With the developments of china’s opening-up, more and more west cultures get into our sight. With facing unfamiliar civilizations, some cultural conflicts might happen in the communications inevitably, which would be really harmful to the relationships. What I want to talk about today is the Table Manners. Since the Table Manners have a decisive position in the communications between west countries and China, then I’ll focus on the differences of Table Manners across cultures, and I’ll try to analyze the reasons that cause the differences.
Firstly, one of the differences is the meal serving. In a Chinese way, we load one meal just with a single dish, in another word, one meal one dish, so that we have dinner together. On the country, the western people prefer to individual serving when they have meals. That means one person one dish.
Secondly, the view on arriving time is another difference. The western people value their time very much. They do have a good habit that going to the dinner on time. If they are invited to someone’s home for dinner, they would rather to get there 5 minutes earlier. But in the same case, Chinese may get there a bit late intentionally, since in our opinion that means polite to the host. We are supposed not to behave so eagerly for the dinner.
Further more, the concept of dishes is also a difference about Table Manners. The Chinese think much of our image in our friends’ mind and we think the richness of the foods represents one’s hospitality. We emphasize on the meal itself when we treats friends. So the foods and wine at the banquet should be rich and colorful. It might be better if the foods delicious and expensive. Otherwise, we will not consider it as treat. Differently, the western people think nothing is more than the nutrition of the foods they have. They pay great attention to the nutrition of rather than color, flavor, or shape. They diet mainly focus on health.
Actually, There’re a variety of reasons to cause the differences between China and Western countries, as to its root, they have different cultures and history backgrounds. I list several major causes in details as follows.
In the first place, it is due to the different traditional values.
In western countries, especially in the United States, people like heroes and they are encouraged to be outstanding to show the value as a single person. But Chinese people believe that the group is more important than individual. We should be united usually, so we do lots of things together just like having dinner. I think this is why the western people prefer to individual serving at dinner while we don’t.
In the second place, the reason is the different history backgrounds. In our country’s long history, the society is in the agricultural times for a long time. ”time” is not so important for farmers’ planting. So we don’t have the good habit of time. But the western countries get into modern times much earlier than China. With the developments of finance and business, “time” means fortune. In their daily lives, they always arrange and plan their schedule carefully. All these make the different attitudes between Chinese and the western people to the arrival time.
In the third place, the cause is the different cultural philosophies. Warmhearted, hospitality, unselfish，these are regarded as valuable qualities in Chinese culture. We will treat friends with the best things all we have. So the dinner for guests must be expensive and rich. However, the efficiency is praised highly in west. People in western countries stress importance of actual effects rather than some other factors.
As a conclusion, people come from different countries with different culture and history backgrounds always have different habits and manners. It’s hard to say what kinds of manners are good, what are not. On the surface, certain aspects of the youth lifestyle have so blended as to make them indistinguishable. The right way for us is to absorb the excellent elements of both the east and west. That would be the sign of our social progress.