Food Culture(中美饮食文化差异).doc

Food CultureGood afternoon, everyone! Today I want to talk something about the food culture in china and western countries. And I hope you will enjoy it. Generally speaking, we Chinese think food is very important to man. People often associate food with important holidays and the chance to meet guests. The Chinese food not only is very delicious and tasty but also very pleasing to your senses and many of dishes have very beautiful and interesting names. We Chinese have the food culture of our own which are quite different from the western counties. In the western countries, people pay more attention to the nutrition of food rather than the looks of it. Whats more, the cuisine and table manners are quite different from ours in a great extent. . Ok, now I will show you some differences between China and western countries. First, its about the special way to make greeting in china It is a very common practice we Chinese people say "Have you had your meal?" when they meet each other around the time before or after meals. Sometimes they even ask this question everywhere even in toilets. In fact, it is a kind of greeting to communicate with each other just like English tend to begin a communication with weather.But foreigners cannot understand that because they think why you ask me this. They tend to think you want to invite them to dinner .However, Chinese think food is very important and essential to people so it shows some care and concern about you. That is why they ask others if they had food yet?Ok, second, what I want to say is everything is eatable in China. It seems that we eat everything and everything can be eatable in Chinese food, whether it comes from land or from the sky or from the sea or whether it is wild or domestic. However, Foreigners cannot imagine we eat the food like snakes, dogs and even frogs. When we sell the meat from the animal and poultry, we normally sell it as a whole or cut it from the whole body. There is an American teacher didn't want to buy and eat pork when she first came to China because she saw the meat cut from a certain part of the pig. Ok, now, lets talk something about the names of the dishes in China which very often puzzles foreigners a lot that we ask and talk so much when we order our food in the restaurant. One reason is we ask what the food or the dish is and try to clarify it because you sometimes never know what the food is just according the name of the food until it is put on your table in the restaurant just. because sometimes the food is very simple but the name is very obscure(晦涩). For example one of the dishes is called "Ants Climbing the Trees." But the food is simple potato noodles and bits of meat in it, while most of western food has a simple and clear name and you know what it is when you hear the name. For instance, there is a traditional food call "fish and chips" in the UK. You see it is very obvious it is fried fish and potato chips. The reason for this atmosphere in China is on the one hand people want to tell you the way it cooks such as cook, and on the other hand they give it butiful good names so that you have a good imagination of it and have a good appetite. Finally ,usually ,there is to much food to eat at meals in ChinaThis is because we Chinese think it very impolite if we don't cook the food enough for the guests so we normally cook more food than guests eat. If you finish your food at meal, the host and hostess usually add more and more food in your dish or bowl without asking you whether you want it or not so as to show they are polite to the guests. They will keep saying, "eat more" and in English we have the expression "help yourself". Americans never force you to eat more. If you stop eating, they tend to think you are full. So sometime foreigners feel very helpless when the host and hostess to put more food in their dishes and bowls and they can do nothing but eat more and more until they are completely full. So some foreigners learn to know they always leave some food in their bowls or dishes in order to avoid more food to be added when are invited to dinner in Chinese family. That is the differences in food culture between China and the West.