Pints, body language and other ways to bridge a culture gap

One word I learned before going abroad was "multicultural". It's arguably the single most popular word to pop up in an IELTS (an English proficiency test for overseas-bound Chinese) essay question, and I got it down. I was able to dissect multiculturalism with reference to diversity, universality and assimilation, even in my sleep.

But it wasn't until I got to London that I got a taste of "cultural diversity".

It started at the home of the Korean family who rented me one of their spare rooms. The wife, my landlady, spent her waking hours on the Internet weeping over tragic goodbyes in Korean soap operas.

The 18-year-old British-born Korean daughter, with her fashionable punk look, probably wouldn't know her Asian roots even if she was looking in the mirror. Her mother's traditional Korean cooking didn't do it for her anymore, she made salads and chatted to her friends on the phone while her parents blared out Korean karaoke in the next room.

The real battle went down when the topic of boyfriends came up.

The parents could not stand the idea of their daughter having a "foreigner" boyfriend. That ruled out 75 percent of Londoners. Of the remaining 25 percent, Australians, Spaniards, Mexicans and Indians were out. The scope finally tightened around the local Korean town neighborhood. Neither side would budge and the battle reached a climax when the daughter started screaming obscenities, throwing around chairs and pushing over shelves.

The parents, steeped in the Eastern philosophy of "keeping one's family quarrels to oneself", simmered down. But their neighbors, ignoramuses when it came to Eastern philosophy, called the cops when they heard high-pitched cries and the sound of blunt objects hitting walls.

The cops, also lacking in knowledge of Confucianism, did not let it go when they found out the "family" nature of the dispute. Someone from the city council was called, and everyone sat down to get to the root of the problem, which turned out to be: language barrier.

The daughter only knew basic Korean, while her parents' English remained rudimentary, despite living in London for decades. The daughter had to resolve to "body language" to communicate, and it wasn't quite as violent as it sounds. Perhaps.

Multicultural was also one way to describe my class. The 34 students and four supervisors came from 16 countries and spoke 12 different languages.

When group discussions heated up, we often resorted to attacking one another's English skills: "Do you not speak English?" "It's your English that's the problem" - or even cultural backgrounds: "Maybe that's what you do in China, but it's not going to cut in back in the Netherlands." The leaders of the group discussions were the diplomats, resolving international crises on a daily basis.

But it never gets serious. What was serious was the pub sessions after class. Like true Londoners, we tried to solve our problems over pints and bottles of beer. Not only were we able to make friends again, a few romances even sprang up between us. In my class alone, we were proud to have a Chinese/Spanish couple, a Greek/Korean couple, and a British/Lebanese couple.

(China Daily 12/11/2007 page20)