Fostering Intercultural Communication

Last semester when I was in Harbin, China, four American friends of my English teacher came to visit China. Three of my friends and I volunteered to show them around in Harbin. So on Sunday afternoon, we went to a famous commercial street in Harbin called Central Street and spent a wonderful afternoon together. In the evening, we chose a Chinese restaurant which is famous for its traditional Chinese food to eat.  Only after the dinner, I realized that you could never imagine what could be a culture shock for a foreigner when you were a local yourself.

In China, as hosts we ordered food for our guests. So we ordered three types of dumplings, traditional nutritious slowly cooked soup, and some dishes. When all the food was served, the guests were looking at us with their eyes full of question. It was until then we realized that in America, usually they ordered their own food even it’s on other’s treat. But in China, we share the dishes, dumplings, soup together. After explaining to them, they would like to try eating together and learn to use chopsticks. But when we told them what inside the dumplings are donkey meat and dog meat, they laughed and thought we were kidding. Even after we explained to them that in China donkey meat was considered as one of the most delicious meat in the world, they still did not  want to try. Because usually they only tried meat that they know, such as  pork, mutton, chicken meat  and thought it’s kind of rude to eat dog and monkey meat.

In addition, they told us they didn’t feel comfortable when they took bus, because the bus was crowded and it’s unavoidable that people touched each other from time to time. But as Americans they thought it is important to respect personal room and they called it “elbow room”. So they feel really awkward to take bus.

Although the guests really enjoyed the traditional Chinese food and it was quite a lot of fun during the dinner, but I think we could do better as hosts if we knew better about American culture. It is very easy for us to make assumption when we were quite familiar with what we were doing. But what we were doing every day could be a shock to people from other culture. And sometimes, if we do not pay attention to it, we may went beyond the bottom moral line of other cultures or even violate laws of other cultures .As such, it is of great importance to learn more about other culture as well as respect other culture.