On The Factors Influencing Tibetan College Students' Identity Of Tibetan And Han Culture

As a mainstream culture, Han culture influences the culture of other nationalities. With the increase of economic and cultural exchanges between the Tibetan areas and the inland, Tibetan traditional culture is being influenced by Han culture. In the process of culture transition and culture adaptation, Tibetan college students have more contact with and get more influence of Han culture, so they change correspondingly in the cultural identity. Their identity of their own nationality and that of Han culture will have more influence on the future cultural development of their own nationality and on the cultural exchange between Tibetan and Han nationality. Many foreign scholars have investigated the cultural identity of minorities. Because there exists great cultural difference between different nationalities, the cultural identity of different nationalities has different characteristics. At present, in China, most researches on this subject are macroscopically theoretical, and no related empirical study has been found. The present study tries to understand the present situation of Tibetan college students?cultural identity and find out the crucial factors influencing their cultural identity. The present research, through the questionnaire, interview and documental review, investigates the present situation of Tibetan college students?cultural identity. The results indicate that: 1. Tibetan college students?learning of Chinese and Han culture will not lower their identifying the culture of their own nationality, but to a certain degree will help them realize the value of their own culture. So they can get to the higher level of ethnic identity development phase earlier. 2. The more chances the Tibetan college students have to learn Han culture, the more often they will choose separation to be their identity strategy. On the contrary, those who do not have so many chances will more likely choose assimilation to be their identity strategy; 3. The factors, such as socio-cultural background, the instant situation (including society, school, class cultural background), parents?educational degree and language, etc. significantly influence the situation of Tibetan college students?cultural identity. Among these factors, father抯 educational degree, time of learning Chinese, and the language used in class have the most significant influence on the identity of Tibetan and Han culture; 4. Among the Tibetan college students?factors of personality, there are only a few factors that influence Tibetan college students?cultural identity. And the factors that influence Tibetan college students?identity of Han and Tibetan culture are not alike. The factors significantly influencing Tibetan cultural identity are daring, world, independency and stability. The factors significantly influencing Han cultural identity are independency, determination and experimentation. Only independency is the same factor which has the most influence on the two kinds of identity; 5. In Tibetan college students?identity of Han culture, emotion is a comparatively special dimension. The factors which influence Tibetan college students?Han cultural emotion are special and the way of influencing is not the same as Han cultural identity, which indicate that each minority individual has complicated emotion towards the mainstream culture. This research needs the help of other related studies to provide convincing expl...