German 529 assignment：what if I grew up in another country?

      The first time I heard the paper’s topic from my classmate, I was thinking about what if I was born in a western country--say Switzerland or America. Apparently, as a home-grown Chinese, there’s no big differences between Switzerland and the United State to me--they’re both western countries, they share the same European ancestry, they have similar culture, and they’re the only two foreign countries I know better than others.

      Then I had a second thought, according to what we have been studying from eastern Germany’s history, this topic is asking us to talk about the state systems. Yes, I’m from a communist state, the way I think about this question can be very different from the other American students. In our Chinese text book, there’re something we always keep in mind— “ We must integrate the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete realities of China, blaze a path of our own and build a socialism with Chinese characteristics--that is the basic conclusion we have reached after reviewing our long history.” And yes, the communist state I was born in is unique in the world, it’s not the same thing as some western people think about predecessor of Russia—the Soviet. In consideration of my English skills and culture understandings, I think I didn’t get a lot from the book and the additional article precisely, but one thing for sure, I totally understand the writers’ feelings, the feeling of standing between socialism and capitalism.

       If I haven’t been living in both Switzerland and the U.S. for a year, I might feel offended after reading the book after the wall or anything related to this topic. But now, I’m “a middle person”. I think I like capitalism more—I would never say this in China, a country with one-party system. Politics is always so sensitive there, you don’t have free talk which will only get you trouble; what’s more, general Chinese people don’t care about politics or any of their rights because they can do nothing about it. I like capitalism, but I don’t think I can live in a capitalism state for lifelong time. I was born and brought up in socialism and a traditional Chinese family, though I don’t know this country’s system well, I may dislike it, but I was already influenced by it in every respect. I can’t get over it.

       Obviously, the stereotype of a socialism state is relatively poor, falling behind or unstable. But this is not completely true, China is a proof –it’s on a point of transition, it’s changing faster than people thought. But for the rest of my life, I don’t think China can develop into a brand new face and people like me can also belong to a “lost generation”. It’s difficult for us to value an exact view of society; it’s difficult for us at least for me to choose a side of the two society systems. Because we know how great it feels like to live in a capitalism state, but we still hold onto our own root, our own tradition-- it’s who we are and where we are from.

If I were born in the U.S., I think I can get more freedom--we could talk about politics if we want to and we can go for what we think is better for us. We don’t need to study everything so hard like a “study machine” in school, we can learn anything we’re interested in. We study because we want to make a difference not because we have to make a living. “Just can do everything you want”—that’s a very American way to say. And “American dream” is great.

        If I were born in the U.S., I think I will feel happier. But if it happened, I will feel very pity not to know the Chinese culture. China is a great country with so long history, we have our old doctrine, like Confucian Tradition or Taoist Philosophy and so on—they’re very old, but they’re the pith of the Chinese traditional philosophy— These are something a foreigner can hardly understand if they were not born on this land. I do have pains and struggling living in my home country, but I enjoyed and got used to and this pain; it feels great to understand, accept this culture and try to make it better, it’s something only Chinese who combine knowledge of both the east and west can understand.

      The relationship between East and West Germany before is similar to the thing between China mainland and Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the society was still run by capitalism just like British, only in the name of Chinese-Hong Kong.

      In conclusion, I think we shouldn’t judge any state systems, because they were determined by a country’s history and national condition. What a nation or a social person should do is to learn from the history lessons, to learn from the good of outside countries and make their own social systems better and their own countries stronger.