Iron & Silk: Intercultural Friendship



Iron & Silk: Intercultural Friendship

Introduction

Friendship cannot be limited with boundaries and it cannot exist without sharing. Intercultural friendship involves more complex pattern due to differences in the customs, beliefs, and values. Intercultural friendship involves sharing of values, beliefs, practices, and ideas beyond any social, culture, or geographical boundaries. Intercultural friendship results in powerful influence of one culture on the other as discussed in Mark Salzman's “Iron & Silk”, the adoptions in intercultural friendship results in both advantages and disadvantages. This results in diversity and advancement in the cultural and traditional practices. These differences create influence and power in the intercultural relation and it attracts people from different cultures. An intercultural friendship is not a new idea, but it resulted in learning of civilization and increasing social contacts. This results due to adoption of culture and tradition of a country, which have powerful influence on the other. This clearly provides that power and influence play a major role in deciding the flow of intercultural sharing and adoptions in intercultural practices. With the advancement of media and globalization, these intercultural practices spread across borders, all over the world. In an intercultural friendship, there is always imbalanced cultiural sharing due to differnce in powers, which is based on change in geographical settings, adopting lifestyle and practice of dominant culture, and influence of media of dominant society.

Discussion

Change in geographical settings due to migrations, travel, invasion, exploration, inter-cultural trade, and various other activities, results in bringing different nations and civilizations closer. These interactions resulted in developing friendly relationships between different cultures, races, and nations. When these people live together and had close relations with each other, it results in sharing and adoption of one culture by another culture. Observation of this flow of sharing and cultural adaptations clearly reveals that this adoption of sharing or transferring cultural practices follows a pattern. This pattern reveals that there is a continuous flow of values, beliefs, and practices from dominant and powerful nation to the other. During his visit to China, Salzman reflects that how the Chinese culture have strong influence on him, which developed at the early age by watching movie in which he liked Kung fu style. It is not only the case of Salzman, but all over the world, Chinese kung fu movies and their martial arts style were appreciated. There are various benefits associated with these social and cultural ...