants and
  8 vowels--representing different sounds that are
  combined to form words.
• Korean morphemes or words are also predominantly
  polysyllabic in contrast to generally
  monosyllabic Chinese words.

62
Language

• Although approximately 50 of the Korean
  vocabulary is derived from Chinese, the language
  structure is uniquely different.
• The additional historical relationship between
  Korea and Japan has resulted in the two languages
  have strikingly similar grammatical structures.
• The most important one is that they are
  verb-final languages.

63
Language

• For the vast majority of sentences, the verb
  always occurs at the sentence-final position.
• This particular feature has great communicative
  significance as the speaker, while stating the
  subject and object, can observe the listeners
  reaction and then adjust the verb to accommodate
  the listener and preserve the human relationship.

64
Language

• The language itself maximizes interpersonal
  harmony and reinforces traditional values derived
  from the three teachings.
• Confucian values are particularly evident in the
  honorific or polite "system of both the Korean
  and Japanese languages which employ the use of
  different verbs and nouns depending upon the
  social status or rank of the person being
  addressed.

65
Language

• Two persons who meet for the first time are
  expected to use the more distant or formal terms,
  but they will shift to more informal or "equal"
  terms if they become friends.
• Younger people invariably use formal language in
  addressing elders the latter will use "inferior"
  terms in "talking down" to those who are younger.
  

66
Language

• Nonverbal communication is very important.
• Silence is a much more important part of
  communication for the Korean speaker than for the
  English speaker.
• The phonetic systems of English and Korean are
  quite different and cause difficulty for Koreans
  learning to speak English.

67
Language

• Fricatives and affricates do not occur in the
  final position of words and final stops are often
  nasalized when they occur before a nasal sound.
• Because there are no labiodental, interdental, or
  palatal fricatives in Korean, speakers may make
  the following substitutions b/v, p/v, s/sh, s/z,
  t/ch, and dz/th.

68
Language

• Korean does not have some vowel distinctions, so
  the following vowels are often problematic /i/,
  /I/, /u/, //, and /au/.
• Because /r/ and /l/ belong to the same phonetic
  category, they may be used interchangeably.

69
Language

• Because there is no stress in Korean, Korean
  speakers can sound monotonous and have difficulty
  with interrogative intonation, which is typically
  found in English question forms.
• Korean has no gender agreement, no articles, no
  verb inflections for tense and number and no
  relative pronouns.

70
Health Beliefs

• Like the Chinese who do not differentiate between
  psychological and physical problems, the Koreans
  have a folk illness called Hwa-Byung.
• Hwa refers to anger and fire, while Byung
  means sickness.

71
Health Beliefs

• Individuals suffering from repressed or
  suppressed anger of long duration may manifest
  somatic symptoms such as loss of appetite,
  indigestion, epigastric pain, alternating
  diarrhea and constipation, dyspnea, hypertension,
  palpitation, headaches, dizziness, and fatigue.