跨 文 化 交 际

Title: The differences between Chinese and Western food

Name: 中诚纯子 Number: 120090202203 Department: Foreign Language Department Class/major: 09’ English-2 Finish Time: 2011-12-21

[Abstract] During the 5000-year-old glorious history, China has got rich and profound food culture. In the other hand, western nation has created its self-system food civilization as well. Nowadays, high-level restaurants and cafeteria here and there are the place that white collar get together, and the popular KFC and McDonald’s becomes children’s favourite. Under the globlization, the diet structure and the eating habit of mankind has been converted with the expansion of culture.The paper aims to make an analysis to the differences of food culture between the Chinese and Western as well as the mutual supplementation and combativeness of these food cultures under the globlization. It also can promote the mutual understanding between the people of the East and West. A thorough analysis with the contrasting methods of the differences of these different food culture has been made.
[Key word]:
Chinese and Western food cultures; Cross-cultural communication; Differences

[摘要] 5000年的历史使中国早已有了博大精深的饮食文化；而另一边，西方国家的逐渐崛起也使它们拥有了自成体系的饮食文明。 然而今天除了中国传统的小吃外，西方的食品在中国也随处可见了，高级的西餐厅﹑咖啡馆成了白领的聚集地；更明显的是那些肯德基、麦当劳，几乎已经成为小朋友的最爱。在全球化的条件下，人类的饮食结构甚至是习惯开始随着文化的发展而逐渐变化着。本文旨在通过分析中西方饮食文化的差异以及在现代社会的影响下这些饮食文化的互补和兼容来了解饮食文化的方方面面。这样做的目的同样还能增进中西方人民的相互了解，促进交流。这份报告通过对比的方法深入说明饮食文化的差异，并进行了分类分析。
[关键词]： 中西饮食文化；跨文化交际； 差异

[Introduction] Qian Mu, the master of Chinese culture, has once said:Different culture leads to different science.Chinese take a fancy to ensemble while the west choose separation.[1] (国学大师钱穆先生在《现代中国学术论衡》中云：“文化异，斯学术亦异。中国重和合，西方重分别”) That's the difference between Chinese food and west food. There are both culinary art(烹饪）and seasoning（调味）in Chinese food. The original taste of the food ingredients are not important. Most concerned is pursuing the final taste after seasoning. That's the key of Chinese food. In the film directed by Xu Ke has shew the ''满汉全席" to the audience . That is the tidemark of Chinese catering culture, which means a full, formal banquet, combining Manchurian and Chinese delicacies. So China’s diet has a history almost as long as that of Chinese civilization. But in western countries, ancient thinkers devoted less attention to the food problem than the Chinese philosophers did. In China, diet is actually the contents of our daily lives, but why we call it culture? That is because of the special status of the diet in the Chinese culture, and it also has a great distinction between China and the west. Receiving the influence of respective cultural tradition, the Chinese and western dietary culture has absolutely different characteristics. Such characteristic has enriched the research value of dietary culture. This paper endeavors to analyze the cultural differences that people rooted causes in Chinese and Western food cultures from the perspectives of concept, etiquette and content. Through a comprehensive study of this subject, we can find out a joint enhancing the communication between China and the west. It also can be a great help to the communication of the Chinese and western people.

