Yifu chen
12/18/2012
Different culture between China and United State
As we all know, China and American have many differences in culture. I want to talk about the differences in food culture and education styles. With the development of economic, more and more people pay attention on food and education quality. So the food and education culture has been becoming popular in our daily life. Then I want talk about why we have those differences in culture.
First, we talk about the different in diet attitudes. As we can see, in China, we will eat something with sensibility. When we choose what to eat, we will care more about the color, the smell, the taste, the shape and the device. Because our nations in the past many years, the productive level is very low, and many people are always hungry, they can’t eat enough food. So if a kind of culture treats eating as the most important thing, there will appear two situations. On one hand, this function of eating will be played to maximize, not only for surviving, but also for using it to maintain health.While Americans maybe more rationality. When they eat something, the things they care most are the nutritious value, such as the protein, the fat, the vitamin, the minerals and the carbohydrate. But it has made some problems, for example, from Los Angeles to New York, the steak is only one taste, which has no arts to speak of. As a dish, chicken is chicken, steak is steak. In America, they think the foods are used just to eat, so they often eat a large piece of meat, the whole chicken and other “hard food”. However in China, we eat something we must enjoying the taste of it. So the Chinese cooking also show great randomness on the selected materials. According to a survey of western botanists, Chinese food has more than 600 kinds of vegetables, which is six times more than it in the west.1."Gravy is perhaps the greatest difference between 'American' and 'Chinese-style' Chinese food. "Americans like lots of gravy," he continued, "and it has to match the ingredient. Take lobster: Americans like a white gravy, whereas Chinese prefer a drier sauce with black beans."That same chef advised that he prepares a darker gravy for beef to match the coloring of the meat, and a lighter colored gravy for chicken. He also said that it was common for waiters to specify whether the dish is for an American or a Chinese customer. This he advised would determine how he prepares the dish.Differences in the way foods are prepared tend to be more common in Chinatown, where there is, on balance, a large community of Chinese patrons. Outside of Chinatown, restaurants tend to prepare their dishes for western tastes unless otherwise specified.Certain restaurants have built a reputation on serving a predominantly western crowd, others cater mostly to Chinese taste. Neither is necessarily better than the other, it is more a question of the kind of food the customers want to eat. Those serving mostly western tastes would probably make better Chicken Chow Mein, Egg Rolls, or Spare Ribs. Those with more Chinese patrons tend to offer different types of dishes, such as tripe in clay pot. How you figure out which kind of restaurant is which, is not always easy." We can found Chinese food have a lot of various classes. But U.S. relative to a single type of food.
Education is the basis of a national, so I want talk about different education styles between China and United States. In China the majority of young people will get the opportunity to enjoy the 9 years’ mandatory education and very few people can go to high school or college, so the proportion of people gets educated to the whole people is quite low. The reason why our government puts so many efforts to encourage the young to get further study is mainly to improve our nation's quality. 2"Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: local, state, and federal, in that order. Child education is compulsory. There are also a large number and wide variety of higher education institutions throughout the country that one can choose to attend, both publicly and privately administered.Public education is universally available. School curricula, funding, teaching, employment, and other policies are set through locally elected school boards with jurisdiction over school districts with many directives from state legislatures. School districts are usually separate from other local jurisdictions, with independent officials and budgets. Educational standards and standardized testing decisions are usually made by state governments.The ages for compulsory education vary by state. It begins from ages five to eight and ends from ages fourteen to eighteen. Compulsory education requirements can generally be satisfied by educating children in public schools, state-certified private schools, or an approved home school program. In most public and private schools, education is divided into three levels: elementary school, middle school (sometimes called junior high school), and high school (sometimes referred to as secondary education).In almost all schools at these levels, children are divided by age groups into grades, ranging from kindergarten (followed by first grade) for the youngest children in elementary school, up to twelfth grade, the final year of high school. The exact age range of students in these grade levels varies slightly from area to area."In American, education attract great attention from the government, compulsory education is 12 years,3 years longer than ours, the students not only enjoy free books but even have free lunch, from this you can see how American care about education. What is more, most of the people will not get satisfied with 12 years education, if so, they can hardly get a job.While American teachers prefer to use "ABCD" in stead of Arabic numerals to evaluate the students, in their eyes every student is good, so teachers will not grudge praise for the students, may be appreciative education is enlightened from this. But China education always tell us the score is the most important. In China, we have are great pressure on our students, if you score not well that means you will to be eliminated. Of course, if you want to choose famous college you should have good scores. After American students entering college, many of them begin to work harder than they ever did, they may stay in the library all day long, and they think it is time for their effort, or they will not get satisfied job after graduation. And on the way I want to say some thing not so important. In China a student can go to famous university as long as he has good social relationship, and he will get a gradual certificate. While if you study in America, you should pay attention, getting in by the backdoor is impossible, if you do not work hard you will never graduate successfully, and no satisfied job is waiting for you. In general, Chinese education styles pay more attention to basic knowledge, especially to math physic and chemistry. Our students really have steady basic knowledge that the US students admire very much. When we turn to see US students, we can easily find they prefer to improve social skills, including arguing, social work and teamwork, this difference lead to a phenomenon that if Chinese and American both work in a company most of the Americans will work as manager, and most of we Chinese will work as technical staffs who work for the manager.
