A few years ago I had to ability to take a communication across cultures class. It was one of my most interesting classes I have taken throughout my college career. It is understood that culture is learned patterns of behavior and attitudes shared by a group of people (Martin & Nakayama, 2018, p. 84). As part of our class we had an assignment where we would have to communicate with a group of students from China. Our professor gave us a packet full of questions we could use to ask the students from China. We had the opportunity to be able to come up with our own questions to ask them as well.
It was hard to find time to communicate with the other students due to the time difference and how busy our schedules were. The main purpose of this assignment was to dive farther into cultural values. Cultural values is defined as the worldview of a cultural group and its set of deeply held beliefs (Martin & Nakayama, 2018, p. 95). China celebrates the Chinese New Year also known as Spring Festival in January. Just like Christmas for Western countries, it is a time to be with family. Families will decorate about a half month before the actual holiday. Decorations are everything red such as red lanterns, making home the main focus of the festival.
On New Years Eve the family gets together for a family reunion. The reunion is then celebrated with a meal of meat, vegetables, seafood, and dumplings. Children are given money in red envelopes from the time they are born until they are teenagers. I learned that the red envelopes are meant to dispell evil spirits. Most importantly I learned that the beliefs are shared by the people of China.
References
Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2019). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
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