ContentI. Introduction (2)1.1 Research Background (2)1.2 Aims & Objectives (2)1.3 The Scope of this Paper (2)II. The intercultural adaptation theory (3)2.1 The process of adaptation (3)2.2 Intercultural personhood (4)III. Conflicts between Chinese and Western Culture Reflected in Pushing Hands (6)3.1 Plot of Pushing Hands—The independent space in Chinese and Westernfamily (6)3.2 Attitudes towards children (7)3.3 Chinese and Western family’s attitude toward their elders (8)3.4 The emotional expression of Chinese and Western Countries (9)IV. Conclusion (10)V. References (11)I.Introduction1.1Research BackgroundNowadays, the development of mass media provides a lot of opportunities for people to experience different cultures. Among mass media, movie industry makes themost powerful impact on human beings. Film-makers use film as a kind of art form to express their interpretations of life. Therefore, movies not only entertain us, but also influence our views on ourselves, others and the whole world. Movies, as an essential form of mass media, have played an important role in intercultural communication.1.2Aims & ObjectivesResearch on intercultural communication helps us to know how cultures permeate through our daily life, lead our behaviors, form our think patterns and influence our communications with people who have diverse culture backgrounds. Movies are the effective carriers to bring different cultures to audiences. A lot of Chinese directors stand out conspicuously in the world with their unique angle of views and techniques of expression to show Chinese traditional cultures to foreign audiences. Among them, Ang Lee is the most successful intercultural films’ director. With the background of growing up in Tai Wan and being educated in America, Ang Lee has his own cognitions of culture differences and integration. Many years of living experience in America offers him chances to go through the process of intercultural adaptation and to form the intercultural personhood.From his films, the audience could see not only the conflicts and integrations of eastern and western cultures bu t also Ang Lee’s understandings of the humanity. In his early films, eastern and western cultural conflicts are the main topics to discuss. And in his later films, he integrates eastern and western cultures and even is beyond eastern and western culture boundaries to explore and discuss humanity. With long time intercultural life experience, Ang Lee has formed intercultural personhood.1.3The Scope of this PaperThe first part introduces Ang Lee’s biography.Ang Lee’s intercultural backgroundaffords the possibility for him to form intercultural personhood.The second part is the theoretical background. It presents managing conflict and negotiating face theory, the intercultural adaptation theory and theory of intercultural personhood.The third part is a very important one. Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon has gained a big success. Eastern and western culture are integrated perfectly in this film, which shows that Ang Lee is in duality process because he can switch between eastern and western culture. The intercultural adaptation theory is adopted here to explain his mind’s flexibility.II.The intercultural adaptation theoryThe Intercultural adaptation process occurs when individuals travel from one culture to another, both in long and short term encounters. Along with this movement,there seems to be a process of adjustment and familiarization with the new situation.The sojourners seek out specific cultural knowledge, adopt a different style of communication, reserve judgment on unfamiliar cultural practices or withdraw from intercultural interactions (Witter, 1993). Intercultural adaptation is a complex and dynamic process which is an inevitable part of intercultural interactions.2.1 The process of adaptationIf a sojourner wants to stay in the new culture environment and lead a happy life, he/she has to go through the intercultural adaptation. Mansell pointed out that sojourners experience to one degree or another four emotional and affective states in the process of intercultural adaptation: alienation, marginality, acculturation, and duality.Alienation causes a strong desire in sojourners to retain identification with the own culture. The rejection of the host culture leads us to limit our social circle to acquaintances or work contacts and to seek out our own nationals for social enjoyment. Unable to employ the necessary skills for adjustment, we feel out of sync with the host culture and want desperately to return home.The feeling of marginality is like a sandwich, surrounding by two different cultures.Sojourners do not know which side they belong to. They would feel confused about their culture identities. During this period, sojourners can only build up superficial connections with host nationals and can enjoy neither his native culture nor the new host culture.Acculturation occurs when sojourners establish a strong need to adopt the way of living of the host culture. Our identification with the host culture means that the primary culture loses its importance. In this situation we are able to make intimate friends with the host nationals and are able gradually to replace some elements our original culture with elements of the host culture. Y et, moving too quickly to adopt the new culture may pose frustrations and obstacles to our intercultural adaptation.Duality symbolizes that even though sojourners are living in the foreign countries, they have cultivated the ability of simultaneously switching between native culture and host culture. During this period, sojourners are able to gain the achievement of being independent and subjective above