I went to Stuyvesant high school, where at least 70% of the students are Asian. This was nothing new to me, after all, my family is Chinese and I grew up with the culture. I met friends easily because we shared similar experiences growing up. However, once I made the baseball team, I was one of five Asians on the team. We carried a team of about twenty-five players, so that 70% Asian population dropped to 20%.
There was a lot that was different between me and the other players, most of them being white. At first it was things like what we did during the weekends and how we acted, but the culture shock came when we went to Florida for a week for spring training.
Living together for a week, there were many things that my roommates did that I wasn’t accustomed to. Of course I didn’t say anything because the differences were subtle, but it made me realize things that I do in my culture that other cultures do not do. Even when we walked through the door of the condominium, I spotted the first difference. My shoes came off at the door, and theirs did not.
The foods we wanted to buy at the Publix differed too with me trying to eat a little healthier than hot pockets, fried foods and frozen chicken strips. In Chinese culture, these foods are considered “yeet-hay,” literally meaning hot air. The belief is that too much of this type of food will make you “too hot” and sick with a sore throat and cough. You have to balance this out by eating food with cooling qualities like fruits and vegetables. So my friends eating nothing but junk confused me. These cultural differences shocked me, but did not have an effect on our play on the field; we played well and as a team no matter what race we were.
Baseball is always considered America’s past time and is as American as hot dogs and apple pie. Growing up playing baseball, I never thought that an Asian playing baseball was so rare (that was also a culture realization). But I learned and grew with my team, and I’m glad that I got the chance to live with them for a week and appreciate our cultural differences.
