The culture artifact---Taxi, How it is difference in China?

Taxi is one of the most important transportation vehicles in China. Different from the United State, the rate of car owner divide by the population in China has a huge different than the United States.

The vehicles for hiring were first appeared in England. In the early eighteenth century, a rich man will hire a cabriolet when he plans to have a tour. People use the abbreviate word “cab” as the vehicles for hiring. The most common cause of “Taxi-car” was a story in a spring evening in 1906. Aron went to see a opera with his girlfriends, and when he went back home, the driver of carriage let he spend ten times of normal fees. So that Aron had conflict with the driver because he don’t want to pay that much. Finally, he got hurt by the driver. When he recovers from hunt, he asked a watchmaker friend to make a count machine to cars and want to make “Taxi-car” to instead of the carriage.

Chinese people mostly use bicycles, bus or taxi as transportation. The huge population make it is impossible to allow everyone has their own cars. So that taxi becomes much important as the population grows. During the busy hours, the buses are always full and taxi becomes very popular. You can see so many people stand on sides of the street and looking for an empty taxi. However, the taxies are always full.

In the United States, taxi is an expansive transportation. Mostly be found in huge cities, train station or airfield. People need to plan or to call for a taxi in most places. In my opinion, that because of the expansive manpower fee and the huge percentage of car owner in the United States.

Thus, the taxi in China is a very important vehicle and I believe it will become much important in the future, because the population explosion is a huge problem that hardly be solved.

What’s the difference between Ghost Day in China and the Halloween?

My second essay was based on Halloween, and I described a little of a similar festival in China—“The Ghost Day”, here I will describe more information about ghost day and I will compare the similar and the difference between Ghost day and Halloween in details.
In China, there is a festival which has a similar meaning with Halloween. We call it “Ghost Day”. There are several Ghost days based on lunar calendar in China. The Ghost day can be explained as the festival of ghosts. The famous ghost days are: March the third, July the seventh and QingMing festival, October the first. In the southern east of China, people believe the ghost will come out on March the third and people set off firecrackers to get the ghost away. People in different regions focus on different of them. In my hometown, QingMing festival is a very important festival, people will visit a grave to cherish the memory of the dead in their family. (The graph on the left is what people do during QingMing festival.) On July the seventh of lunar calendar, people think the leader of the dead people will open the gate and allowed the ghosts came back to our world for a short time and enjoyed things they could not have at their world. People will prepare some food, cloth or money for Sacrificial offering those ghosts. On every October the first, there is another ghost day in which people think they should buried some winter cloth for the dead people in their family in the other world.
In summary, the ghost day in China is more liked festival of visiting graves and sadly festival, and mostly remember by older people. However, Halloween is more interesting and exciting to the teenagers.

What’s difference between Chinese and the United States Culture?

China has a long history, so that it has a self culture system, both on the value, tradition and also religions. However, the United State has a short history, and a mixture of so many cultures.
Since the first settlers’ boat, the “Mayflower” arrived North America four hundreds year before. More and more settlers came to this “New Found Land” from European, Africa and Asia for better life. The society tries to make all cultures work well. Different cultures start to have conflict and mixture because of different value or tradition. Finally, it produces a special culture: pluralistic culture. People from different regions, different cultures give the pluralistic culture power to develop, Americans tried to solve the conflict and find the common ideas.

However, China has its own culture system, and the long history make children have lots of literature and history to learn. Children learn lots of experience and get to know what they can’t do. On the other hand, it also make people don’t like changing. Thus, it slowed the developing of the society. That is one of the main problems make all of the countries which have a long history (Roman=Italy, Spain, Egypt, India, China…) becomes the “developing countries”.

In summary, the long history make China has its own value, tradition; and make Chinese people proud of our country. But it also affects the developing and the changing of the society. America has a mixture culture, so that it allows different values or traditions get together and absorb the good ways. The laws in the United states says “Property is a sacred and inviolable right” to make sure everyone from different cultures will work hard for themselves. In china, people think public property is the most important, everyone need to work for it. However, working for public property will be useful during the conflicts (just like war), people can get together because of it. However, when the conflicts end, people won’t work hard if they could not get themselves property. In China, we think a good friend is people who can pass hardship with you and enjoy riches with you. However, there were so many people can pass hardship with you but could not enjoy riches with others in the history of China. (Example: Lots of kings in China who begins a Dynasty)

For more information: http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/swzl/rwzg/index.htm Cultural of China
Chinese Government, cultural of China: http://www.chinaculture.org/index.html

Education of Chinese University

China has a different education style as the United Sates.

In China, students studied so hard in primary school, and become harder in senior and junior school. However, when a student gets into a university in China, they don’t need to study as hard as high school. That because the huge population and the few university in China. Here is an example, if we suppose there is 100 primary school, then, there is 20 famous high school, and only 1 famous university. (The “famous” I used above means the school or university which is very good) As a result, students studied so hard when they were young, but when they get into the University, they don’t need to worry about high level schools and only need to study for graduate. However, Chinese university is very easy to graduate, different from the university in the United States, many undergraduate students in China do not taken classes everyone, and they often borrow the notes from the classmates and review them right before the final exam.

For those students who in Senior or higher in the university, they always spend time on finding job, finding girlfriends instead of lessons. One of my friends told me that university students always forget what they learned before, that make some of the university students have a lower score than a graduating high school student in the same quiz.

Chinese Dragon

Chinese Dragon, or "Lung (龙)" is a major part of Chinese cultural. It is different from the Dragon European knows on shape and meanings.

In China, Dragon has the head as a KyLin(an animal means good things in China, hard to transfer to english), ear as a bull, mane as a lion, horn as a deer,mouse as a tiger,body as a snake, claw as a eagle, scale as a carp and tail like a goldfish. Lung also has different colors, most famous of them is gold as the king, yellow as water (Because the color of HuangHe river, one of the main rivers in China is yellow, that's caused by the lost of soil in upper stream).

Lung in China means happiness, immortality, procreation, fertility, activity and so many good emotion. Lung is also the design of Han nation, the main nation in China for thousands of years. Chinese Dragons were believed to ward off evil spirits. Take a look at a Chinese city and you will see dragons decorating ancient monuments and buildings, sometimes playing with a pearl or thunder-ball. One can also see dragons on the garments of ancient Chinese generals. The Emperor alone had nine of them on his brocade.

The goldern Lung means the king, the son of the sky. Thousands of years ago, Lung has been the design on the formal robe for the King in China. At that time, only the King and the family of the king can dress in Gold, and only the king can dress clothes with Lung on it. If anyone did not follow this rule, all of your famliy will be killed because goldern Lung means the Imperial authority, the power of the king.

Thus, Lung does not only means the power, rich , but also the Symble of people living in China. Chinese people are all pround on the Lung. If someone insult on Lung, all of Chinese people will become so angry, because it has been the symble in our blood.