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> If anything it's a pathological development among certain first-generation Asian immigrants I was thinking this throughout your comment. I've also observe

by eric-hu 13y ago

> If anything it's a pathological development among certain first-generation Asian immigrants I was thinking this throughout your comment. I've also observed that it's a trait much stronger among first generation families or those closer to them (second generation instead of fifth, for instance). I grew up as the children of Chinese immigrants and spent a year in college studying abroad in Beijing. I expected to see a city of 20 million high-achievers. I was in for quite a surprise. The people I met there were more like the non-Asians I knew in America than the Asians I knew. I have no idea what specifically about immigration causes this behavior, or if it's just correlation. It could simply be the case that people prone to extreme "life optimization" are more okay with the emotional upheaval of moving to another country.

wes-exp 13y ago
A lot of immigrants to the US manage to immigrate specifically because they are high achievers. As such, it makes sense that immigrants as a statistical group would not really be representative of their home country.
bitwize 13y ago
1) Asian immigrants tend to self-select for high achievement. 2) Asians historically were at a cultural disadvantage compared to other Westerners in America. Americans were at least passingly familiar with other European cultures, and had quite a bit of common ground with them; much less so with Asians so there was a mutual unintelligibility problem. So to compensate, Asian parents tended to pressure their kids to excel in something universal that Americans would consider valuable -- hence the tendency of Asians to gravitate towards the hard sciences, math, and music (oddly enough, Western classical music at that). Amy Tan wrote about this, remarking how unusual and against the odds it was that she became a writer instead of the scientist or classical violinist her mother wanted her to be.

by eric-hu 13y ago

wes-exp 13y ago

A lot of immigrants to the US manage to immigrate specifically because they are high achievers. As such, it makes sense that immigrants as a statistical group would not really be representative of their home country.

bitwize 13y ago

1) Asian immigrants tend to self-select for high achievement. 2) Asians historically were at a cultural disadvantage compared to other Westerners in America. Americans were at least passingly familiar with other European cultures, and had quite a bit of common ground with them; much less so with Asians so there was a mutual unintelligibility problem. So to compensate, Asian parents tended to pressure their kids to excel in something universal that Americans would consider valuable -- hence the tendency of Asians to gravitate towards the hard sciences, math, and music (oddly enough, Western classical music at that). Amy Tan wrote about this, remarking how unusual and against the odds it was that she became a writer instead of the scientist or classical violinist her mother wanted her to be.