The difference between China and Western
What is culture?L.Beamer &I. Varner reminded us, “Culture is a mental set of windows through which all of life is viewed. It varies from individual to individual with in a society, but it shares important characteristics with members of society.” Culture is everything and everywhere. And more important, at least for our purposes, culture governs and defines in which position the conditions and circumstances veer.Simultaneously, in certain conditions and circumstances lots of information can or not be noticed or understood. That is too abstract to really understand. Different countries have different traits and characteristics due to their different geographical environments, differenthistoricalconditions and different logical thinking. No countries and nations are without their cultures.uneventful
The characteristics of any culture can not be separated from a certain geographicalenvironment, each kind of culture has different characteristics due to the characteristics of the region, climate and environment.  China is a great semi-closed continental country, which sea on one side and on the other transportationthree sides is extre
mely inconvenient. Such kind of natural environment form a state of half isolation  from the outside world, and the congenial habitat and self- sufficient resource have an essential effect on characteristics of Chinese traditional culture. The human habitat was too congenial to produce an outward-looking, adventurous, sea-farming culture. The result of this congeniality is a peaceful people, indulging in an uneventful life of the simple rhythmical pulse of nature. At the same time, self-sufficient farming culture caused self-contained that developed satisfaction and conservation. Farming is the basic economic mode for the existence of Chinese people. The prematurity and relative stability of the agriculturalcivilization nurtured the tradition of harmony and maintaining equilibrium. The harmonious and stable life molds the Chinese people ‘character of being content with what they are and what they have. They tend to lead a simple and placid life comparing with aggressiveness. They seem to be a balanced existence, neither over-delight, nor over-sorrowful, but take control of themselves with persistence. They are skillful of dealing with injustice and calamity with tolerance and humor. On the contrary, the territory of every western country is relatively small area that is surrounded by sea and where have no enou
gh natural resources. Western people were restricted to move so that they have a tendency to explore the sea that are peaceful, friendly, and full of chances and lures. The cradleof Western civilization Greek was exoteric geographical environment, people struggling with the hostile nature, they hence cultivated such kind of science tradition that people were fond of explore and conquer nature. That makes western culture shows advocating the spirit of competition and struggling as a whole.
There are so many dimensions on which cultures may differ; human nature can be said as a basic difference. In China, people have accepted the thought of Confucius who believed the human nature was basically good. As they said, children are believed to bepure and innocent but may become corrupt as they grow older and have more contact with society. The direction of moral changes is from good to bad. Because of this danger, it is the responsibility of those in authorities, such as parents, teachers and political leaders, who protect the morality under their care. When some children write about their mothers, fathers, teachers and honored historical figures, they tend to idealize them. The traditional Western belief about human natures is that humans are basically evil. We see this in the Bi
ble story of Adam and Eve. God throw them out of the Garden of Eden because they ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. From that time, all humans have been born with original sin. That means they do evil as part of their nature and can only be saved by God. As a result of the rise of humanism in the West, this basic belief has changed to a mixture of good and evil. The original belief continues to flourish alongside the more modern belief. For instance, Westerners who are called fundamentalist Christians, those who follow the Bibleas a guide to their daily life, still believe that humans are basically evil and must be saved, that is, must accept the help of God to become good. The traditional view has also been incorporated into Western institutions in various ways. In Confucian culture people are encouraged to be good by others around them. Because of the eyes of other people, when the person cannot reach others’ expectations,  he likely to feel ashamed. If China calls that situation a shame culture, then the West is dominated by guilt culture. In shame culture, the standard is an ideal set up in everyone’s mind. Everyone wants to achieve this possibility, but sometimes they cannot. At this time, they could have a shame feeling. In guilt culture, the person is expected to know the difference between right and wrong. When they do something wrong or out of moral, they could feel guilty, especially the Christian.

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