What culture do the Chinese have?

Answer 1

Well, let me begin by saying that I wish you could have been more specific with your question because it's nearly impossible to sum up an entire culture in a paragraph. So I'll just do my best to give you some of the most notable traditions and values.

The Chinese culture, although closed off to the rest of the world for many many years, is very welcoming to foreigners. If you plan to visit China and you don't look Chinese, then you can expect to become a type of mobile Kodak moment. People will come up to you and ask to have their picture taken with you almost everywhere you go, especially children. This is especially prevalent is some of the smaller cities of China. This used to be just as common in places like Beijing, but not so much after the Olympics.

In China, people are not guaranteed nearly as many of the rights we have here in the USA. As a traveler there, it's important to know that if a driver hits you, they will only have to pay a small fine. There are also several political events that are not appropriate to talk about. People who do talk about them, "disappear." Many of them have never heard of the protesting in Tiananmen Square because the government has gone out of their way to keep it on the down low.

As far as families go, there are usually two parents and a single child (due to the One-Child Policy enacted to prevent overpopulation). A lot of grandparents live with their children and grandchildren. Elders command a lot of respect there. They are seen as very wise.

Schools there are massive. They have high schools the size of small colleges there. Nearly all of them have some type of uniform, even the public schools. Many will also have rules about dying your hair, wearing makeup, nail polish and jewelry. Some schools require girls to wear their hair up. There are a lot of specialty high schools. I actually did an exchange program at a high school who's specialty was the tourism industry and you could major in things like hotel management, being a tour guide and even flight attendants. There's usually some kind of morning exercise, our school has a Chinese man counting and there were simple exercises associated with each number. In class, you are expected to stand with the teacher calls on you and the students are extremely disciplined. No one talks unless they're addressed by the teacher. You can take classes such as tea art (where you learn the beautiful hand movements associated with an almost ritualized tea making and serving) and calligraphy.

Almost no one drives there. The driving is so crazy that in the cities, nearly everyone takes taxis. The road is most left to delivery trucks and taxis both going about 90 mph.

Places like Pizza Hut, McDonald's, and KFC are considered some of the coolest places to go eat. Pizza Huts in China are actually much nicer and people get kinda dressed up for them.

You'll see almost all western models. Even going to the movie theatre they had American movies that had either Chinese actor voices taped over the English or subtitles. You'll also see a lot of teenagers wearing T-shirts with English words that make almost zero sense. The whole point of it is to just wear Western looking words.

The basic stuff you can look up on Wikipedia, this is all the stuff I didn't think you could get from your average tour book.

Hope it helped. :)

Answer 2

China, is an very diverse place of cultures. Forget the stereotypes you hear, for those are completely idiotic crap. The only reason why all Chinese are seen as "yellow skinned", are because most of the Chinese who come to America are from eastern China; the ethnic Han Chinese. Those are the yellow-skinned Chinese people. Sure, they make about 55% of China's population. But how about all of the other Chinese people who aren't Hans? China, shares borders with India and Nepal. When it comes to borders, there will always be ethnic diffusion. Same case with China. In the Indian-Chinese borders, there are Indo-Aryan Chinese people. Basically Indian-Chinese people. They are no longer Hindus, but they are Buddhists. There are also the Tibetan people, they speak their own language the Tibetan language. There are Arab-Chinese and even German-Chinese! A lot of Chinese people with European descent also live in Macau, where the Portuguese language is an official state language in Macau. Turks, also make up one of China's big populations. The Kazakh language, has a high amount of speakers in China. Mongols, live in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. They speak the Mongolian language. The others, are indegenous groups such as Taiwanese aboregines and Hokkiens.