Individual Medium Post #2

When looking at the culture of diaspora I find that you often see an expression of culture specific to that diaspora. It’s neither entirely the culture of their new environment, nor exactly the same as the culture of their homeland. It’s not bastardized at all, just different. For many diaspora, their unique culture acts as an artery to a central point of ethnic identity. I find it helpful to think of diaspora as a lamp, and the culture of origin as the wall socket (always have to inject some kind of metaphor into these responses). Electricity flows through both components, guided by a cable, and at the lightbulb the electricity changes forms. It maintains its identity as a form of energy, but the way through which this energy enters the world has changed. A recent video by the media publication Vox provides a fantastic example for this. It talks about the unique style of architecture used within Chinatowns around the world. When Chinese immigrants in San Francisco rebuilt Chinatown following the San Francisco Earthquake, they employed a style of architecture seen only in Chinese temples. Instead of confining this style to religious temples, they used it to build the entirety of Chinatown. It had lots of greens, bright reds, and yellows, swooping pagoda roofs, and lots of Chinese symbolism. It was unapologetically Chinese, and for a small amount of time entirely unique to San Francisco. Eventually it spread to other Chinatowns throughout the US, and then the world, becoming an extremely recognizable architectural style of Chinese diaspora. This may not be an explicit form of protest, but in my mind this represents a refusal to assimilate to mainstream “American” (white, protestant, western European) culture.