Magic doesn't work in this new place.
Native poetry has lost rhythm and rhyme,
Familiar food is labeled a curiosity,
And hostile stares replace familial love.
To be an immigrant
Is to be solitary in the midst of millions.

Immigrants travel from native lands for many reasons, but in general, they all involve expectations for a better life. For this, they will risk uncertainty, exploitation, discrimination, hostility, poverty, and sometimes even separation from family. Those who survive develop an inner fortitude and determination that sees them through their suffering.

The preservation of spirituality is as much a concern as anything else. Spirituality, except in the highest stages, has a definite culture context. (There is spirituality that takes its power from the land, culture, and time – that is why most types of magic will not work outside their native lands; there is spirituality that one carries within oneself, and there is rare spirituality which transcends all time and place.)

Immigrants try either to maintain their native beliefs or to adopt the beliefs of their host country. The first option is difficult: They are in a culture incompatible with their native beliefs and will sustain their spirituality only if it was already strongly established. In the second case, where immigrants adopt the host country's spirituality, they must learn an entirely new system. In either case, immigrants must cope with the problems of conflict between two cultures until they reach a spiritual stage where cultural references become meaningless.

immigrant
365 Tao
daily meditations
Deng Ming-Dao (author)
ISBN 0-06-250223-9

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Metropolitan Museum of Art   
description
Han Gan, a leading horse painter of the Tang dynasty (618–907), was known for portraying not only the physical likeness of a horse but also its spirit. This painting, the most famous work attributed to the artist, is a portrait of Night-Shining White, a favorite charger of the emperor Xuanzong (712–756). The fiery-tempered steed, with its burning eye, flaring nostrils, and dancing hooves, epitomizes Chinese myths about imported "celestial steeds" that "sweat blood" and were really dragons in disguise. This sensitive, precise drawing, reinforced by delicate ink shading, is an example of "baihua" (white painting) a term used in Tang texts on painting to describe monochrome painting with ink shading, as opposed to full color painting. The later term "baimiao" (white drawing) denotes line drawing without shading, as seen in the paintings of Li Gonglin (ca. 1041–1106). The numerous seals and inscriptions added to the painting and its borders by later owners and experts are a distinctive feature of Chinese collecting and connoisseurship. While collectors are sometimes overzealous in showing their appreciation in this manner, the addition of seals and comments by later viewers served to record a work's transmission and offer vivid testimony of an artwork's continuing impact on later generations.