A Study On The Characteristics And Differences Of Chinese And American Cultural Patterns

Cultural exchange is getting more and more frequent with the pace of globalization increasingly fast. No matter when people are studying, working, traveling or enjoying their life, the chance for them to engage in a certain kind of culture different from their own is growing. This, on one hand, enriches the diversification of the world, and on the other hand, provides much more opportunities for people of all countries to communicate with each other. However, opportunity is often coming along with challenge:though boundary of different cultures blurred due to globalization, essential differences among cultures exist for sure all the time. The differences are likely to affect cultural exchange in various degrees, even evolving into conflicts in case of a more serious way that threatens life of individuals and harmony of society. To reduce such influence, we need start with both sides of cultural communication, trying our best to reveal the distinction between the two cultures, meanwhile, making people from different cultural patterns understand differences within each other’s culture and truly accept such sort of cultural relativity. That’s exactly what this research is established in. The research proceeding with studying American exchange students in China who are living in T apartments, employing qualitative methods such as formal and informal interviews, participant observation, case studies, etc, aims to reveal the essential differences between Chinese cultural pattern and American cultural pattern, with the expectation of contributing to the area of cultural exchange.This thesis is divided into three parts. The first part is chapter one, introduction, mainly about background, significance and methods of this research, with detailed description of related issues. The second part, based on empirical data, depicts American exchange students’ state and attitude to living in China and on the other hand analyzes and interprets this state and attitude. This part consists of three chapters: chapter two represents students’ learning and education state, including rethinking of educational concepts, educational aims and teacher-student relations; chapter three focuses on students’ practice of everyday life, including views on hanging out, traveling, doing internship, diet, religion, etc; chapter four concentrates on students’ interpersonal communication, including vertical relationship like parents and kids and lateral relationship like friends. The third part is the conclusion that generalizes and summarizes the main characteristics of both Chinese cultural pattern and American cultural pattern and also the differences between the two.