Diversity and Unity
By Yaoyao Shi
Before coming to Villanova, I lived in Shanghai for 18 years. While I was in Shanghai, I had never really thought about what “home culture” meant to me. After having been away from home for more than three years and experiencing different cultures, I gradually started to realize what my home culture meant to me. At first, I could only see differences, but I started to discover similarities between different cultures as well.
For me, the sense of home is brewed tea and peeled and cut fruits. But as my lifestyle has become more fast-paced, coffee became my go-to because it is quick and easy. I cannot remember the last time I properly brewed a pot of tea. When I went back home during Christmas, my family and my friends brewed tea and just chatted for hours. A pot of tea can be brewed for over 10 times. We brewed different types of tea, chatted about the smells and tastes of each kind, and appreciated the beauty of teapots of different designs. Brewed tea brings us together, tea reminds me of home, and more importantly, it reminds me of all those conversations and memories.
Besides tea, when I have guests over, I am always used to preparing a plate of peeled and cut fruits, from cut apples to peeled oranges and sliced mango. One time, my friend asked me why I always did that, and I realized it was my habit because it was what everyone did back home. Preparing a large bowl of cut-up fruits takes up time, and it represents love and hospitality. At home, we are not expressive and we don’t say “I love you” often, but spending time preparing peeled and cut fruits delivers that message. Love is expressed through action.
From brewed tea to cut-up fruits, I understood my home culture through its differences from others, which makes my home culture unique. However, I found out there were similarities as well. Back home, I was raised by the value of pursuing the true, the kind, and the beautiful. I think those values are universal; we should all seek truth, be kind to others, and be able to see the good of the people and nature around us. These values echo with Villanova’s values of veritas, unitas, and caritas. These values are transferable no matter where we are and where we go.
Another example is that the serenity prayer here teaches us to accept what we have been offered and be open to those offerings, and that sometimes we should let go. In China, Taoism has a similar idea. It states that for politicians, the best way to govern is to do nothing against the natural order and let it pass. Buddhism also expresses a similar view that we have to face obstacles and accept them. It stresses the concept of “emptiness,” that all things around us have a temporal nature, and things do not exist in the way that we suppose they do. This concept makes us understand that we should let go sometimes because of the empty nature of struggles we have encountered. Through all these expressions of values, I have seen how different cultures overlap in unity.
Being open minded to different experiences of cultures enables me to have different perspectives and understand my home culture better. If we embrace both differences and similarities and learn from them, we can truly achieve diversity and unity no matter where we are.
