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CulturalDifferences from the Perspective of Chinese

andAmerican Marriage Customs

由中美婚俗看中西方文化差异

Introduction

Different countries have different cultures, beliefs, and customs.Many of the most obvious differences can be discovered by comparing culturewith culture, customs with customs. Marriage customs are one of the basicbuilding blocks of culture. It plays an important role in culturalunderstanding and communication. As one of the most representative customs involvedin culture, it can reveal much about individuals and societies beliefs,standards as well as core values.

Generally speaking, marriage customs can be reflected inpreparation, wedding ceremony, and some preferences for something such aswhere, when or what. For a person, marriage means the combination of twopersons. For the family, marriage means the birth of new kinship. But for thewhole country, marriage is a symbol of traditions, social thoughts, as well ascultural heritage. Based on these, research on marriage customs will make usunderstand better about traditions as well as cultures.

During the past two decades, with the rapid development of scienceand technology, great changes have taken place all over the world. Certaintendency of globalization brings increasing thinking exchanges and frequentlymultinational cultural communication. Different countries show culturaldifferences in the process of international cooperation and competition.Otherwise, under the influence of cross-cultural communication, both Chineseand American marriage customs have changed a lot in recent years. In order togain a better view of Chinese and Western cultural factors and limitations,more detailed examples and topics will be discussed in this paper.

In summary, this paper will not only give aglimpse of the differences of Chinese and American marriage customs but try tofind out the integration of Chinese and Western culture. In this way, we can learn more about thewestern history and traditions which is helpful for dealing with culturalproblems and difficulties.

Literature Review

Researchershave done some researches related to marriage customs and culture. Under thebackground of modernization and globalization, marriage customs are changingfrom the traditional to modern one. Many scholars have focused on thetraditional differences from different aspects. From the perspective of thechanges of marriage customs, cultural integration seems to be an inevitable tendency.According to Charles Mitchell(2008), a formal definition about culture is thatculture is a set of learned core values, beliefs, standards, knowledge, morals,laws, and behaviors. A societys culture is passed from generation togeneration, and aspects such as religion, customs are interrelated.