Abstract

Tips is common in people’s daily life in America and China as well. Tips is one thing that Chinese people meet when travel in America. The two countries have differences in tips. This paper studies tips from 3 perspectives, the origin and characteristics of tips, differences in tips giving between America and China, analysis of differences in tips. Besides, the paper also analyses the differences from the perspectives of the historical background, economy, and society, which is expected to aid people in understanding tips.

Key words:  tips; China & America; differences; cultural analysis

摘 要

无论是美国还是中国，小费在人们的日常生活中都不是陌生的。当中国人在美国旅游的时候，小费是不可少的。这两个国家在小费上存在很大区别。本文主要从3个方面来研究小费：小费的起源及特征，中美小费的差异，以及导致小费差异的原因。另外，本文也从历史背景，经济和社会的角度来分析差异，从而能够帮助人们理解小费。

关键词： 小费；中美； 区别； 文化分析

1. Introduction
With the advancement of science and technology, China is stepping toward to the top of the world. Besides, people can discover that China exchanges with other countries more often than before. So it is common to see that more and more Chinese people go abroad to travel, study and work. However, when people go to a foreign country, especially for the first time, they will find the life style or habits are different from those of China. It will take a long time for people to adapt to the life there. For example, in catering industry, people from China and America have different habits, as well as the manners. There are lots of differences between China and America, which also include those in tips. Tips in western countries can be found very common in people’s life. For example, when people there have their hair cut at the barber’s or go to travel or have dinner, tips is a convention in most cases. However, in China, tips-giving is not a must on every occasion of receiving services. That is to say, there exist large differences in tips between China and America, which will affect the communication between people.
Today, this paper mainly aims to take a further look at the differences in tips from the cultural perspective. In fact, nowadays tips has gradually emerged in Chinese people’ life and even becomes a part of their life. In contrast, in America, tips is very common. Most people don’t know why there are great differences between China and America in tips. From the perspective of culture, tips is concerned with history or economy or society and so on. In fact, in the early 17th century, tips-giving had emerged.However, in China, tips-giving is not much common. So many differences in tips may lead to the miscommunication between China and America. Even though tips-giving has not become common in China, people can learn a lot from tips about Americans’ life, character etc.