Abstract:

Culture is the sum of material and spiritual wealth of the historical development of human society in the process of creation. Each country has its own culture. Culture is the most important symbol to distinguish the nation. In English, culture and society are interchangeable synonyms on many occasions. With the rapid development of science and technology, the skills of communication become more and more advanced. In the context of globalization, different cultural exchanges between China and the West are linked much more frequently and closely. But the continuous exchange leads to the cultural differences between China and the West. Every country has its own culture, including diet cultures, etiquette cultures, regional cultures, festival cultures, educational cultures and so on. Someone knows little or lacks necessary understanding about Chinese and Western cultural differences, and this will cause many problems in the process of communication. This paper mainly describes the differences and comparisons between China and the West in terms of diet cultures, etiquette cultures, custom cultures and education cultures, so as to prevent culture shock and embarrassment while communicating with others.

Keywords: Chinese, Western, Cultural differences

摘  要：

文化是人类社会发展过程中所创造的物质和精神财富的总和。文化是区分民族最重要的标志。每个国家都有自己的文化。在英语中，文化和社会在很多场合是可以互换的同义词。随着科技的快速发展，沟通技能越来越发达。在全球化的背景下，中西方文化交流越来越频繁和紧密，但这种持续不断的交流引起了文化差异。每个国家都有自己的文化，包括饮食文化，礼仪文化，宗教文化，节日文化，教育文化等。有的人对于中西文化差异缺乏了解，导致在交流过程中出现很多问题。本文对中西方不同的饮食，礼仪，习俗，教育文化差异进行描述与比较，防止在与西方人交流中造成文化冲突以及陷入尴尬。

关键词：中国，西方，文化差异

1 Introduction
As is known to all, everything is connected with each other. Cultural differences are no exception. Different countries have different cultures, and these differences have effects on people’s way of thinking and their attitudes towards life.The more frequent the interpersonal relationship is, the more necessary understanding national culture background is. Different cultures in the way of thinking, values, languages, values, world views and social norms lead to differences in verbal and non-verbal behavior .
 Chinese and Western cultures are obvious and all of them have advantages. With the acceleration of economic globalization and information exchange, China and the West become gradually integrative. Chinese diets have begun to focus on the nutrition, health and science of cooking, and the Western diets start to pay attention to color, flavor, and taste. Chinese and Western diet culture develop rapidly in communication. People will enjoy delicious, healthy and nutritive food.