Comparison and Analysis of the Difference between Chinese and Western Customs

Abstract

    The differences between English and Chinese customs are believed to be one of the fundamental reasons for errors or mistakes committed by learners of English. Since custom and culture coexist in an inextricable relationship, custom, as an essential part of culture, is naturally embodied by its corresponding culture. Therefore, a contrastive analysis is conducted between English and Chinese in the aspects of religion, social values and modes of thought to make out the differences between English and Chinese customs. The analysis reveals that native English speakers tend to think analytically while native Chinese prefer to think synthetically. And it is held in this thesis that the striking difference is traceable to the different religions, social values and modes of thought between westerners and Chinese.

Thesis statement:

Custom and culture are closely related and interdependent. On the one hand, custom is the most important organic component of culture. Every custom is, to a certain degree, peculiar to a language community. It embodies the thinking pattern and way of life of a certain culture. On the other hand, custom is influenced and shaped by culture. It is so deeply ingrained in culture that the specific custom of a nation must be determined by their cultural contexts. The culture of Chinese and western customs originates from the cultural exploration and transmission of millions of Chinese and western people. It is an important part of the traditional Chinese and western culture and the necessary part of the world culture.  The national and the international background nowadays make it possible to disseminate the Chinese and western customs to the world. A case in point is the China-France Culture Year.

There won’t be anything new when talking about the subject of the differences between Chinese and western customs, which has already been touched on by numerous scholars. However, it is a subject that cannot be neglected whenever it comes to the study of eastern and western customs. So this paper tries to probe into the problem with the exploration of the definition of “custom” and “culture” at the beginning.

0. Introduction

0.1 Background of the paper:

With the fast development of science and technology, as well as the tendency of the globalization, the world is becoming smaller, and people from different countries and with different cultural background begin to communicate much more frequently. At the same time, the chances for us to get in touch with foreigners are much more than that of before. In the cross-cultural communication, the failures caused by the lack of awareness to the differences between Chinese and western customs also occur very often, which even make both sides feel unhappy. Therefore, more and more attention has been paid to the study of the differences between Chinese and western customs. And this thesis is composed on the basis of the researches of the scholars in the field.

0.2 Purpose of the paper:

The present paper，based on a large number of convincing examples and from the perspective of cultural communication, intends to explore the difference between Chinese and western customs. For one reason, the custom of a place is an important part of its culture. Every change in the social life, every development in the national custom is directly and quickly reflected in its culture.  The ultimate meaning associated with custom is culturally determined. Therefore, Chinese and western countries, which have their different cultures respectively, greatly differ from each other in their customs. For another reason, it is of great importance for us to pay attention to the difference between Chinese and western customs, through which we can be aware of the characteristics of different cultures, what’s more, with the development of the “global village”, it is absolutely necessary for us to communicate with different culture-based countries, especially the developed western countries.

It is mainly on these reasons that I will embark on my exploration on the difference between Chinese and western customs.

Chapter I The definition of custom and culture

1.1        The definition of custom

During the course of carrying research to custom and culture, different points of view have come into being. There are totally the following expressions:

As Zeng Changqiu observes, custom is “the summing-up of values, courtesy and habits of a nation after long period of calculation, which vividly show the habit of life, the way of behaving, concept of values and the psychological structures of the nation”.

Weber also makes clear definition to custom; he regards “custom” as a kind of rule without guarantee from outside. The behaviorists obey it voluntarily, hoping other members of the group to obey it as well.

What’s more, Hayeck seems to have probed into the subject of “custom” from a deeper understanding. He thinks that individuals are used to obeying the rule of custom, just like the intuition of human beings. 

To sum up, we can conclude from the definitions above that custom is a kind of social psychological habit, which belongs to the surface level of the cultural psychological structure. It is the common living experience composed under the influence of the natural environment., which is also closely related with people’s material life. It vividly embodies in the aspects such as the habit of life, the way of behaving, concept of values and the psychological structures of people.

1.2        The definition of culture

As to the concept of culture, it has a much broader meaning, so it is difficult to give a widely accepted definition for culture because culture includes every aspect of human life. According to Tylor (1924), culture is “That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Goodenough (1957:167) pointed out, "...a society's culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or to believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and to do so in any role that they accept for any one of themselves." Goodenough thus takes culture as socially acquired knowledge. From the statements above, we can see that linguistic expressions are often culture-loaded and can carry super-linguistic information. 

