Tuesday, January 24, 2012

What Are Major Differences Between Chinese And Western Culture?

Western culture:
1. Western culture is based on individualism rather than on mass (collectivism). For instance, in the US, you always talk about individual rights, instead of placing the whole society above your own self. This is clearly different in China where a country, society or family are placed above your own self.
2. Western culture is adventurous and exploration based. Westerners like to discover new things, invention and expand outwards. For instance, bungee jumping is considered adventurous and common in western culture, but you will probably find no-one doing such a thing in China.
3. Western culture is based on science, which attempts to resolve people and nature’s relationship.
4. West uses law to resolve people and people’s relationship. You can never find ‘law’ well-established in China. For 2000 years, China is a land that’s based on human relationship rather than law.
5. West uses ‘god’ and religion to resolve human and spiritualism relationship. In case of problems with your own self, you just pray to god.
6. A culture that expands and develop outwards.
Chinese Culture:
1. A culture based on masses (collectivism). People placed country and family above your own self.
2. A culture that is based on humanism and people
3. To resolve the relationship betwen man and nature, the chinese attempts to fuse the human and ‘heaven’ as one.
4. To resolve people and people’s relationship, chinese uses ethics and tolerance
5. To resolve human and spiritualism, chinese emphasizes internal cultivation
6. A focus on balance and mean. By ‘mean’, it means ‘middle way’. You don’t go into extremism. Peace is always honoured.
7. Pay homage to heaven and earth, as well as bearing a remembrance to the homeland. This was accorded to the fact that chinese had been a farming civilization and therefore will be more prone to remember their land.
8. A culture that expands internally rather than outwards.
Table manners:
The main difference between Chinese and western eating habits is that unlike the West, where everyone has their own plate of food, in China the dishes are placed on the table and everybody shares. If you are being treated by a Chinese host, be prepared for a ton of food. Chinese are very proud of their culture of cuisine and will do their best to show their hospitality.
And sometimes the Chinese host use their chopsticks to put food in your bowl or plate. This is a sign of politeness. The appropriate thing to do would be to eat the whatever-it-is and say how yummy it is. If you feel uncomfortable with this, you can just say a polite thank you and leave the food there.
Don’t stick your chopsticks upright in the rice bowl. Instead, lay them on your dish. The reason for this is that when somebody dies, the shrine to them contains a bowl of sand or rice with two sticks of incense stuck upright in it. So if you stick your chopsticks in the rice bowl, it looks like this shrine and is equivalent to wishing death upon a person at the table!
Make sure the spout of the teapot is not facing anyone. It is impolite to set the teapot down where the spout is facing towards somebody. The spout should always be directed to where nobody is sitting, usually just outward from the table.
Don’t tap on your bowl with your chopsticks. Beggars tap on their bowls, so this is not polite. Also, when the food is coming too slow in a restaurant, people will tap their bowls. If you are in someone’s home, it is like insulting the cook.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival

