As far as I am concerned, I think this is the most significant cultural difference between China and America. With the influence of Confucianism for thousands years, Chinese people are more implicit to express their emotions. While in America, people advocate the new thoughts which encourage people to use effusive ways or words to express their feelings freely.
The examples are everywhere in daily life. In China, even people are affectionate to their friends and relatives, they always show their affection in public less than other peoples. For instance, the whole family and some friends are going to the railway station or the airport to see a person off, no matter whether he or she goes to another country to study or to another province for work. This should be a very moving situation when the time comes for saying goodbye to their best friend or family, but there are nobody will hug or kiss even they do not want that person leave them. Friends may shake hands with the person who is leaving and his or her parents may hold his or her hand for a long time with tears in their eyes, but with no other physical contact. In fact hugging and kissing are seldom seen in public in China, no matter what the occasion it is, people prefer to express their emotions privately. While if this situation has happened in America, hugs and kisses are essential to express their love and dismay for this person’s leaving.
The other example is about the performance when people get some gift from others. In China, normally Chinese people think that if you open the gift as soon as you have received it, you might embarrass the person who gives the gift and you might be thought greedy. Therefore, Chinese people prefer to open the gifts after the visitors have left. Apart from that, many Chinese people wouldn’t wrapping the gifts when they send them, and if they wrap them, they would tell the receivers what is inside, and the receiver will thank the sender and put the gift aside without unwrapping them until the person who gives the gift have left. However, when America people have received gifts from other western people, they prefer to open the gifts in front of the person who gives the gift to them, as soon as they received the gift and express their thanks. There is no good or bad between two different attitude, but it is a typical cultural difference of their custom.
Race is the other obvious difference between China and America. China has 56 nationalities and at least 90 percent are the Han nationality, besides, all the nationalities are yellow race. Besides, when it comes to spiritual culture, Confucianism is the main spiritual culture in ancient China and exist for thousands of years, it always reigns the dominant position to influence Chinese people’s thoughts and behaviors. For nowadays, China is also accept other faiths but most people in China are believe in atheism. Therefore, it can be said that China is a country with single species and single culture.
Although America only have hundreds of years history, it is an immigration country. Its population structure is very complex and it has many different races of people, and almost every race of people has a variety of nationalities in here. Apart from that, all kinds of culture reflect on some religion, Catholicism, Christianism, and Judaism are the major religions and all of them have a variety of subsystem. Therefore, America is the melting pot of different religions and cultures, and it with a strong flavor of era.
The way students are educated in China and America are also quite different. Comparing the elementary education between China and America, a general view is that Chinese element education mainly aims to build the foundation of further education but all these education levels are with more book study and less thought. While America’s aims to build an education to train the creativity with less book study and more thought. As the result, the Chinese student study more book knowledge but pay little attention to the practice, and cannot handle the practical problems. American students are raised to pay more attention to their self-confidence, independence, spirit of supporting oneself, therefore, they are more confident when they face some practical problems.
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