The differences are everywhere. They affect people’s ways of thinking and their views of the world. Even in everyday life, the cultural differences show up from the moment the eyes are opened to the minute the dreams are invited.

In the following, I’ll give some typical example of the differences.

Section 1: Greeting

Greeting is the first step to form a culture, because people begin to communicate with others. The individuals become a community.

How do we Chinese greet each other? Informally, if we 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.

However, in the western countries, the above questions are just questions, not greeting at all. They may think you’re inviting them to dinner if you ask about their meals. Usually, they’ll just give each other a smile or greet with a “Hi.”. They’ll 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 will do here.

Section 2: Expressing gratitude

Think of the situations below. Your mother is busy in the kitchen. She suddenly asks you to fetch a bowl for her. You do so. What’ll your mother’s response be? Probably she’ll just continue doing the cooking. After a while, the dinner is ready. Your mother hands you your bowl of rice. What’s your response? Probably just begin to eat.

That’s what I want to say. 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. It’s such an unpopular response that if you say it, the counterpart will think you are treating him as a stranger, otherwise 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.

However, as an interesting phenomenon, it’s a custom to say "thank you" in Japan. No matter in family or among friends, Japanese chronically use it all the day. This is probably the aberrance of the culture.

Section 3 Dining

The ways people eat, that is, the table manner, really distinguish a lot. The reason for this is probably because of the different dining tools and menus.

Easterners use chopsticks, or sometimes even grasp rice straightly with hands 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. That’s the usual way we eat. We 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 knives 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.

Section 4 Symbolizing

Symbolization is how people imagine or regard something. It actually reflects the way people think. Here I’ll only discuss some symbolization that frequently appears in daily life.

First is about the colors. We often give each color some meanings, because we feel differently when facing different colors. So people always have preference when choosing colors of clothes, decorations, etc. In the APEC summit held in Shanghai several years ago, in the last day, the presidents from all over the world wore the traditional Chinese Dang suits and took a photo together. The colors of the suits were chosen by themselves freely. However, it’s quite interesting to find that most Easterners chose red while most of the westerners preferred blue. To explain this, it’s easy to realize that what red means is almost opposite in the East and the West. Red means luck, 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.

Another interesting discovery is about the dragons. In the East, dragons are imagined as something like snake and are flowing in the sky for most of the time. The dragon is said to have the face of the horse, the horns of the deer, the ears of the ox, the body of the snake, the claws of the eagle and squama of the fish. 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 can 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.