primary culture and host culture. Open-mindedness and flexibility are necessary for maintaining this ability and establishing the continuity.2.2 Intercultural personhoodWhen sojourners go into duality period, their flexibility can help them engage in building a remarkable new personhood---intercultural personhood. Cultural identity in its pure form has become more a nostalgic concept than a reality. Intercultural personhood is a way of life in which an individual develops an identity and a definition of self that integrates, rather than separates, humanity. Intercultural personhood projects a kind of human development that is open to growth---a growth beyond the perimeters of one’s own cultura l upbringing (Kim, Y.1996:434). Intercultural personhood is an integration of eastern and western perspectives. With the intercultural personhood,the sojourners are able to conciliate contradictory elements and transform them into complementary, interacting parts of a single whole. The emerging intercultural personhood, then, is a special kind of mindset thatpromises greater fitness in our increasingly intercultural world (Kim, 2001).The current discussion of intercultural personhood owes much to the writings of several prominent thinkers of the 20th century who have explored ideologies with national and cultural interests and that embrace all humanity. One such work is Northrop’s The meeting of East and West (1996), in which an “international culture ideal” was presented as a way to provide intellectual and emotional foundations for what he envisioned as “partial world sovereignty.” Inspiration has also been drawn from the work of Tompson (1973), which explored the idea of “planetary culture,” or how Eastern mysticism was integrated with Western science and rationalism. The primary sources for the current analysis of Eastern and Western cultural traditions also include Nakamura’s Way of Thought of Eastern People (1964), Campbell’s The Power pf Myth(1988), Gulick’s The Eastern and the West (1963), Oliver’s Communication and Culture in Ancient India and China (1971), Capra’s The Tao of Physics (1975), and Hall’s Beyond culture (1976) and The Dance of Life (1983).The emergence of intercultural personhood is a direct function of dramatically increasing intercultural communication municating across cultural identity boundaries is often challenging because it provokes questions about people’s presumed cultural premises and habits, as well as people’s inevitable intergroup posturing and the us-and-them psychological orientation (Kim, 1995). Yet it is precisely such challenges that offer us openings for new cultural learning, self-awareness, and personal growth (Kim, 1988, 1995). The greater the severity of intercultural challenges, the greater the potential for reinvention of an inner self that goes beyond the boundaries of our original cultural conditioning. In this process, our identity is transformed gradually and imperceptibly from an ascribed or assigned identity to an achieved or adopted identity—an emergent intercultural personhood at a higher level of integration.Such an identity transformation takes place in a progression of stages. In each stage,new concepts, attitudes, and behavio rs are incorporated into an individual’s psychological makeup. As previously unknown life patterns are etched into our nervous systems, they become part of our new psyches.The evolution of our identity from cultural to intercultural is far from smooth or easy. Moments of intense stress can reverse the process at any time because individuals may indeed regress toward reidentifying with their origins, having found the alienation and malaise involved in maintaining a new identity too much of a strain. Such strain may take various forms of an identity crisis and cultural marginality. Yet the stress experience also challenges individuals to accommodate new cultural elements and become more capable of making deliberate and appropriate choices about action as situations demand.III. Conflicts between Chinese and W estern Culture Reflected in Pushing Hands In the muti-language background, Ang Lee always tries to meet the requirement of eastern and western audiences. Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, using western narrative mode to tell a Chinese story, shows the audience the Chinese spirit and western’s thinking patterns (Xu, 2001). The film is a roaring success, no matter in the perspective of commercial value or the cultural value. This film is the first Chinese film which is played in the main American theater. Through this film, Chinese Wuxia culture is firstly delivered to western audiences and firstly accepted by western mainstream culture. From his films’ success, we know Ang Lee clearly knows his cultural identity and the humanity. His films attract not only Chinese audiences but also western audiences. From this time forth, Ang Lee has formed intercultural personhood which helps him to touch those sensitive topics.3.1 Plot of Pushing Hands—The independent space in Chinese and Western familyLi Mubai is an accomplished Wudangs’ martial artists. Long ago, his master was murdered by Jade Fox. Mu Bai and Yu Shulien who have developed feelings for each other, but have never acknowledged or acted on them. Mu Bai, intending to lead a new path in life, asks Shu Lien who is on her way to Bei Jing to transport his sword, also referred to as the Green Destiny, as a gift for their friend Sir Te. At Sir Te's estate, Shu Lien meets Jen, the daughter of Governor Yu. Jen, destined for an arranged marriage and yearning for adventure, seems envious of Shu Lien's warrior lifestyle.One evening, a masked thief sneaks into Sir Te's estate and steals the sword. Mu Bai and