"Culture blogger" Jerry Guo: I need more time to experience and understand the differences in values between China and the United States

China News Service Shanghai, February 1 Title: "Cultural blogger" Guo Jerry: I need more time to experience and understand the differences in values between China and the United States

China News Service reporter Li Jiajia

The latest issue published by Jerry Guo, an American Jew and a well-known video blogger, stays on the discussion of "using the silt of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to make a Mexican bread kiln". In China, Jerry Guo has become popular because he is good at shooting videos about the differences between China and the United States, and now, on the occasion of the traditional Chinese New Year, he has also chosen to go to the countryside to spend an authentic "Chinese New Year".

"I know the Chinese New Year, in the United States, every year there will be celebrations during the Spring Festival, especially in Chinatown, where there will be activities and performances with Chinese cultural colors such as light car parades, dragon and lion dances, and paper cannons." Recently, Guo Jerry said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from China News Agency that during the Spring Festival, not only Chinese people living in the United States, but also people of other ethnic groups will gather in Chinatown to celebrate, and many American shopping malls will also post "Happy New Year" slogans and display lights everywhere.

The same is the New Year, whether it is a foreign Christmas or China's Spring Festival is a family reunion day, so there will be a lot of similar small New Year customs, "for example, everyone will gather at home to eat, and will not choose the outside restaurant, the United States Christmas will prepare Christmas gifts for children, China's elders will also give children 'pressure money'", in Guo Jerry's view, the biggest difference is probably the number of days of holiday, "China's Spring Festival has 7 days of holiday, Christmas is only 1 day, happy is too short."

You must not have thought that American children especially love the Chinese Spring Festival, "because at Christmas, the streets are not so lively, but the Spring Festival is very lively." In New York, the Spring Festival is a legal holiday, the school will be a holiday, many American children will go to Chinatown to see the dragon dance and lion dance, you can also set off firecrackers, of course, paper firecrackers, there is no Martian kind", Guo Jerry said that if he let him come to be China's Spring Festival promotion ambassador, then he will definitely start from the perspective of children, introduce them to the Fun activities during the Spring Festival, such as paper cutting, learning calligraphy, pasting the Spring Festival, and decorating the home with red-hot fire. In addition, he will introduce some simple methods of traditional Chinese cuisine, so that parents and children can participate together.

In college, Guo Jierui came to Taiwan as an exchange student for a few months to study, and since then, he has fallen in love with Chinese culture and Chinese cuisine, claiming to be more spicy than Sichuanese, and often commenting on food in videos as "spicy is not spicy" as the standard.

Recalling how he first embarked on the road of video bloggers, Guo Jierui said that about 5 years ago, he found that many chinese networks were not very accurate about the introduction of the United States, "for example, many people think that Americans read for free and medical treatment is free, but this is not the case." Reading is free because people pay high taxes, and medical treatment is free because they buy expensive health insurance," Guo Jerry said, saying that the original intention of shooting the video was to let more Chinese see a real America and show the facts to the public with the lens.

Gradually, from the introduction of the United States, Jerry Guo began to pay attention to the differences between China and the United States, whether it is cultural or economic life, "My topics are generally from the audience and fans' questions, everyone is curious, we go to investigate what, we go to shoot, everything is audience-centric."

During the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in 2020, Guo Jerry recorded the production of "Overseas Anti-epidemic Diary" in the form of a short video, not only interviewing on the streets of the United States, visiting American hospitals, but also discussing the causes of the outbreak in the United States, each of which has millions of views. He is famous for his hard-core explanation of the current situation in the United States under the epidemic, but behind it "I am under great pressure and very confused", "the epidemic, anti-epidemic, vaccines, masks, these are originally scientific problems, but I don't know how to evolve into political issues in the United States." The report on the fight against the epidemic is obviously about science, but others seem to have become a matter of value position", during that time, the only way for Guo Jerry to relieve the pressure was to insist on only telling the facts, "because only facts can stand the test".

Many people on the Internet are used to calling him "Treasure Boy", some people call him "food blogger", more people love to call him "foreign Internet celebrity", but Guo Jerry's positioning of himself has always been "cultural blogger", "because this (the identity of cultural bloggers) can let everyone see the colorful world, human history has developed for tens of thousands of years, people in each country have many differences, we are not only different nationalities, different appearances, different languages, the most important thing is that our way of thinking and values are also different." We should not impose our own culture and values on others, nor should we use our own way of thinking to speculate on the ideas of others, only by understanding and respecting the culture of others can people communicate better and coexist in peace. ”

If there's anything he's curious about About China, it used to be food and scenery, and now it's the way China's economy and society operate and how people get along. "In China, everyone is particularly concerned about the protection of basic life, eating well, living well, and being in good health are the basic needs of everyone, but many people in the United States do not think so, and the values of many people in the United States think that the 'right not to wear a mask' is more important than 'getting sick', which is a very interesting thing, and I need more time to experience and understand the difference in values." (End)

Source: China News Network