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(11/13/13 10:06pm)
It had already been a particularly grating night when I trudged my way to the Wa. I had already set off the fire alarm (twice) burning popcorn in Witherspoon, and the U-Store employees had shut the doors on me as I wildly gesticulated toward my phone, which read 3:59 a.m. Just when I thought my luck couldn’t get any worse, I realized I had looped around the Wa four times and was trapped in the metal maze that was the Arts and Transit project.
(11/03/13 8:50pm)
He said that he’d been the best Latin reciter in his Ghanaian village before he took to the streets in Maryland.
(10/09/13 8:32pm)
One of the most terrifying things I’ve had to cope with growing up was being alone. As an only child growing up with a working parent, I always kept to myself at home, picking up various hobbies to keep myself busy until my mother came home. I taught myself how to knit and wood carve, even venturing into bison herding in Southern Illinois one summer, to keep myself grounded in the process of moving schools half a dozen times before my teens. The last two years of high school were particularly trying, as I took care of my grandparents single-handedly while my mother worked abroad. People ask me what motivated me to get a license in Korean cooking and joke about how bored I must’ve been to try; in reality, I had been learning to cook for my grandparents, who only ate Korean food. When friends mocked me about always going home during the holidays, I never told them it was because I was my grandfather’s legal guardian and had no choice but to return.
(09/26/13 8:20pm)
I had just gotten back from the Street, clothes crusted in heaven-knows-what, when my mother calls me from Korea at 4 a.m. It took me a moment to figure out exactly what she was saying; it was a mixture of hyperventilation and uncharacteristic squealing, and my interpretation was not particularly enhanced by my own state of consciousness. The fact that my mother never gets excited and looks like she’s calling the Secret Service even when she’s ordering pizza made this a particularly bizarre experience. Had I not known any better, I would’ve guessed she’d won the lottery; in reality, she’d just seen this year’s U.S. News and World Report list of top U.S. colleges.
(09/18/13 9:00pm)
If there’s one thing studying in Beijing this summer has taught me, if not the fact that toilet paper is a luxury and that walking with your caged bird is apparently a thing, it’s that Asian Tiger nations have a distinctly unique way of reconciling traditional with modern, the East with the West. It seems difficult to imagine Seoul or Singapore having ever been a place where escalators and vending machines don’t give you advice, a place where a patch of grass isn’t fenced off. Yet this futuristic glamor belies a deep-rooted tension between tradition and modernization that has reconciled itself into a “Nuevo” East Asia.It’s a phenomenon that could exist only in the most particular of circumstances. Bound by long-standing traditions, yet fervently desiring to be deemed as “modern,” East Asia has come to adopt means to reconcile these drastically different worlds and brand itself as a rival and counterpart to the Western Hemisphere. However, this isn’t just a whirlwind westernization that East Asia is helplessly following, but a deliberate process of fusing local traditions into a Western standard of modernity, an unprecedented “nuevo” culture.One of the most popular manifestations of this can be found in plastic surgery. Especially with the release of the Miss Korea candidate photos this past summer, in which over a dozen contestants appeared to look identical, plastic surgery has risen to the forefront of East Asian stereotypes. After all, there is no denying that plastic surgery has come to dominate a sizable portion of South Korea’s economy, and that thousands of women from neighboring countries now visit for the sole purpose of going under the knife. Yet what is rarely understood is the rationale behind such a phenomenon. In East Asian nations where having western features has become ideal, plastic surgery is merely one more means to modernization. Even former Korean President Roh was asked to undergo double eyelid surgery to be seen as more “modern” during diplomatic talks. It seems no wonder that the Chinese word for having a modern appearance, "yangqi," can also mean Western.Tiger parenting can also be seen as a manifestation of Nuevo East Asia. Few nations have experienced the rapid economic development of Asian Tiger nations, and even fewer its Malthusian competition. Tiger parenting has come to represent a means of training the youth to rival the West amid this competition, pushing children harder in their studies to train them to become the best. I once asked my mother why she had been so hard on me when I was a child, why the only cartoons I had known were my Reader Rabbit CDs and the only games I had played were my Lion King typing games. She replied it was simply to help me survive. What with Confucianism putting so much emphasis on education, East Asia has adapted to fuse oriental tradition to reach a Western standard of modernity.This is significant to Princeton on several levels, most especially in how we view our international student body and cultural studies as a whole. It’s all too easy and much too common to typecast cultures by single characteristics, developed or developing, traditional or modern. However, this is neither an accurate nor comprehensive categorization that does justice to any nation or us as scholars. What it does do is limit our capacity to explore the spectrum of cultures and understand how they interact, making us overlook the hybrid cultures and nuances that make our globalized world unique. This open mentality is something I’ve had to work on myself this past summer and something I sincerely hope to see more of this year on campus.Ye Eun Charlotte Chun is a sophomore from Seoul, South Korea.She can be reached at ychun@princeton.edu.
(09/12/13 8:41pm)
If there’s anything Princeton has more of than free food, tiger puns and black bear warnings, it’s the opportunity for students to study abroad and immerse ourselves in a different culture. Scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed recently has become something akin to a Lonely Planet experience, from Rome to Beijing, Rio to Nairobi. It seems hard to imagine how anyone could possibly blame Princeton for being an Orange Bubble, yet it occurs all too often. Maybe it’s because the academics here makes it difficult to actively keep up with the outside world, maybe it’s just geography, but judging from my Facebook newsfeed alone, Princeton students are anything but oblivious to the world.
(07/31/13 7:15pm)
Congratulations, Class of 2017! You’ve made the best decision of your life: joining the Orange Bubble. You've traveled the world, made ground-breaking discoveries and are ready to conquerPrinceton. Nothing could possibly stop you, except perhaps that fiend and terror to all—sleep.
(03/26/13 11:00pm)
If there’s one thing I’m asked more frequently than where I’m from, it’s whether or not I’m going to stay in the United States after I graduate. Granted, my questionably fluctuating accent and ethnically ambiguous looks confuse even the keenest observer. If my limited Korean and even sparser knowledge of K-pop isn’t confusing enough, I’ve even had people on campus ask me if I was from “East or West Korea.” However, despite my seemingly superficial ties to South Korea, never once have I conceived of working in the United States post-graduation.
(02/26/13 11:00pm)
When New York Times columnist David Brooks accused Princetonians of being “organization kids,” he claimed that our easy acceptance of authority and eagerness to please had fostered a passive environment in which the greater community protested more on behalf of campus issues than the students themselves. Condescendingly, Brooks called this a generational phenomenon in which “the new elite doesn’t protest,” too distant from the alienation and rebellion characterizing the yesteryears.