Chinese Culture vs. Western and American Culture

Chinese Culture vs. Western and American Culture

There are many different aspects on Ancient Chinese culture that differ from Western and American culture. Many things such as education, marriage, and community type can be different from what we have in our Western civilization. Although Chinese culture has evolved through many, many years some ancient traditions still uphold.

There are a wide variety of differences between the Chinese and Western cultures forms of art and literature. One example of this is the importance of architecture in China. While the Chinese build large and extravagant buildings, the history of the architecture and the buildings themselves are relatively unimportant to them. There is hard to find any ancient buildings in China or to even know if their current forms are architecture are similar to their old ones due to the lack of records kept in anything other than paintings. “The Chinese have no respect for buildings. When they fall or were destroyed, the local inhabitants come like ants and carried off any material that could be turned to use for the needs of living” (Speiser 17). So while the Chinese lack a preserving method of buildings, or rather find it to be unimportant, the Western and US culture greatly respect the art that is architecture. When the Twin Towers in New York were destroyed in 2001 it was a great devastation. Devastation that was so huge in fact that the buildings are being remodeled and rebuilt in order to form a museum in the memory of lives lost, and the importance of the building itself. The Chinese would never think of doing such a thing; they would simply pick up the usable pieces and move on.

The differences in art between western and Chinese culture grow with the addition ...

... middle of paper ...

...d. The Chinese Cultural Revolution. San Diego: Lucent, 1997. Print.

Pinson, Ernest. "A Letter from China." Harbinger. Ed. Edmund Tsang et al. N.p., 2000. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. .

Shoebottom, Paul. "The Differences between English and Chinese." A Guide to Learning English. Frankfurt International School, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. .

Shu, Sandra. "The Chinese Education System vs the American Education System." The Thunderbolt. Ed. Nathan Chau. Thunderbolt, n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. .

"Some General Differences between Chinese and American Culture." Pre-Departure Orientation for Chinese Students. AIEF, n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. .

Speiser, Werner. The Art of China. New York: Greystone, n.d. Print.