On the whole, we can understand culture in the following way. On one hand, culture means the total pattern of beliefs, customs, institutions, objects, and techniques that characterize the life of a human community. On the other hand, culture refers to the way of people, organizations, family patterns and political systems. It is like icebergs: some features can be seen, which includes housing, law, food, belief and customs, while the others are deeply hidden, which includes the way we encode information.

Chapter II The difference between Chinese and Western customs

As custom is all-pervasive and mufti-dimensional, in order to contrast the two customs in an effective and systematic manner, we must, first of all, divide this complex whole into several subsystems. Similar to the case with defining custom, opinions diverge on the categorization of custom. Some scholars, like Eugene Nida, classify custom into five aspects: ecological custom, material custom, social custom, religious custom and linguistic custom; some categorize custom simply into two broad categories: custom and Custom, with the former referring to the total way of life of a people, including customs, social conventions, morals, interpersonal communications, etc, and the latter denoting "the products and contributions of a society, that is, man-made products of technology (the pyramids, the Great Wall, electronic computers) and all products of the mind (work of art and literature, philosophy and aesthetics and other works of intellectual attainment)"(戴炜栋等2000: 162). A third view is that custom can be classified into three types: material custom, including architecture, clothing, good, tools and other artifacts; institutional custom, which denotes laws, customs, religions, manners, education, etc.; mental custom, which refers to people's mentalities and behaviors, their values, beliefs, modes of thinking, philosophy, literature and art included. Still another position is to categorize custom into high custom, folk custom and deep custom. High custom refers to philosophy, literature, art, music and religion; folk custom mainly denotes social conventions and the way of life, including dress, food, transportation, and housing; while deep custom refers to those deeply-rooted aspects such as values, morals, perceptions, thought patterns and so forth.   

It must be admitted that there is an element of truth in all the above classifications, and what is more they also overlap somewhere. However, probing deeper into the nature of custom, we find that as far as the openness towards outside influence is concerned, some aspects of custom are significantly distinct from the others: the aspects like dress, food, transportation, and housing are subject to change, yet some others that are deeply embedded in custom, such as ethics, morals, values, thinking patterns, and religious practices, are apt to resist major alterations and may persist generation after generation. In this sense, the last classification is the only one that has clearly marked the essential difference between the diverse aspects of custom. Moreover, given the interdependence between language and custom, the last categorization of custom is also likely to be of some value to the decision-making on translation strategies. Due to these factors, we are going to contrast Chinese and Western customs within the frameworks of high custom, folk custom and deep custom. In the domain of high custom, attention will be mainly focused on religion. In the aspect of folk custom, the way of life and social conventions will be elaborated on. And in regard to the deep structure of custom, comparison will be made in terms of mode of thought and values.

2.1 The characteristics of western custom

   2.1.1 Religion

   In most Western countries, the prevalent religion is Christianity. Accordingly, English abounds with expressions or idioms that contain such words as "God", "hell" and "devil". For instance, "God's gift", "God bless you.", "God provides for him that trusts.", "God help those who help themselves.", "He that serves God for money will serve the devil for better wages.", “between the devil and the deep blue", "talk of the devil and he will appear", "The devil take the hindmost.", "Hell and Tommy." and "come hell or high water". In addition, as the central ethic that Jesus, the son of God, preaches is "love", there correspondingly exist quite a few idioms or sayings regarding this quality: "Love begets love.", "Love your neighbors as yourself.", "Love asks faith, and faith firmness.", "Do as you would be done by."

   Christianity is very definite that there is only one God, that is, the Creator of the Earth and the Heaven. Called the Supreme Being, God is almighty in the Christians' mind. Accordingly, "God is above all.", "God is where He was.", "Truth is the daughter of God.", "The tree that God plants no wind hurts it." and "That never ends ill which begins in God's name”.

   2.1.2 The way of life

   Among all the aspects of culture, the way of life is the one that is likely to exhibit the strongest tendency towards change in the context of frequent or constant exposure to foreign customs. 

   Take Britain as an example, being an island country with a long coastline, Britain is fairly rich in fishery resources, and fishing plays an important role in its economy. Naturally, its language is abundant in the expressions that are related to sea, sailing and fishing: "all at sea", "sink or swim", "to go with the stream", "to rest on one's oars", "be in the same boat with somebody” "trim the sails to the wind”, “keep one's head above water", "All is fish that comes to one's net.", "Hoist your sail when the wind is fair.", "Living without an aim is like sailing without a compass." and so on. It should be pointed out that some expressions in this regard are quite bewildering. If the translators have little acquaintance with the origins of these sayings, they are much likely to be misled. Take "be left high and dry" for example: seemingly denoting "being in a very high position", this idiom actually refers to "being in trouble", since originally it is used to describe the situation of a ship stranded on a sandbank.

