Bingrui wang

Pace Class

Pace Project Paper

Outline of the Paper:

This paper will adapt to a narrative style to display the writers research

including the research purpose, the research implications, the whole researching

process etc. This paper will consist of five sessions: the first session, the reason for

the writer having chosen the project topic; the second session, the influences that

results from the research as one experiential learning; the third session, my findings in

this research and the connections between my findings and the existed academic

studies; the forth session, the specific oppression I recognized in this research; the

fifth session, my future exploration. Finally, this paper is not just a report of my

research findings but also is one personal review of the whole learning and

researching process of this course-long project.

Session : Initial Reason for Choosing the Topic

My topic for this course-long project is What difficulty that the female Chinese

immigrants have in their careers?. This topic started from my aspiration that I want

to learn about the life of the immigrant Chinese women in the US. As a matter of fact,

this aspiration had arisen before I came to America, exactly speaking, it was produced

from one of my college courses. When I was a senior in college, we had this elective

course called American Literature. One chapter in our text book introduced the

American immigrants literature in which Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club was talked

about. I also happened to watch the adapted film which has the same name as the

book. At that time, I had been attracted and amazed by the descriptions of the women

s life in the book. Although the theme for this book is about the relations between

mothers and daughters, I still could recognize the differences that brought by living in
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a different culture circle (the American culture). After watching the adapted film, I

become kind of obsessed with learning these women who have quite the same faces,

speak the same languages (of course, their English is much better than mine). I am

amazed by the fact that in the other half hemisphere on the earth, there exist people

who share the same roots with my culture and languages but they actually have total

different life from yours.

The curiosity became the first driving force that make me want to know more

about Chinese immigrants, especially women. With what I learned from Pace class, I

became more concerned on these immigrant Chinese women s life. For me this

course-long project became one perfect opportunity to learn about these women who

used to be in books.

Session : The Project as One Learning Experience

I would call this course-long project as experiential learning. By experiential

learning, I mean through personal experiences or exploring, I learned a lot of

knowledge that could hardly get from books.

My logic for this research is nothing complicated: Step1 Deciding project topic;

Step 2 Deciding researching method: Interviewing; Step 3 Designing interviewing

questions; Step 4 Looking for interviewees and collecting data; Step 5 Analyzing the

data and making comparasion with other academic studies; Step 5 Sorting out the

analyses and comparasion to reach to the findings and implications. Looking back to

the whole process, I could find, in each step, that there was new knowledge drawn

from my experiences.

Step 1: Deciding the Project Topic

In this step, I started thinking my topic from my desire to get to know the female
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Chinese immigrants life. However, life is too broad to explore within just one

course-long project and also I was supposed to find one specific oppression in my

project. After some through considerations, I decided to focus on Chinatown as my

researching site which seems to be most familiar to me as one Chinese immigrant

community. Since the researching site is Chinatown, I thought to look into these

Chinese women s working conditions could be one eligible topic. Looking back on

this step, I think the most challenging thing is to narrow the researching topic. I was

so curious to get to know all aspects of the female Chinese immigrants life that it was

hard to me to decide one specific topic. In conclusion, from this step I got to know

that to decide the researching topic or researching questions is the very first

significant step which might decide whether the research itself will be feasible or not.

Although we might at first have some general directions of the research topics and

might feel reluctantly to delete some ideas , we still need to narrow down the topic

over and over again for the sake of the later execution of the research.

Step 2: Deciding Researching Method

After I decided my topic, there were several researching methods that I could

take to do my research for instance, questionnaire, investigating related studies etc.

However, I personally hoped this researching could be one chance for me to talk in

person with those female Chinese immigrants and learned their real life stories

through conversations. Then the idea of interviewing people came into my mind.

Although I had worries that I had to get out of my comfortable zone to talk with

strangers, I still decided to adapt interview as my research because it is the most

proper one to achieve my goals. Also this new action-interviewing strangers would

also become a chance for myself to advance.

Step 3: Designing the Interview Questions

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When I reached this step, I was so lucky to receive help from one doctoral

student of Sociology Department. We first corresponded with each other via emails

and I wrote my first version of interview questions in those emails. My first version

interview questions directly and explicitly asked my interviewees what oppression

they had in their work. By talking with my helper then, I got to know that these

explicit questions were questionable because my interviewees would be strangers to

me and these explicit questions might not be good intro when having conversation

with people I meet for the first time. Also, the word oppression to some degree is

not conversational and might be hard for people who are not from academia to define

thus the interviewees might be blocked to respond if these direct and explicit

questions asked. After a few alteration on the questions, I finally kept five questions

with the first three as friendly into questions and the left two ones that lead the

interviewees to reflect the possible oppression in their life without using the word

oppression. In this step, I learned that when designing interviewing questions I not

only need to consider the research topic but also need to consider that the possible

responds pumping up if those questions are asked. If these questions make people feel

hard to answer, it will be better choice to redesign all questions. In one word, the

possible responds and the expected responds from the interviewees should also be one

important factor I need to consider.

Step 4: Looking for Interviewees and Collecting Data

This step was the main and most important part in my research and also was the

most challenging step for me. I had to collect my courage to contact the chargers of

some related organizations and some significant individuals for my interviews.

