Bingrui Wang

Pace Class

Video Synopsis

Hi! I am one international student from China. My name is Bingrui Wang, one first

year student of Graduate School of Education, Intercultural Communication program.

My topic of this course-long project is What oppression that the female Chinese

immigrants meet in their careers?. And my focus researching site is Chinatown in

Philadelphia.

1* What form(s) of oppression were you exploring?

I categorize the oppression into two types: first, within the Chinese immigrant

community: patriarchy, women are looked down upon and have to sacrifice for the

family especially for the males business; second, outside the Chinese immigrant

community: cultural conflicts.

* How does it manifest itself in society, or more specifically in the context you

chose to explore it?

There are many forms of manifestation of the oppression. Take the interviewee I focus

on as an example, she moved here from China in 1970s and had to dropped off for

helping her father with the family business in that she had to gave up her dream of

becoming a teacher and having her own family and married. Oppression outside the

community is always combined with culture shock. For example, the local

government used not to understand the traditional way of baking duck and there was a

period of time baked duck was all thrown away and banned from selling, which

brought a great loss to those Chinese restaurants.

* What did you do?

I first designed the interviewing questions and asked for help from one doctoral

student from Sociology Department to narrow down the questions and make the
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Pace Class

questions properly designed for interviewees who I just met for the first time. Then I

interviewed the founder of Philadelphia Overseas Chinese Women Association, the

owner of Joy Tsin Lau and recorded the whole interview and kept field notes. With

the interviewing data, I read several articles on female Chinese immigrants in order to

find the academic support of my research.

* How did you do?

The main method I took in my research was interviewing. To contact a total stranger

and invited her to my interview is quite new to me. In this new experience, I pushed

myself out of my comfortable zone-to email, to make phone call and meet in person

with some one I have never met before.

* What did you learn?

I learned a lot from the interviewing. I got to know that the Chinese immigrants

community in Philadelphia especially the female need political speakers or

representatives who can speak publicly for the community and they also need media

to highlight the communitys profile so that the American society might pay attention

to and know this communitys culture. I also learned that interviewing as one

qualitative research method is proper for me. To interview a stranger is like reading a

book which you are not familiar with the contents. In this process, I found I am quite

interested in the interaction between me and the interviewee and the transition that the

interviewee gradually take off their armor and become more engaged and willing to

share their stories.

* How will you continue to address this form of oppression in the future?

I will continue my research and I might carry on my research outside Chinatown or

even outside Philadelphia. Also I will share this researching experience with my

Chinese international student peers so that to make them be aware what we

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Pace Class

international students could do for the local Chinese immigrant community; so that to

connect the Chinese students within higher education to the local, Chinese immigrant

community.