旅游英语专业毕业论文(4)
From the use of chopsticks we can see the whole course of using chopsticks is collaborative work. If one of them is absent, the whole work cannot be completed. It shows that collectivism is the core thought of Chinese nation. And knife and fork is born in modern industrial society, which is the production of socialization. Its main material is metal which shows social function of modern society, and failed to get rid of its offensive during socialization process.
3.3 Custom
Custom culture refers to the culture that formed in the daily social life and human communication activity by ethnic and habits. The differences of custom between east and west are various. Different nationalities show different ethnic culture and custom on many aspects such as greeting, thanks, flattery, apology, or making telephone calls. For example, when Chinese meet acquaintance, they always greet each other by asking “have you eaten” or “where are you going”. While in western culture, it does not belong to the greeting but a real problem. They may think “why does he ask me whether I have eaten” “does he want to invite me to have dinner”. When Chinese invited guests to have dinner, there are so many dishes on the table, but host says repeatedly “there is nothing for you” “have a potluck” and similar words. The host also helps pick food for guests and try his best to make guests eat and drink more. Westerner often doubted about this phenomenon. It is not realistic behaviour that host said there is nothing when there are so many dishes on the table. And their meal is very simple which often with a small number of delicious vegetables when they treat others. Host just says “help yourself” and they never carry food to guest's bowl.
4. Different table manners between China and West
4.1Table setting
In China: We prefer to the round table in the Chinese banquets. If there is just a round table in the family dinner, so it has no table order. But if the banquets are held in a restaurant or a hall and there are two or over two round table, then it must have the table setting order. The rule of table setting is that the top table is the round table which is back to the restaurant or the hall and the right of which is senior and the left is inferior. If there are three round tables, then the table in the middle is senior, the right is next and the left is second. Anyway, the right is honor and the left is low, whatever how many the tables are.