Reflecting on this step, I discovered my new potential. Before I started contacting the

related people and organizations, I expected I would be too nervous and timid to make
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all the phone calls and talk to strangers. However, it turned out to me that I enjoyed

myself a lot in this process because this process allowed me to explore and to discover

and to communicate with people. All the exploration, the discovery and the

communications amazed me so much that I even did not have any moment to worry

about losing face or appearing clumsy. This self-discovery is one of the most

significant results in my research and I believe I will adapt interviewing as my

frequently-used method in future personal explorations or academic researches.

Step 5: Analyzing the Data

In this step, I looked into the information I collected from my interviews and

tried to make my own implications first and then I compared my data and implications

with other related studies. The reason for me to refer to the academic studies as the

final step is that this research is more like one personal exploration in that I hoped to

execute my research freely and did not want the other related studies confine my

thoughts. My findings arose from this course-long research would probably nothing

new to those related studies and my findings and implications I made might also

probably not completed at all. Despite these flaws in my research results, I believe all

the shortcoming would be payed off by this distinct learning process and the

dubious researching results themselves also counted as reference experiences for

my future researched.

Session : My Findings in This Research

In this session, I will present my findings and make connections to some other

related studies.

According to the information I collected from my interviews, the female Chinese

immigrants who work in Chinatown have difficulty that is not from having less
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proficiency of English or situating in another different culture (the American culture)

but is from within the Chinese immigrant community. They have difficulty brought by

their female identities which are opposed to the powerful male groups. This finding is

consistent with the study carried by Shi from 2003 to 2004 in San Francisco Bay

Area. In her study, she made brief introductions of her participants working

conditions and is quite the same with what I found in Philadelphia Chinatown in my

research. Shi also pointed out the Chinese immigrant women usually work for ethnic

Chinese companies or subcontracted companies and their working conditions are

usually not satisfying and in order to survive they have to put up with exploitation

from the company owners and their husbands. All these are in line with my findings in

my research.

Although it is traditionally reasonable for these Chinese immigrant women to be

obedient to the mans authority within the community, they still struggle to advocate

to protect themselves and help each other. By interviewing the founder of

Philadelphia Overseas Chinese Women Association, I got to know that this

association is aimed at unifying all the Chinese women and offering help to all the

association members. Ms. Chen ( the founder of the association) told me during the

interview, that they help their sisters to deal with their relations with their families

especially their husbands; they also help women to deal with the difficulty in work.

The association is one good demonstration that Chinese immigrant women at

least those participants in my research are no longer passively tolerated the

suppression and they wont take it any more. They begin to automatically decide what

their life should be like and how they can make their ideal life out of their

expectations.

Through the interviewing with Ms. Chen, I also got to know that what the
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Chinese immigrant women need is the political representatives and speaks and the

attentions from the mass media. On one hand, they need the political representative to

speak for their needs, on the other hand, they need mass media to highlight their

profile so that people from other culture circle can get to know their life and their

culture.

Session : The Specific Oppression

The specific oppression I can recognize from my research is from two types: the

first, within the Chinese immigrant community, patriarchy; the second, out of the

Chinese immigrant community, the culture conflicts.

Within the Chinese immigrant community, women s social status is lower than

men s and women have to consider their husbands first in their family and the male

members in one family like the father , the husband and the adult son maintain

absolute authority over the female members. In workplace, it is the same that the male

supervisor has absolute control and authority over female workers. Chinese women

are usually looked upon and regarded as passive bodies who just need to take orders

by their male counterparts. Although things are getting better recent years, the

traditional notions that Chinese women are inferior to the men die hard. Therefore, the

oppression within Chinese immigrant community is still mainly from Patriarchy.

Outside the Chinese immigrant community, the oppression is usually combined

with the cultural conflicts. In this situation, the Chinese women s gender is blurred by

their identity as Asian people in other words, oppression arises mainly from conflicts

among cultures rather than genders. Because of the lack of inter-communications

between people from other communities and the Chinese immigrant community,

conflicts including the misunderstanding of specific Chinese conventions become

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common and this brings difficulty to all the industries and workers in Chinatown no

matter what the gender is.

Session : My Future Exploration

From this research, I have one glimpse on the oppression the Chinese immigrant

women in Chinatown have and their needs they have in order to combat the

oppression.

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

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.

My future exploration will definitely not confined to this topic and I might

explore other cross-culture issues. With this research as the starting point of my

journey of self-discovery, I believe in my future explorations I might have many

unexpected aspects in me.

References

Anesi, J. (2013). Hiring women is a 'recipe for failure'? Gender inequality ignorance
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summed up in one anonymous letter. Air conditioning, heating & refrigeration news,

250, 22

England, P. (2005). Gender inequality in labor market: the role of motherhood and

segregation. Social Politics , 12, 264-288

Fernandez, F. & M., Mors, M. L. (2008). Competing for jobs: Labor queues and

gender sorting in the hiring process. Social Science Research, 37, 1061-80

Shi, Y. (2008). Chinese Immigrant Women Workers: Everyday forms of resistance and

coagulated politics. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 5(4), 363-382

The Joy Luck Club [videorecording] / Hollywood Pictures presents an Oliver Stone

production ; a film by Wayne Wang ; screenplay by Amy Tan & Ronald Bass ;

produced by Wayne Wang, Amy Tan, Ronald Bass, Patrick Markey ; directed by

Wayne Wang.