Differences Between Chinese Culture and American Culture
I have been living in China for twenty years. I was born in JiangSu province, and also grew up in there. My family members were from different parts of China. My mom’s hometown is at the Huabei plain which is the north side of The Yellow River. However, my father grew up in Nanjing, the famous city which locates beside the Yangzi River.
Most of people in southern China are used to have rice as their daily main food resource, but northern China mostly has wheat. But no matter which part of China, meat is not the major food for us. Chinese people always believe that rice, wheat, vegetable, fruit are the best for our health. In contrast, meat would give more troubles to our health, for example, heart attack, high blood pressure, and etc.
But people in America, mostly have meat as their food resource. The most important is that they mostly have beef, chicken, shrimp, turkey, instead of pork and lamb. In restaurants, you can easily find hamburger, steak, ribs with a little rice and a piece of bread. I believe that the food style gives American people much more energy than we have. They are much stronger than us. That is the fact!
I have heard of an interesting story about Yao Ming, who is one of the famous NBA player right now. During his first season in NBA, millions of people are attracted by his height and his cute smile. However, he is not strong enough to play NBA game yet! He ever told the reporter that he likes to have soup that his mom makes for him. Soup could not help him, only steak, cheese, butter could make him stronger and gives him more energy. In order to increase his competition, he has to be used to American food style!
“Custom is the great guide of human life”, wrote Scottish philosopher David Hume. Knowing the customs of a country is, in effect, a guide to understanding the soul of that country and its people. As a foreign language leaner, we should know the culture in our target language’s country. Only in this way, we can really learn the language well. People express their culture through traditions in food, clothing, recreation, and ceremonies; through the education system and institutions of learning, including museums and libraries; and through the arts, encompassing the visual, literary, and performing arts. As a result, we will talk about the differences from some aspects.
First, I will mention the addressing. In China, we will put the family names before our given names, and then in order to express our politeness, we would like to add “sir” or “lady” or their title after the name. On contrast, in America, people would like to put their family names after their given names and first names and they will put Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms, Dr. or
