1、Culture Differences,What is culture?The culture differences between China and the Western countries.Why we should know the culture difference?,The definition of culture from wikipedia,Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning “to cultivate“) is a term that has different meanings.
2、,The definition of culture from wikipedia,However, the word “culture“ is most commonly used in three basic senses: 1) Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture . 2) An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for
3、 symbolic thought and social learning . 3) The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group .,In the following, Ill give some typical examples of the differences.,GreetingExpressing gratitudeDiningSymbolizing,Greeting,Informally, if w
4、e meet an friend in the street, we are used to say: “Hi, have you had your meal?” or “Where are you going?”. When it is the case of two gentlemen, they tend to shake hands. In the western countries, the above questions are just questions, not greeting at all. They may think youre inviting them to di
5、nner if you ask about their meals. Usually, theyll just give each other a smile or greet with a “Hi.”. Theyll shake hands only in some formal situations. By the way, Westerners can leave a party or meeting halls without a formal conge, nor should they shake hands with every attendee like most of us
6、will do here.,Expressing gratitude,In Chinese families, we rarely say “Thank you” to other family members for receiving help or service. Neither will we say so between good friends. Its such an unpopular response that if you say it, the counterpart will think you are treating him as a stranger, othe
7、rwise you are lacking of intimacy. But in the West, “thank you“ is one of the most frequently used sentences. Teachers will thank a student for answering a question; husbands will thank his wife for making a coffee.,Dining,Easterners use chopsticks, or sometimes even grasp rice straightly with hands
8、 as Indians do. The thin and long chopsticks cannot be used to cut food, so we usually use our teeth to act as knives. We hold our food, meat or vegetable, with the chopsticks, send them to the mouths, bite off a part of it and remain the other part on the chopsticks. Thats the usual way we eat. We
9、are also used to hold up our bowls when having rice or soup. Japanese hold bowls to have miso soup without spoons. But all these habits are considered rude in the Western countries.The etiquette in the West requests that when eating, bowls and plates cannot leave the tables. Food should be cut by kn
10、ives to fit into the mouths. Of course your mouth cannot touch the plates or bowls. So the regular process is like this. You cut your steak on the plate with fork and knife, send the meat cube into the mouth with fork and nothing will be returned back but the fork alone.,Symbolizing,Red means luck,
11、fortune here. We Chinese often use this color to decorate in festivals, such as red lanterns, red Chinese nodes, red bangers. But red stands for blood, revolutions in the West. So the presidents avoided wearing this unlucky color.In the East, dragons are imagined as something like snake and are flow
12、ing in the sky for most of the time. We regard dragon as God and say that we Chinese are the offspring of the dragon. The God of Dragons of the four seas can charge the rainfalls, so we sometimes also call them the God of the water or rain. But in the West, people think dragons as dinosaurs, which c
13、an stand on the ground with feet and fly with huge wings. They lay eggs just like dinosaurs. The dragons of the West have the ability to erupt fire, instead of water. The fire can destroy everything so the dragons are not welcomed at all. They even become the symbol of the Devil.,Promote communicationAvoid making embarrassing mistakeA kind of respectEnrich our knowledgeMore(I dont know),Thanks !,