There are many classic poems about the moon from Chinese poets for thousands of years. Do you know which is the most popular one? I’ll let you know following a brief intriduction about the festival. ChineseHour is very happy to share the happy hours of the Moon Festival with our Chinese learners, and wish you would have a good day at the festival, a good taste of the moon cake and a good taste of Chinese learning too.
jǔ tóu wàng míngyuè
举  头  望   明 月,
I gaze upwards toward the moon in the skies,
dī tóu sī gùxiāng
低 头  思  故 乡。
And downwards look when a nostalgia does arise.
míngyuè jǐshí yǒu
明 月   几时  有,
Bright moon, when was your birth?
bǎ jiǔ wèn qīngtiān
把 酒  问  青 天。
Winecup in hand, I ask the deep blue sky.
It is now the eighth month in the lunar calendar, the time for the Chinese to celebrate the Mid-Autumn festival. It is so called because it is in the middle of the eighth month, which is a full moon. We used to celebrate the full moon by fruit, moon cake, and children played their lanterns with neighbor.
On the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar the moon is full and it is time for the Chinese people to mark their Moon Festival, or the Mid-Autumn Festival. The round shape symbolizes family reunion. Therefore the day is a holiday for family members to get together and enjoy the full moon - an auspicious token of abundance, harmony and luck.
Sons and daughters will come back to their parents’ house. Sometimes people who have already settled overseas will return to visit their parents on that day. Adults will usually indulge in fragrant moon cakes of many varieties with a good cup of piping hot Chinese tea, while the little ones run around with their brightly-lit lanterns. After nightfall, entire families go out under the stars for a walk or picnics, looking up at the full silver moon, thinking of their nearby relatives or friends, as well as those who are far from home. A line from a verse “The moon at the home village is exceptionally brighter” expresses those feelings. It is also a romantic night for the lovers, who sit holding hands on riverbanks and park benches, enraptured by the brightest moon of the year.
Round “moon cakes”, made of fruit, ice cream, yogurt, pork, mushrooms, green tea, flowers, jelly etc., are a traditional food eaten during the festival. People also enjoy pomelos on this day; yu, the Chinese word for pomelo, sounds the same as another Chinese word to beseech the moon god for protection.
“水调歌头 Shui diao ge tou” is the most popular poem about the moon and the moon festival. It is primarily recommended in the Chinese school textbooks and most students can memorize it without missing a word.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Arabian T Shirts Culture

T shirts identify the man's persona. It tells about your personality type and character. It also reflects the person inside you. T-shirts were originally worn as undershirts but now T-shirts are worn frequently as the only piece of clothing on the top half of the body, other than possibly a bra or an undershirt that is vest. T-shirts have also become a medium for self-expression and advertising, with any imaginable combination of words, art, and even display the photographs. T-shirts present a wonderful opportunity to experiment with color, designs and their reasonable cost makes it painless to replenish your selections each season. The various fabric contents and textures used today also work to create new silhouettes, from the classic shape to the cut of the moment; T-shirts have serious flexibility of fashion.
T-shirts are normally made of cotton or polyester or in a mixed percentage of both. T-shirts owe its soft natural texture to the jersey stitch knitting that very much holds the fabric together. 100% pre-shrink, heavyweight cotton T-shirts are highly absorbent and comfortable when dried. However, when soaked from over work or exercise, it may sticks to your skin and blocks the skin pores and takes long time to dry.
When cotton is blended with polyester (65%, 50%, 40%, 30%, 20% or 10%), it give the shirt strength, reduce shrinking, decrease drying time, enhance wrinkle resistance and better breathing of the skin. A 50% cotton and 50% polyester fabric makes a great logo shirt; a wash and wear - no ironing, ideal gifts for customers, business promotions, clubs, fund raisers, events, reunions, schools uniform shirts and sports team outfit.
Tees with Arabic slogans are in fashion. It gives the contemporary and urban look. Also it adds the taste to the culture. Printed Arabic calligraphy in black, white or golden color adds traditional look to tees. You can see many people who wear Tees with Arabic slogans, even if they do not belong to specified country. You can find the quotation written on these t shirts in Arabic, which symbolize peace and harmony. But the main reason behind the Arabic calligraphy didn't penetrate the pop culture is because of very closely association of it with religion and the usage of these styles may be a sensitive issue in an outside country.
Custom or personalized t-shirt printing is the freedom to choose the Arabic words, graphics and even photographs that you want on your t-shirts. But with so many t-shirt printing companies that sprout like mushrooms in the printing industry, you will be having a hard time to choose who among these printing doors you will go into. Tees with Arabic symbols and slogans are available in stock on the internet. Also, seasonal discounts are available, so that you can get tees on flat 50% or 80% off. The tees are available in wide variety of colors and designs with your fitting size, so that you can choose easily and comfortably. It is better that you call the contact number given at the top of the site to check the authenticity.