Blog Assignment 3 - Chinese and American Nonverbal Communication - Due Sep. 21st

A certain culture can determine everything. People from different cultures speak different languages with different accents, eat different foods with different condiments, wear different clothes with different styles, and have different behaviors with different standards, while the last difference can cause some trouble. Because of the different standards of behaviors, people’s nonverbal communications, commonly known as body languages, may differ. We can see this with the following examples of Chinese and American body languages.

When foreigners come to China, if they stay long enough, perhaps the most attractive thing that motivates them to stay or live here is “the milk of human kindness”. As a person who has lived in China for 19 years and in the United States for nearly one month, I was always trying to find what this “milk of human kindness” is. Of course there is an element of truth that friends and family care about each other more than people from other parts of the world, but another element I found very obvious is body languages.

There are many common scenes in China that cannot be easily seen in the United States: boys on streets walk together holding each other’s shoulders, singing perhaps; girls on roads running together hand in hand; friends, no matter boys or girls, behave so closely to each other with “normal” body contact, like leaking each other etc. Attention! They are not gays or lesbians, but close friends together, with special ways of showing love and intimacy. I still remember a American friend asked me very surprisingly: how many homo-sexual people are there in China? I had to explain very patiently to him that those people he saw were just close friends, because he wouldn’t believe me anyway. It was quite normal that a westerner of 20 years old might be shocked by another culture’s “strange and unique” body language.

The other difference of nonverbal communication between Chinese and Americans is that Americans move really a lot more than Chinese. In China, it’s commonly accepted that people speak with some gestures, but too much gestures, shaking heads, waist or even the whole body all the time while speaking may be considered ridiculous. Affected by the ancient Chinese philosophers’ ideas, Chinese people are more likely to “stay” and behave quietly instead of “move”. That is a very important reason why China has never invaded any country or area in the world.

However, except for the above differences, the nonverbal language of Chinese and Americans are generally the same. We shake hands with new people, nod our heads when we agree, and even the gestures mean the same.

Nonverbal communication occupies a central place when we communicate with each other, so it’s very important for foreigners to fit in the new environment and learn the new meanings of nonverbal communication. It’s another beauty we will acknowledge in a new culture.