Culture or civilization

    Complains made by the UK Queen about Chinese delegation's rudeness have been a viral subject in social medias. Some tried to explain the misunderstanding by culture difference while others high lightened the arrogance of the actual government of China.

     For me, it's not a culture diversity issue. We do have many cultural differences that can be interpreted as weird. for example, speaking loudly in restaurants or fighting to pay the bill. But things like spitting on the streets are more relevant to the level of civilization than to the origin of culture. In a big city like Shanghai, people do such things randomly while in the contryside, old people still keep this habit. One of my former colleagues said that English people spitted also a lot two hundreds years ago and they just forgot it. It's true that before 19th century, the sanitary condition was bad for all countries. But bad actions which harm people's health can be improved with the emphasis of education. In big cities, people are more civilised and understand easily the limit of their freedom. They will try to keep themselves healthy and make others healthy too, both in physic and mentality. It's advocated to be polite in public area, like subway stations or airports. 

     Civilization can be achieved by a nation's efforts and attention, but cultures are not comparable. American people like cultural studies, but sometimes, they generalized too much. I began to hate the word Identity, which defines excessively one person. The stereotypes live with you wherever you go. As labelled Chinese, we are not proud of many things, especialy the noisy communication. But we are considered as nice people in whole.

      I saw lots of criticism of islamic culture but sometimes I wondered which wouldl be the best way to communicate with them.  I recently fell in love with Hummus, a special sauce from Middle East. It makes me willing to understand more the people there. 

      Try to understand different cultures but try to be civilized everywhere.