Quote:
Originally Posted by Centropolis
Midwesterners are obsessed with Canada and my rural parents, of the storied flyover, have been to MANY more major cities in Canada than myself. In my opinion its not really a big thing in the U.S. that Americans wouldnt know, with exception, and that goes for all of the Commonwealth at this point.
Now in China, it might be.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Chemist
Chinese people definitely know there's lots of Chinese in Canada. When I tell people here that I'm Canadian, they almost invariably start talking about how many Chinese people there are in Canada and how they know somebody who's living in Canada.
|
Actually, I'm surprised that it's actually often Asians from Asia that are surprisingly unaware of their own diasporas. Makes sense thinking about it though because Asian countries are just so much more populous than their diasporas (e.g. billions of Chinese or Indians vs. few millions of Chinese Americans or Canadians). By contrast, say Ireland has its diaspora much more populous than the old country (many more Irish Americans that the few million in the old country). A Chinese person can live in his or her own country thinking or assuming the only fellow Chinese people they'll see are also Chinese from China. Not Chinese from London, or Chinese from Manila, or Vancouver or Orange County etc. Those might be off their radar, unless they are cosmopolitan in outlook.
Never been to China, but I've noticed that the most recently arrived mainland Chinese immigrants often don't realize that previous Chinese immigrants have a prior history in the west (e.g. Chinatowns dating to the 1800s) long before themselves. I've heard Asian-Americans and Asian-Canadians travel to Asia and apparently sometimes that confuses the locals (e.g. they don't understand why someone who looks Asian doesn't speak their language or identifies as "Canadian" or "American" and sometimes even assume that Canada is overwhelmingly white).
By contrast, say Africans from Africa, when they arrive in the west, seem more aware that there is an African diaspora in the west already that preceded them, such as African Americans, Afro-Latinos etc.