[Differences in Concepts] Comparing with the Chinese diet, western diet tastes invariable, as simple as chewing the candle, but the sense tells them: We must eat them all because of the nutrition. And then they put it bluntly, just like refueling machine. [2] The concept of western diet is compatible with the whole western philosophy. Metaphysics is the main feature of western philosophy. Such kind of philosophy brings vitality to western culture, so the natural sciences, psychology and methodology achieve a rapid development. In some other aspects, such philosophy proposition is a significantly obstacle, such as the dietary culture, which is the inevitable thing to drop behind, and just the metaphysics of methodology marks everywhere. In celebration, it stresses tableware, stresses the staple, stresses the servings, and stresses the color and shape mix of raw materials. But no matter how luxurious the grade is; from Los Angeles to New York, only one taste of steak, it is no art to speak of. And as dishes, the chicken is chicken; steak is steak, even in groups, which are also conducted in a shallow dish. In a dish of "French Muttonchops", one side is potato mud, and muttonchops sits next to it, another side is allocation of cooking beans, and plus a few tablets of tomato. Color is on clear, but the tastes of the various materials are separated, not to reconcile, and the entire flavor is also simple and clear.[3] Chinese diet is a sense of beauty diet. When people sample dishes, they often say this dish is "delicious", and that dish is "not delicious". But if you ask what is meant by "delicious", why "tasty" and what are the aspects of "delicious", I am afraid that it will be difficult to answer. This shows that which Chinese people hanker on a diet is just the “mood” that is difficult for one to say anything. Even using the "color, flavor, shape and implement "which people often said to make the" realm "reification, I am afraid it is still difficult to crown all. The beauty pursuit of Chinese cuisine is clearly overriding the rational pursuit. This concept of diet is also coinciding with the traditional Chinese philosophy. Chinese philosophy as a representative of oriental philosophy, its distinguishing features is the macro, visual, vague and evasive. Chinese cooking method is to reconcile, and the ultimate goal is to reconcile out of a beautiful taste. The main stress is measure and the overall co-ordination. It contains a wealth of dialectics of Chinese philosophy, and all these depend on the degree of the wonderful flavor and harmony of dish. The ever-changing within degrees decides the changeable of Chinese food, and it also decides the characteristics of Chinese food as well as the characteristics on each of the chefs.
[Differences in etiquette ] In the novel which wrote four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco, there is a scene that describe the foreign son in law visited his mother in law, and some cultural conflict happened in that time. He didn't know Chinese are modest all the time, when his mother in law show she is good at cooking but the mouth was said:" This dish is too bad to eat, without flavor, please just have taste". [3]The American son in law was totally misunderstand, he was no only criticized the cooking but also show off his idea. Then, the Chinese mother was refused to attend their wedding. There is report said:nine of ten mother in law don't like their foreign son in law. They have totally different values and way of thinking include the diet etiquette. (《喜福会》中洋女婿在会见未来丈母娘时，尽管做了很多功课，还是没办法使中国丈母娘满意，） The Chinese and Western dietary patterns can be very different, and these differences affect the national character. In China, a celebration, no matter what, there will be only one form, as sitting together, sharing one feast. Banquet uses round table, which has created a unity of form, which is courtesy, comity atmosphere. Cate are in the center of the table. It is the objects for people to appreciate and taste, and it is also an intermediate of communication. People toast each other and share the vegetables, which reflect the mutual respect between people in the face of the good things, also show the virtues of comity. Although from the health point of view, this approach has obvious deficiencies, but it is in our national "happy" mentality, it reflects the classical Chinese philosophy area of "and" impact for future generations. It is helpful to facilitate the collective emotional exchanges and consequently difficult to reform. The western-style banquets, although the food and wine are very important, but in fact they are just foil. The core of Banquet is friendship, by the conversation with the guests who sitting next to achieve the purpose of recreation. If making an analogous compare between the recreation of the banquets and dancing, it may be said that the Chinese banquet is like group dance, and the western banquet is like men and women dancing. This shows that communication purpose of Chinese banquet and western banquet are very obvious. Only the Chinese banquet is more popular in the communion, but western banquet shows guests reflected in the friendship between neighbours. The more obvious differences between Chinese and western dietary patterns is buffet dinner which is popular in the West. This method is to display all food, and everybody is picking not fixed in his or her places to eat. They walk freely. This approach would provide the emotional interaction between individuals; they never need to put every word on the table. This also shows a western personality and self-respect. However, all the eating without jamming lacks the real affective tone like the Chinese people. Some people want to put the buffet in the Chinese food, but I think it is not feasible. Zhang Qijun in the Principles of Cooking tells us the main reason: "First, buffet is not like drinking tea. Drinking tea is just the thing to you before you choose, and displayed in the cafeteria there is a large number of food to eat, so when you want to have it, it is cold yet. Chinese cuisine will serve hot, if cold, nothing to eat. Secondly, buffet dishes only can do hard dishes and beneficial dishes. Then you can access for large plots. And those most representative of the Chinese culinary arts, such as the tender and lighter dishes, are not in this show. Third, the buffet can do stewing pot; it means a big pot in terms of food. Any sophisticated cooking of a dish can only be cooked in a pot at two most, and it is not able to cook the dish for dozens of people. So it will not be delicious, never talking of the taste. Under such circumstances, it is clear that the use of buffet dinner will deny Chinese culinary arts. "The Chinese people are drinking around the table to show harmony and unity, but the buffet has broken such pattern. It raises the personal independence and self-mentioned at the first place. This is the opposite of the scale of the great unity of all Chinese traditional culture.
[Differences in content ] Diet content is the question of what to eat. In this question, different nation will give different answer. The western people prefer meat diet, because they pay more attention to the absorption of Animal protein and fat. In their diet structure, there are consist of beef, chicken, pork, mutton and fish.It's due to the western nomadic, sailing associated national culture.Sailing and nomads do fishing and hunting for a living, and this decided their main source of food. It's not only comes to diet, in many other aspect like living tools, they used to use animals. However, China was under the influence of Chinese agricultural civilization. Staple food is the grain, assisted by a few vegetables and meat. It's also under the influence of the buddhist culture, which said "Animals are 'living', and the creatures is not being killed, even been eaten.'[4] With the improvement of living standards and nutrition of the concept of the popularity.There are more and more meat diet appeared at Chinese table.In the other hand, there are more vegetable diet come into the diet structure of the west people.The western diet structure has gradually changed by Chinese.

[Conclusion]
In conclusion，there are all kinds of differences between Chinese and western diet.And to some extent, these differences are relative. Increasingly improvement in the communication of the Chinese and western culture contributed to the western diet culture uninterrupted mix together.
Under the globalization,Intercultural communication makes the variety of diet culture constantly complement with compatible process.The communication of diet culture are existed in the "Great Conveyor Belt " of the integrative process of the global economy and culture between different culture. During the study will make people more understand each other, and let them enjoy the different feeling that the diet bring to us.

[References]
[1] 钱穆《现代中国学术论衡》 香港：生活.读书.新知三联书店出版社，2005.
[2] 陈洁.得心应手---西餐礼仪 北京：世界知识出版社, 2005.
[3] Amy Tan 《The Joy Luck Club》(喜福会） 美国 1989
[4] 唐鲁孙.天下味 .桂林:广西师范大学出版社,2004.
[5]《无量寿经》