Cross-cultural Adaptation of Chinese Students in America Beyond Pandemic

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the re-emerged culture shock and psychological adjustment of Chinese students during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The investigation shows that Chinese overseas students, who had acculturated to the American culture, have just experienced a more severe cultural shock than ever before. Reasons for this are various, in which the hatred and anti-Chinese sentiment and the misleading information contribute a lot. What is encouraging is that some students’ culture shock has been alleviated slightly with the coming end of the pandemic. This study attempts to offer a perspective to critically reflect on the changes of the students’ cultural adaptation resulting from the pandemic, as well as to reflect on how we can rethink, and accordingly, take measures to restore these students’ confidence and help them have better contact with people from other cultures in this fast-changing complex world.

Keywords

Culture shock / Cross-cultural adaptation / COVID-19 pandemic / Coronavirus / Overseas students

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Funding

Educational Teaching Reform and Research Grant Program of Jilin University(2022JGY089)