Chinese Traditional Culture

Traditional Chinese culture is beginning to capture the attention of the world. This is true even as popular culture that has traditionally been considered Western begins to spread throughout China. Kung Fu, especially, has had a great impact on the millions of people who first learned about China through it. From that, they may come to China and learn about other aspects of this culture, such as traditional operas like the Beijing and Sichuan ones. Asian nations have long known about the greatness of ancient Chinese culture. Their own cultures are a mix of native ones and those Chinese characteristics. Korea and Japan long ago adopted ideas such as Confucianism is something that continues today even as it is challenged by Pop Culture. This strength comes from the ideas given in the Four Books of Confucianism (The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects of Confucius, and The Book of Mencius). These books built upon the ideas of an even more ancient period codified in the Five Classics. From them, the West learns such things as Fengshui and other concepts that are uniquely Chinese. China has taken steps to further this spread of its culture by establishing Chinese Cultural Centers in such places as the United States and Europe.

Cultural Differences

Meeting people from another culture can be difficult. Different cultures emphasize the importance of relationship building to a greater or lesser degree. For example, business in some countries is not possible until there is a relationship of trust. Even with people at work, it is necessary to spend a lot of time in "small talk", usually over a glass of tea, before they do any job.

In many European countries—like the UK or France—people find it easier to build up a lasting working relationship at restaurants or cafes rather than at the office.
Even within Northern Europe, cultural differences can cause serious problems. Certainly, English and German cultures share similar value; however, Germans prefer to get down to business more quickly. We think that they are rude. In fact, this is just because one culture starts discussions and makes decision more quickly. 

Western Food and Culture

The culture of food and dining in the West is a little different from that in China. The proper western dinner at a fine restaurant is one of manners, focusing on conversation. You are expected to have knowledge of table manners such as what folk or knife to use as these are essential in western dining. The meal would consist of several courses including a soup or salad, an appetizer, the main dish, and a dessert. The atmosphere will be filled with light music that would only serve as background as people converse with each other. The decorations are usually sparse and are only meant to highlight the atmosphere that is being created by the music. This type of dining is different from the dining experience in most restaurants in China. However, with the increase in internationalism, more restaurants are opening which reflect the more western dining style. The Chinese people, now more affluent and knowledgeable about international customs, are beginning to join in this dining experience. This is not to say that people have given up the deep richness in culture that Chinese food represents. It only means that more choices and tastes are becoming available to population. This represents a significant improvement as it will change the perception that the height of western dining is fast food. As cultural communication expands, knowledge of western food will improve.

 

Mr.  Christmas

'Christmas comes but once a year' is a familiar phrase, and indeed for many people the 25th of December is the highlight of the calendar.

But for one British man once a year is not enough. Andy Park, who is better known by his nickname Mr. Christmas, has celebrated Christmas every single day for the last 14 years.

The 44-year-old electrician claims to have eaten a full roast dinner every day for the last decade and a half, munching his way through over 5,000 turkeys, 117,000 Brussels sprouts, and around 30,000 roast potatoes in the process.

He also sends himself a Christmas card every day and looks forward to unwrapping a present he has bought himself each evening, while watching the Queen's Speech.

Mr. Park estimates his festive fetish costs him £150 (1,570 yuan) a week. This year, however, the divorcee says he is feeling the pinch due to the global financial crisis, and is scaling back his celebrations.

His Christmas habit is putting a strain on more than just his wallet. Mr. Park was previously warned by his doctor that his Christmas addiction could kill him. His daily over-indulgence has caused his weight to skyrocket to 19 stone (121 kg).

So how did Andy Park's obsession with Christmas begin?

"I'll never forget the day it started," said Mr. Park, "the sun was shining, but I was just feeling fed up and bored, so I went home and put the decorations up. Suddenly I was happy. I thought, this is fun. So I did it again the next day, and the day after that."

And Mr. Park has not been content to keep his Christmas cheer to himself. In 2005 he released a song, aptly titled It's Christmas Every Day, but has yet to find chart success.

Patterns of culture

Custom has not commonly been regarded as a subject of great moment. The inner workings of our won brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behaviour at its most commonplace. As a matter of fact, it is the other way around. Traditional custom, taken the world over, is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions, no matter how aberrant. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief, and the very great varieties it may manifest.
No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probing he cannot go behind these stereotypes; his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs. John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual, as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family. When one seriously studies the social orders that have had the opportunity to develop autonomously, the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation. The life history handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth, the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities. Every child that is born into his group will share them with him, and no child born into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandth part. There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible.
The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and some of these propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place, any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration. In all the less controversial fields, like the study of cacti or termites or the mature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.
Anthropology was by definition impossible, as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds. It was necessary first to arrive at that degree of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief against our neighbour's superstition. It was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same premises, let us say the supernatural, must be considered together, our own among the rest.