   2.1.3 Courtesy Expressions

Courtesy is a universal necessity, without which all the societies in the world would be in a pitiable state and the daily communications between its members would be interfered with by endless offences and frictions. Nevertheless, as to what are courtesy expressions and what are not, people from different cultures seem to have different standards.

For instance, It is a common practice for a native English acquaintance by saying "Hi!", "Good morning." or "Nice day, isn't it?"

When meeting someone at the airport or the railway station, who has just arrived from a long journey, the English-speaking people tend to ask something like "Did you enjoy your trip?" or "Did you have a nice trip?"

In the English-speaking countries, the hosts and the visitors normally bid farewell to each other by exchanging such expressions as "Bye-bye", "Good-bye" or "See you later."

What’s more, it is customary for a native speaker of English to accept compliments from others by giving a positive response like "Thank you."

2.2 The characteristics of Chinese custom

   Correspondingly, we may come to the Chinese custom in the same respects.

   2.2.1 Religion

   The situation of religion in China is a bit more complex. There are mainly three religions in China: Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Taoism is indigenous to China, which has retained a lot of age-old rituals and ceremonies, such as conducting witchcraft, worshipping Heaven, offering sacrifices to ancestors; Buddhism, originating from India, is an imported religion and Confucianism is somewhat like an academic school, which is, however, tinted with religious coloring. Interestingly, although these three religions differ in doctrine, they have coexisted for a rather long period of time, and even converged to some extent. 

   Strictly speaking, the Chinese religions are pantheistic. The distinction between the human beings and the divine beings is always rather ambiguous. Taoists believe in immortals, which are actually developed from humans and man again, turn back to be incarnate. For instance,“长生不老”(be alive for evermore),“神仙下凡”(immortals descend to the world). Buddhists believe in Buddha, who is, however, somewhat similar to human beings, and even has human failings:“泥菩萨过河，自身难保”(When a clay idol ford a river, he is even hardly able to save himself. And ironically, it is also possible for human beings to turn into Buddha:“放下屠刀，立地成佛”(A butcher becomes a Buddha the moment he drops his cleaver). Confucians generally have faith in“天”(Heaven), which is, in essence, a very abstract and thus abstruse force:“天诛地灭”(be destroyed by heaven and earth),“天命不韬”(Heaven's decrees are beyond doubt.),“人有千算，天只一算”(Whatever human minds intend, it's heaven that decides the end.),“生死有命” (Life and death are decreed by fate; rank and riches determined by Heaven.).

   2.2.2 The way of life

   The Chinese use one of the twelve animals which respectively represent the twelve Earthly Branches, namely子鼠(Mouse)，丑牛(Ox)，寅虎(Tiger), yfJ兔(Rabbit)，辰龙(Dragon)，巳蛇(Snake)，午马(Horse)，未羊(Sheep), 申猴(Monkey)，酉鸡(Rooster)，戌狗(Dog) and亥猪(Pig), to symbolize the year in which a person is born, while the English-speaking people divide one year into twelve which a person is born the Chinese celebrate春节(the Spring Festival)，元宵节(Festival) and中秋节(Mid-Autumn (the Lantern Festival)，端午节(the Dragon Boat Festival) each year, aII of which are their traditional festivals.

   2.2.3 Courtesy Expressions

   It is a common practice for a Chinese to greet his/her friend or acquaintance by saying“吃了吗?”or“上哪去啊?”

   When meeting someone at the airport or the railway station, who has just arrived from a long journey, the Chinese might customarily say“您受累了”,“一路上辛苦了”.

   Conventionally, the Chinese hosts would see the guests to the door with some caring words like“走好”，“慢走”, and by convention the reply from the visitors is“请留步”.

   When the native speaker of English to accept compliments from others by giving a positive response like "Thank you.” the Chinese, believing modesty is a virtue, usually react to compliments with“哪里，哪里”，“惭愧，惭愧”，“您过讲了”to show that they do not deserve them. 

2.3 The difference between Chinese and Western customs

   In order to be clearly observed, some common differences between Chinese and western customs are listed in the following table.