Shu Lien, with the assistance of Sir Te's servant Master Bo, trace the theft to Governor Yu's compound and learn that Jade Fox has been posing as Jen's governess for many years. A guilt-ridden Jen returns the Green Destiny to Sir Te's estate but is intercepted by Mu Bai. Mu Bai easily defeats her and offers her to become his pupil. Jen angrily rebukes his offer and flees.That night, a desert bandit named Lo breaks into Jen's bedroom and asks her to leave with him. A flashback reveals that in the past, when Governor Yu and his family were traveling in the western deserts, Lo and his bandits had raided Jen's caravan and after a protracted desert chase, kidnapped her. However, Lo and Jen soon fell passionately in love. Jen refuses to leave with him and goes through the arranged wedding. Lo interrupts Jen's wedding procession, begging her to come away with him.3.2 Attitudes towards childrenThe story of this film happens in 18th century. At that time, younger generations marriages are arranged by their parents. There is old saying in China to describe this situation ,“arrange a match by parents’ order and on the matchmaker’s word.” Marriage is not simply meaning love. Parents, especially father, have the final word to choose future husband or wife for their children, which is always the case in collectivist society like China. One crucial factor of choosing the marriage is that the two families have the equal social status. So there is a scene that Shulien visits Jen: Yu: “Thank you for seeing me. I hear your wedding day is near. Y ou must be overwhe lmed by the preparations.”Jen: “I’m hardly doing a thing. The less I think of it the better. My parents are arranging everything. The Gous are a very powerful family. My marrying will be good for my father’s career.”Yu: “Y ou are fortunate to marry into such a noble family.”Jen: “Am I? I wish I were like the heroes in the books I read. Like you and Li Mubai. I guess I’m happy to be marrying. But to be free to live my own life, to choosewhom I love... That is true happiness.”Yu: “Do you think so? Let me tell you a story.”Jen: “About you and Li Mubai?”Yu: “Y es. Did you know I was once engaged to be married?”Jen: “No, really?”Yu: “His name was Meng Sizhao. He was a brother to Li Mubai by oath.One day, while in battle, he was killed by the sword of Li Mubai's enemy. After, Li Mubai and I went through a lot together. Our feelings for each other grew stronger. But how could we dishonor Meng's memory? So the freedoms you talk about, I too desire it. But I have never tasted it.”Jen: “Too bad for Meng, but it's not your fault, or Li Mubai's.”Yu: “I am not an aristocrat, as you are... but I must still respect a woman's duties.”From these conversations, we know that although Shulien and Li Mubai deeply fall in love with each other they could not or d are not get together for Li Mubai’s brotherhood and Shulien’s woman duty for the engagement. In their mind, Meng was killed for saving Li Mubai. As his brother, it would be a loss of face for both himself and Meng to marry Shulien. Now, Jen is forced to marriage a guy who she has never seen before. All these heroes are not free, but they are all eager to get freedom and have the “love” right. Chinese withholding love arouse because of the collectivistic culture.Traditional Chinese people care so much a bout others’ feelings and foresight. Therefore,they would take responsibility for others and live for others but not for themselves.Parents’ consent, social stratification and obligation become burdens to prevent people pursuing their freedom and the basic human right---love.3.3 Chinese and Western family’s attitude toward their eldersThe integration of eastern and western culture is shown not only in the film story but in the technique of expression. Ang lee uses western narrative model, especially H ollywood’s narrative skill to tell the audience a Chinese Wuxia story. Most of Ang Lee’s film is using the typical three-act narrative mode, which includes three scenes.The first scene: the main heroes come into the big screen and finish the premise part of the story; the second scene: the heroes encounter crisis and struggle with it; the third scene: crisis has been solved. This three-act narrative mode dominates the mainstream Hollywood films’ structure (Ding, 2001). Each scene could show its imposing dramatic power. Using this narrative model could establish tight structure so that it could attract audiences’ attention.In Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, three-act narrative model has been used proficiently. The first scene is introducing the following contents: Li Mubai and Yu Shulien have strong feelings for each other; Li sends his sword Green Destiny to Sir Te so as to give up the life in Jiang Hu; Li’s master is poisoned by Fox; Jen’s parents arrange a marriage for her but she desires for Jiang Hu free life. The second scene is showing that because of the torrid love between Jen and Lo, Jen flees away from her wedding and steels the Green Destiny to adventure Jiang Hu; Li Mubai and Yu Shulientry to help and redirect Jen. The third scene is that Li kills Fox but is poisoned by Fox and died for saving Jen’s life; Jen ends up jumping to the river because of deeply remorseful.The three-act narrative model can be easily accepted by western audiences and Chinese Wuxia is always a mysterious topic for western audiences. Therefore, the three-act narrative model plus Chinese Wuxia make Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon a big success in the whole world.3.4 The emotional expression of Chinese and Western CountriesCrouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon is a big winner in Academy Award. This film has produced