Influence of my Ethnic features on my Personality

Surname 1 Influence of my Ethnic features on my Personality I am a young man aged 19 years and Chinese in origin. My religion is Buddhism which is also the religion of all my family members. My ancestral origin which constitutes my customs, traditions, and even my religion has had a great impact on my development. This is particularly because my family has emphasized on the need to follow our cultural heritage to the letter even though we do not live in China. As a result, most of these factors have influenced the person I am today.

The first practice in my culture that has had an impact on my heritage is the naming practice. My culture is very strict on matters of naming where surnames or family names are very important to every individual with a Chinese origin (Ch’en 24). As a custom, every Chinese has three names where the surname must come first, followed by the generation name and the given name comes last. As a customary rule, the family or the surname must come from one of the 438 words that are found in the PoChia-Hsing which is a sacred Chinese poem. The generation name is taken from a poem of 30 characters which each family has adopted. These cultural inclinations have made me as an individual get interested in studying several aspects of my family history. This has enabled me to develop an identity.

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Surname 2 My religion foundation of Buddhism has had its share of influence on my life as well. Firstly, I consider myself as pragmatic especially in my approach to life and religion. This governs my actions against any action that would offend the gods or the known ways of nature. I also offer respect and rituals offerings in order to maintain order and also bring good luck to me and my family. Being in a country where my religion is viewed as the religious minority has challenged me to seek more understanding about my religion. What this search has borne is more understanding about the true meaning of spiritual freedom and true happiness. In addition, some beliefs which are core in my religion have acted as a guide to my behavior and character. For instance the current trend where the only focus most individuals have is to seek pleasure is one aspect that I tend to disagree with. This is because my religion has taught me that pursuit of pleasure can only lead to unquenchable thirst without avoiding some aspects of nature like aging, sickness and death. This has given true meaning of life where I focus on more important things in life in order to attain final liberation which is referred to as Nibbana.

Some of the issues that my belief considers important include abstaining from wrong and corrupt means of livelihood, killing, stealing and sexual misconduct among others. It has also taught me the need to hold other people’s religions with a high esteem. However, I am not a religious fanatic but I consider my religion an important part of my life as it instructs me on how to go on different areas of my life and also guide my conduct. As a result I can attribute a lot of character formation to my religion due the beliefs that have contributed to this.

My physical characteristic is another factor that has had an influence on my personality.

Firstly, just like most of other individuals with a Chinese origin, I have black hair and dark eyes.

Unlike individuals with European decent, I have a relatively yellow skin, less body and facial hair, flatter faces, smaller nose, wider cheekbone and my front teeth tend to have a slightly

Surname 3 scooped out shape (Hays para 8). This makes me have an outstanding identity. This factor has been both an advantage and a disadvantage. This is because it has given me an identity as I do not need to explain to every individual about my ethnic origin. On the other hand, this has made some individuals discriminate me due to my origin as they can easily identify that I am a Chinese. This is particularly because some people hold rough stereotypes about my ethnic origin.

For instance, some people have a tendency of grouping people by skin color. In addition, most individuals fear that people with Chinese origin have higher rates of hypertension. Racial categories based on skin color is not meant to be a distinctive feature that propagates discrimination, however, some individuals tend to base their differentiation on such factors making it an object of discrimination. The other view is about some diseases where it has been discovered that many individuals who have a Chinese origin get acne at a later stage than the Westerners.

Ethnicity is a critical variable in how people with diabetes are perceived and treated by their family and how their family, in turn, is viewed by their community at large. Being a Chinese, in my culture there are some cultural factors that have mediated ways in which symptoms are identified and interpreted, appropriate modes of expression of pain and discomfort, whether a particular chronic condition is highly stigmatized or accepted, and whether the dependency that accompanies chronic illness is disvalued or considered part of the normal cycle of life. Ethnicity also influences ways in which my family interact with health professionals and considerations that practitioners must give for our care in order to make it more effective.

Construction of gender roles within my family tradition has influenced several issues regarding gender treatment. At one point it has been viewed as an agent of oppression especially

Surname 4 for women in my community. For instance, housework is basically regarded as women’s work irrespective of whether the woman is working at home or away from home. On the other hand, men activities are considered to be those that involve outside duties. With industrialization and democratization women have been given more opportunities to play diverse roles in public life, but the basic structure of a gender division of labor is observable in public life but this has not given an equal status with their male counterparts. This is because in most working environment women are paid less than their male counterparts. For instance, studies have shown that women's average earnings were 63.4 percent of those of men in the same jobs. In June 1999, there was one woman among seventeen cabinet members and no woman vice minister. Women occupied 2.3 percent of the provincial and local assembly seats in 1999. Women as professional leaders in religious life are limited in numbers in both Christian churches and Buddhist temples (Tsai 81).

The exception to this pattern is seen in shamanism in which women dominate as priestesses. In conclusion, women in my ethnic community still face lower status than the men making most parents prefer begetting boy children as opposed to only girl children.

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Surname 6 Works Cited Ch’en, Kenneth. Buddhism in China: A historical survey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Hays, Jeffrey. Chinese people, Asian physical characteristics, genetics and DNA. 2011. Web. 30 January 2012. http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=118&catid=4&subcatid=18.

Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. China and the overseas Chinese in the United States, 186- 1911.

Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1983.