How to overcome cultural shock and benefit from it? In this talk, Leah Cheung shares her stories of cultural shock as an outsider in Europe. Her experiences show that cultural shocks are unpleasant, yet precious as they highlight cultural diversity and can be turned to an opportunity to promote intercultural understanding with the right attitudes and methods.

Leah Cheung is a young anthropologist who moved from Hong Kong to Germany to pursue her doctoral degree at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology. Having travelled to numerous countries and accumulated rich ethnographic fieldwork experiences, she has developed an acute sense of cultural observation and remarkable cross-cultural interpersonal skills. She firmly believes that instead of avoiding cultural shock, one should embrace it in order to mediate between different cultural and social worlds.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx