Cultural Differences between Chinese and Western Festivals

Differences between Chinese and Western festival cultures

Abstract In the cross-cultural communication between Chinese and Western cultures, instances of culture clash are common, which seriously affects the smooth progress of the interaction, so it is very necessary for us to find out the deep-rooted reasons and take certain measures to cultivate the ability of cross-cultural communication and to avoid culture clash.

Keywords Intercultural Communication, Cultural Differences, Cultural Conflict

With the gradual deepening of China's opening up to the outside world, more and more people and things from the western society are coming into our vision, in this case, the economic and social communication across the border, across the nationalities and across the cultures will be increasing day by day, and this provides us with many chances of contacting and interacting with the westerners, and this is very important to It is a good thing to deepen our understanding of western society, but it is not a simple thing, because we are facing people from unfamiliar cultures and countries, whose ways of thinking, living habits and behavior are very different from ours, and the phenomenon of culture clash will inevitably occur in the process of interaction with them.

1. Cultural conflicts that often occur in Chinese and Western cross-cultural communication

There are many kinds of cultural conflicts in Chinese and Western cross-cultural communication, and it is impossible for us to describe all of them here, but we can only list the more common ones.

1.1 Conflict of privacy

Chinese people have a weak concept of privacy, and believe that the individual belongs to the collective, and together they emphasize unity and love, and care for each other, so Chinese people are often very willing to learn about other people's sweet and sour, and the other side is willing to be frank with each other. Westerners, on the other hand, pay great attention to personal privacy, pay attention to personal space, and are not willing to mention too much about themselves to others, and are even more reluctant to let others intervene. Therefore, the two sides are often in conflict over the issue of privacy, for example, Chinese people often ask each other about their age, marital status, children, occupation, and even income when they meet for the first time, which is a kind of politeness in the eyes of Chinese people, but in the eyes of Westerners, they think that these questions infringe on their privacy.

1.2 Conflicts in the concept of time

The westerners' concept of time and money are linked together, and the idea that time is money is y rooted, so they value time very much, and they tend to make careful arrangements and plans for time in their lives, and develop the good habit of going to appointments on time. In the West, to visit someone, must be notified or agreed in advance, and explain the purpose of the visit, the time and place, by agreement before proceeding. The Chinese, on the other hand, belong to the multi-directional time habits of the country, in the use of time has a great deal of discretion, generally not as strict as the West in accordance with the plan, Westerners often feel uncomfortable with this.

1.3 Conflict in polite language

Chinese people pay attention to modesty, and when they communicate with others, they emphasize "humility and respect for others", which is regarded as a virtue, and it is a kind of polite phenomenon rich in Chinese cultural characteristics. When other people praise us, we will often be self-deprecating to show that we are modest and courteous. Western countries do not have such cultural habits, when they are praised, they will always be very happy to say "Thank you" to show acceptance. Because of the cultural differences between the West and the East, we think that Westerners are overconfident and have no modesty; and when Westerners hear Chinese people dismissing others' praises of them in this way, or when they themselves dismiss their own accomplishments, or even reduce themselves to nothing, they are very surprised and think that the Chinese are dishonest.

1.4 Conflicts in Catering Customs

The Chinese people have a fine tradition of hospitality. On social occasions and at banquets, enthusiastic Chinese people often offer cigarettes and wine to each other. When the Chinese host a banquet, even if the table is full of delicious food, the host is always used to say a few words of politeness, such as "how to bear with me". Sometimes the host will use chopsticks to clip food into the guest's bowl, and use various methods to persuade the guest to eat more food and drink more wine. In western countries, people emphasize respect for personal rights and privacy, so they will not do things that are difficult for others. When you eat, you will never be forced to eat what you want to eat, and they will not use all kinds of ways to persuade the guests to drink, and they will not want you to get drunk.

2. Exploration of the causes of cultural conflict

The causes of cultural conflict between Chinese and Western cultures are many and varied, and the root of the problem is that Chinese and Western cultures have different historical backgrounds, which inevitably bring about differences in people's thoughts and behaviors, and even conflicts.

2.1 Difference in Thinking Patterns

Culture affects people's views and understanding of external things, different countries have different cultures, so there are bound to be differences in thinking patterns, which is especially obvious between the East and West cultures. The thinking mode of western culture focuses on logic and analysis, while the thinking mode of eastern culture shows intuitive wholeness, which is also a characteristic of traditional Chinese culture. Due to the influence of this traditional culture, Chinese people tend to pay special attention to intuition, pay attention to the experience and feeling in the process of cognition, and tend to use this experience and feeling to "judge others by themselves" in the interaction. Compared with the Western thinking mode, the Chinese thinking mode has obvious generalization and ambiguity, over time, will form a kind of stereotyped thinking, can be interpreted as the identification and simplification of the outside world to categorize the perception process. In essence, thinking stereotypes tend to ignore the differences between individual things and exaggerate the cognitive attitudes associated with one other social group, often with emotional overtones and accompanied by fixed tenets. Among all the stereotypes, some of them are correct, while others are wrong, which will directly affect intercultural communication and cause communication errors.

2.2 Behavioral norms vary

The specific meaning of behavioral norms refers to the moral standards and codes of conduct accepted by the society, which is simply a kind of norms telling people what they should do and what they should not do. People of different cultural backgrounds in communication, a phenomenon that often occurs is the use of their own society's behavioral norms to determine the reasonableness of each other's behavior, due to differences in the behavioral norms of the two sides, often resulting in misunderstandings, unpleasant and even worse results. For example, Chinese people pat a child on the head to show friendship, while in Western countries, this is a very disrespectful way to treat a child, and the parents will be very angry about it. Therefore, the ability to correctly identify and apply behavioral norms in cross-cultural communication is an important factor to ensure the smooth progress of cross-cultural communication. The best way to ensure the smooth progress of intercultural communication is to understand the behavioral norms of the other side, especially what behaviors are prohibited, and the best way to do this is to follow the principle of "follow the customs of the country".

2.3 Different Values

People's communicative competence arises in the process of socialization, which is inevitably linked with values. Each culture has its own unique value system, which can help people distinguish between beauty and ugliness, goodness and evil, which is people's philosophy of the world, moral standards and behavioral norms. But it can not be separated from the existence of specific culture, each culture's judgment standard is different, this culture is considered good, another culture may consider bad, but they have their own cultural system within the reasonableness of the existence of the system, can never be understood as a value standard advanced, while the other value standard backward. Take Chinese and Western cultures as an example, in Chinese culture, people respect modesty and courtesy, and seek to settle down as things happen, and do not like to compete and win, and at the same time, the social atmosphere also tends to block the individual who is too prominent, as the saying goes, "If you are higher than the crowd, people will be wrong". In Chinese culture, collective orientation dominates, and the pursuit of personal development is considered a serious form of individualism and is inevitably condemned. In Western culture, individualism is highly prized, and "settling for what one can get" is seen as a lack of enterprising spirit, synonymous with laziness and incompetence, and undesirable to society and individuals. The idea of humanism is rooted in their hearts, and people advocate independent thinking, independent judgment, relying on their own ability to realize their personal interests, and believe that personal interests are supreme.

2.4 Influence of language transfer

People's evaluation and interpretation of phenomena, things and behaviors are based on their own cultures, and this is also true in cross-cultural communication, which often causes communication barriers, the root cause of which lies in the neglect of language transfer. Different cultures will have different rules of language use, and the standard norms of a culture can only be interpreted in its own specific conditions, but not as the norms to describe another culture, otherwise it will inevitably lead to the failure of cross-cultural communication, the deep-seated reason lies in the lack of sensitivity to socio-linguistic differences, and unconsciously carry out linguistic transfer, and the consequences of this will sometimes be very serious, and may even incur huge economic losses. The consequences of this can sometimes be very serious and even lead to great economic losses. China's cashmere products in the international evaluation is quite good, a factory in the north has exported a kind of "double goat" brand high-grade cashmere quilt, the trademark was translated into English Goats, the result of the sale is particularly bad, the reason lies in the English goat in addition to the original meaning of the word "goat", there is also the word "goat", which means "goat", and "goat". In addition to the original meaning of the word "goat" in English, there is also the meaning of "colorful ghost". With such an English trademark, no matter how good the quality of this cashmere quilt, with more comfortable, those beautiful women, housewives will not be willing to put it on the bed.