When Asian Culture Meets the West （1）

Main difference between the East and the West in Culture

Individualism and Collectivism

Individualism is a philosophy that predominates in western countries. Westerners have always sought chances to stand out of the crowd. 

Chinese philosophy is collectivism. A group is something that matters. Consequently, a family, a class at school, a team at work, and the nation, in general, is what really matters. It’s almost impossible for an average person to be different in China. Moreover, Chinese people don’t try to stand out.

Family matters

Western family is usually a nuclear family that wants to be independent. As a rule, newlyweds in the Western world tend to live separately from their parents. What is more, grown-up children also leave parents’ houses as soon as possible.

In Chinese customs and traditions, a family is a strictly hierarchical unit. Chinese family is an extended family where the oldest members are the most respected ones.

Showing emotions

People of Western countries are often cheerful and open-minded. They make friends easily, they feel no timidity when talking to foreigners. They are sociable and willing to extend their circle of mates. 

In contrast to Westerners, Chinese people usually trust their closest people like family and friends. Thus, they are likely to keep their distance from someone new or someone they don’t know well.

With that said, Westerners feel free to express their emotions, be it joy or sadness, in front of other people while Chinese people hide their emotions and don’t let them out. However, there are always exceptions.

Business

Chinese businessmen need to find out about you as much as possible before moving directly to the business. The situation in the US, for example, is completely different. Americans go straight to business. There might be a couple of business dinners planned, but only as a part of business traditions.

The way people negotiate differs a lot, too. In the USA offers and decisions are stated clearly. ‘Yes’ means ‘yes’, ‘no’ means ‘no’, and ‘3000$’ mean ‘3000$’. Thus, western people come to negotiations to discuss the main points and get the result right away.

In China, negotiators come to business meetings to negotiate. They always wait for this chance and are happy when they manage to bring down the price offered by another side or win more beneficial conditions. By the way, negotiations are an important part of everyday life, too. For example, it’s normal to negotiate rent price when you’re in China. Keep these cultural differences between the West and China when you plan a business meeting.

Culture as a product

USA

The USA has been leading the world for many years since World War I. Americans have been exporting a lot of tangible and intangible cultural products since then. As a capital economy, they are not only well-known for investment, stock market, business opportunities; the marketing ability is also one of their strength. Take a look at Coca-cola, Nike, the Disney and the Hollywood.

In order to make Coca-cola as the first soft drinks in the world, they managed to turn Santa Claus’s costume into RED instead of the original GREEN color.

Nike has been the leading sportswear company in the world dominantly for decades especially after signing Michael Jordan as one of the sponsored athletes in the 90s, then Kobe Bryant in 2003.

Disney is another cultural product you should never missed. Disney has been creating dreams for every single child in the world. Through the cartoons, books and theme parks, the influence of Disney is unimaginably huge.

The Hollywood is another dreams come true places. Movies from Hollywood are mostly watched and famous movies mostly came from the Hollywood in the western world.

UK

The UK history is a very important part of the modern civilization. The British got a lot of colonies around the world and have traded and exported a lot of cultural products to many countries.

Football is one of the world most popular sports in the world. The English Premier League has been the world most famous league with the highest views.

British has long been named the most charming accent in the world. In the Netflix movie, “Lucifer”, Tom Ellis, who plays Lucifer, has got a lot of positive comments not only to his acts but also his charming British accent.

Japan

Japan, after the WWII, has been suffered a lot from the loss of the war. Yet, the Japanese stood up quite fast afterwards by exporting Japanese cultures to many countries in the East and West.

Through comics and anime, Japan is the world most famous country in making those. Japanese comics and anime are translated into many languages to spread even further. There are a lot of successful ones, such as Dragon Ball, Naruto, Hunter X Hunter, etc.

Another big industry in Japan is AV industry. By producing high quality, various scenarios and highly trained actors and actresses, AV has gone more than just porn movies. Not like the western countries, actors and actresses in Japan are not defined as low level porn stars. Many of them are invited in different events around the globe to attract traffics.

South Korea

South Korea has been known for its cosmetic products as well as the plastic surgery. Many customers, even from the US, would follow the trend of Korean beauty and the cosmetic products.

K-pop is another big trend in this 10 years. Korean entertainment companies are very strong in marketing. They maximize the use of the youngsters’ favourite online social media platforms to promote K-pop and at the same time, as a cultural output. The groups are not only famous in Korea, but also around the world, for example, BTS, BLACKPINK, STRAY KIDS, etc.

To understand further, please visit : When Asian Culture Meets the West （2）