So why we have different food culture and education styles? First I want talk about food. We know China is a multi-ethnic country, we have 56 different nation and those 56 nations still have different food culture. When the 56 ethnic groups into a big family that cause to diversified food countries. In China, we always said " the food is god", so that can found the food in China is very important, this is a kind of world view is different. But in American, people always said " the time is money", so they do not feel the need to spend time on food, such as Americans just use about 20minutes on the lunch. Americans pay more attention to the food's nutrition not taste. That is why we have different food culture, like as a kind of idea thorough popular feeling. Why we have the different education styles? That have many reasons, such as history, political elements, population and economies. But in this reasons I think the population is the most important because China have large population so the employment problem is very serious, in the school you must work very hard, because if you don't have good achievement you can't get a good job. From the history, Chinese education worst than now. In that age the women can't to go to school, and we always study mechanically, we study same things all days. So Chinese just know read book and don't know how to use book. But we have the change in this day.3"The change came in a speech made to students by the Deputy Premier, Chen yi, in peaking in August 1961, The political aspect should not always be the predominant one in all circumstances, he declared. It must take its place alongside technical and scientific knowledge. In the initial post liberation period it had been necessary to stress political education, but henceforth the emphasis must be on academic training. It was wrong for the technical colleges to spend too much time on political activity and manual work at the expense of technical training."We are now trying to put the books applied to life. But the thought need the time to change. We can found very successful way of education in the United States. The students can learn things whatever they want, because get a job is easier than China. American education system change is through revolution.4"After the Revolution, an emphasis was put on education, especially in the northern states, which rapidly established public schools. By the year 1870, all states had free elementary schools. The US population had one of the highest literacy rates at the time.[35] Private academies flourished in the towns across the country, but rural areas (where most people lived) had few schools before the 1880s.In 1821, Boston started the first public high school in the United States. By the close of the 19th century, public secondary schools began to outnumber private ones.Over the years, Americans have been influenced by a number of European reformers; among them Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Montessori." Earlier change is more conducive to the future development, the United States has done. Americans know that the only interesting things to learn better. 5"The different cultures of the United States and China are due largely to their diverse histories. The history of the United States is largely based on the principles of a Democratic government and China is based on a communist government. The presence of politics can alter the agenda of a countries educational system. Some of china’s earlier leaders perceived education as a way to keep a country moral and to have a better legal system. For this reason leaders of China concluded that it was good to hold teachers in high regard (Mingyuan, 1998). According to some Chinese leaders becoming a teacher was just a step before becoming a leader or an emperor. As in North America, in China the relationship between the student and the teacher were once equal as in the United States, but as means of the ruling class to maintain power, they enforced the teacher as an authoritative figure (Mingyuan, 1998). The teachers then prepared the students to take a civil service exam, and if they passed the exam in a convincing fashion then they could attain a higher role in society (Mingyuan, 1998). These are early implications of the strict testing policies and the valuable role of the teacher in China. In a literature review of the satisfaction of teachers in China and the United States, teachers in China were unlike American teachers in that they viewed their jobs as being something of importance or prestige, not just a simple occupation ( Ouyang and Paprock). The cultural goals of the United States are much different than that of China. "
In my opinion, the reasons which caused the different food culture and education styles in China and America are the different culture, customs, history, atmosphere, nutrition values and economic condition and so on. Although we have many different things between American and China, but we need learn from other's strong points to offset one's weakness, the culture is not important, the most important thing is we can common development because we are the person, we live in the same star that is the earth.
Data:
From book:1.Joanne Lee,"Chinese Restaurant General Information"Fall Volume: 1995 Issue: 2(3) page(s): 17 and 21.
3.Harry Hamm “China, empire of the 700 million” company Garden city, New York 1966 page 147.
From web:2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States
4.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States
5.http://sitemaker.umich.edu/austin.356/cultural_values
