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1、Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more.-author-datedifferent-cultures阅读different-cultures阅读 What leads to the cultural difference? The cultures of the East and the West really distinguish each other a lot. This is because the culture sy

2、stems are two separate systems on the whole. The origin of the eastern cultures is mainly from two countries: China and India. Both of the two cultures are gestated by rivers. In China, the mother river is the Yellow River while the Indian one is the Hindu River. These two cultures were developed fo

3、r several thousand years and formed their own styles. Then in Dang Dynasty of China, the Chinese culture gradually went overseas to Japan, mixed into the Japanese society and shaped the Japanese culture nowadays. Though a bit different from the Chinese one, it belongs to the same system. When the tw

4、o mother rivers gave birth to the eastern culture, another famous culture was brought up on the Mesopotamian Plain - the Mesopotamian Civilization. This civilization later on developed into the cultures of the Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. And these two are well-known as the base of the European

5、culture. Like the Chinese culture, the European one also crossed waters. When the colonists of England settled down in America, their culture went with them over the Atlantic Ocean. So the American culture doesnt distinguish from the European one a lot. At the same time, the difference of the langua

6、ge systems adds to the cultural differences. In the East, most languages belong to the pictographic language (see the picture below) while the Western languages are mostly based on the Latin system, for example, the one Im using to write this paper. Other factors like human race difference counts as

7、 well. But whats more, due to the far distance and the steep areas between the East and West, the two cultures seldom communicate until recent centuries. So they grew up totally in their own ways with almost no interference from the other. Pictographic charactersPart II How differently do people beh

8、ave in daily life? The differences are everywhere. They affect peoples 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, Ill give some typical example of t

9、he differences.Section 1: GreetingGreeting 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

10、 “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 youre inviting them to dinner if you ask about their meals. Usually, theyll just give each other a s

11、mile 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 will do here.Section 2: Expressing gratitudeThink of the situations below.

12、Your mother is busy in the kitchen. She suddenly asks you to fetch a bowl for her. You do so. Whatll your mothers response be? Probably shell just continue doing the cooking. After a while, the dinner is ready. Your mother hands you your bowl of rice. Whats your response? Probably just begin to eat.

13、Thats 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. Its such an unpopular response that if you say it, the counterpart will think you are treating him as a stranger, otherwise you

14、 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, its a custom to say thank you in Japan. No matter in famil

15、y or among friends, Japanese chronically use it all the day. This is probably the aberrance of the culture.Section 3 DiningThe 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 chopstic

16、ks, 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 p

17、art on the chopsticks. Thats 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 pl

18、ates 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

19、 back but the fork alone. Section 4 SymbolizingSymbolization is how people imagine or regard something. It actually reflects the way people think. Here Ill only discuss some symbolization that frequently appears in daily life.First is about the colors. We often give each color some meanings, because

20、 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 pho

21、to together. The colors of the suits were chosen by themselves freely. However, its quite interesting to find that most Easterners chose red while most of the westerners preferred blue. To explain this, its easy to realize that what red means is almost opposite in the East and the West. Red means lu

22、ck, 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, d

23、ragons 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 Chin

24、ese 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

25、 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. Part III What can we do to treat the culture gap? Now we have seen that there exists such a huge gap

26、 between eastern culture and western one. Then what should we do to face this gap in the gradually globalizing world? Firstly, we cannot deny any of the cultures. Every nation has its own characteristics and its mainly through its culture that we first begin to know the nation and its characteristic

27、s. So we cannot say that this culture or custom is right and that is wrong. Equal respect should be attached to every culture in the world, even to those that are not in existence any more. Next, we should get to learn how to coordinate the different cultures. We say the world is becoming smaller an

28、d smaller. More foreigners come and go everyday. When it is in the same country, the same city, the same neighborhood, the cultural collision is expected to be more serious. So we should try to avoid this happening. One important thing is to get some basic knowledge about the other cultures so as no

29、t to misunderstand some actions or habits of the foreigners. When the above two is done, we can start to communicate. I mean we can take in some strong points from the foreign cultures. Though there doesnt exist correctness in terms of culture, it does have the terms of more advanced or more suitabl

30、e for the world nowadays. Of course, we cannot throw away our own culture and accept another one totally. Every culture is a treasure to the history of the Earth, so we should only pick out those we lack to perfect our own. Different cultures add the most colorful element to the world of 21st century. The cultural gap should not be the obstacle to the civilization of human being. It ought to be the motivation of our going farther.-