favorable comments from western audiences. Although Ang Lee uses western narrative mode to tell this story, his aim is to let the western audiences to accept and appreciate traditional Chinese culture. Therefore, Lee’s cultural orientation is his native culture---Chinese culture.Ang Lee integrates eastern and western culture to let western people can understand and follow this Chinese Wuxia story. From this film, western audiences are able to go into eastern circumstance.Chinese natural landscape, huge desert area,view of life of Taoism and typical Chinese reserved love style are described in this film. Those essential elements in traditional Chinese culture are depicted vividly. Besides that, fight setting similar to China opera and the explanation of Xia are the attractive labels to meet the curiosity of the audience with different culture background. In this way, Ang Lee effectively promotes Chinese culture and carries on a successful intercultural communication.IV.ConclusionWe live in a time of cultural integration. As the tightly knit communication wed has brought all cultures closer than ever before, rigid adherence to the culture of our youth is no longer feasible. Culture identity in its pure form has become more a nostalgic concept than a reality. In this circumstance, Y oung Yun Kim proposed a new concept of intercultural personhood---a way of life in which an individual develops an identity and a definition of self that integrates, rather than separates, humanity.Intercultural personhood projects a kind of human development that is open to growth, a growth beyond the perimeters of one’s own cultural upbringing.he emergence of intercultural personhood is a direct function of dramatically increasing intercultural communication activities, which is from personal experiences of diverse people and events through direct encounters to observations via various communication media such as books, television programs and movies. Among them, movies play an important role in intercultural communication. With the development of film industry, people receive different culture customs from films everyday. Therefore, in this dissertation, Ang Lee’s films are chosen as research subjects. From the m, I hope to find the formation of Ang Lee’s intercultural personhood.Ang Lee, as a successful intercultural director, has long-time personal experienceof being immersed in eastern and western cultures. His films always arouse audiences to think about culture differences, culture integration and humanity. In this dissertation, it selects Ang Lee’s five representative film works, Pushing Hand, Wedding Banquet, Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution, to catch a glimpse of th e formation of Ang Lee’s interculturalpersonhood.In Pushing Hand and Wedding Banquet, Ang Lee emphasizes on showing the eastern and western culture conflicts. At that time, he was finding a way to solve this problem. Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon is a transition film. In that film, eastern and western cultures are perfectly integrated. From this point, Ang Lee has the flexibility to switch from eastern to western cultural perspectives. In his later two films,he focuses on exploring humanity, which is beyond culture boundaries. Thus, I can conclude that he has formed intercultural personhood, which is taking root in upbringing culture and absorbing the positive parts of western culture so as to promote the positive development of humanity.With the development of globalization, the world citizens all need to cultivate intercultural personhood. With this personality, people’s life experiences could extend beyond their native cultural world. And with this personality there would be fewer conflicts between native culture and new host culture. It is new culture identity for them,which could integrate diverse cultural elements into a single personality. With intercultural personhood, they would add the new views of nature, of evolution and of progress. In order to form intercultural personhood, people should keep keen relevance to the everyday realities, should have the courage to embrace new concepts and ideology and should have enough life experience of interfacing with other cultures.To sum up, forming intercultural personhood is important for every world citizen.With this personality, people can accept and follow other cultures as well as promote his or her native culture.V.References1. Biagi, Shirly. Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media Belmont [M]. CA:Wadsworth,1999.2. Chen, G.M.& Starosta, W.J. Foundations of Intercultural Communication[M]. Boston, MA:Allyn and Bacon, 1998.3. Claire, Kramash. Language and Culture [M]. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2000.4. Dodd, C.H. Dynamics of Intercultural Communication [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2006.5. Dou, W.C. Fundamentals of Intercultural Communication [M]. Beijing: University of International Business and Economics Press, 2007.6. Furham, A. & Bocher, S. Culture Shock [M]. London, England: Methuen, 1986.7. David, S. N. & Bryan W. V an Norden. The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in Chinese Philosophy [M]. Open Court, 1996.8. Gudykunst, W.B. & Kim, Y.Y. Communicating With Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication [M]. New Y ork: McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1997.9. Gudykunst, W.B. & Ting-Toomy, S. Culture and Interpersonal Communication [M]. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988.10. Gudykunst, W.B. Cross-cultural and Intercultural Communication [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2007.。
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