A Study on the differences between Western friendship and Chinese friendship.
According to Oxford that Friendship is refer to a relationship between friends or the state of being friends. Both China and Western view friendship as treasure. While the definition of friendship in the two areas is not the same. In china the friendship is mean that the deep feeling and intimidate relationship between friends. While in western the friendship is point to a wide range of interpersonal relationship, and friendship in the very great degree is a partnership.
As we know, Friendship is necessary part in people’s daily life. Friendship is to our life what salt is to dasher. Every people has friends, no one can be isolate from the society and without communication with other people. When you are sad, you need friends to share your sorrow. When you are cheerful you also need friends to partake of your happiness. Just as bacon said lack of a true friend is the most pure most poor lonely; No friendship is but a piece of drought.
With the opening policy, more and more western culture into China. As the difference in social and cultural background, the understanding of friendship in Western is quite different from that in China. Sometimes the misunderstanding will cause some superfluous trouble. It’s no denying that we should find out the differences between Western friendship and Chinese friendship. Therefore I will analysis the difference of the friendship between Chinese and western friendship from the three aspects.
First of all, the scope of friends is different. On the one hand, the definition of friendship is different. Just as Louis cha once pointed out that Chinese regard good friends as brother, and take an oath of brotherhood. They even swear to die in the same day. While in western society, only people who fall in love with each other then vow to death. This shows that Chinese always view friendship as a mutual trust, confide relationship. Compared to Chinese, western friends’ is wider. For westerner, no matter a new friend or a business partner, can her deserved to be called friend. Friendship in western can be superficial, temperate. It can also be strong and
perpetual. This phenomenon is result from western open attitude. They can make friends with anyone in anywhere.
On the other hand, the topic range is not the same. In China，friends run through all aspects. Form life to work, they talk every thing under the sun. Nevertheless, friends only confined in one area in western. It won’t extend to other areas. In different areas, they have different friends. For instance, westerners make a friend in gas station, then they will just talk about cars, they won’t talk about their family.
Secondly, in China, the time of establish and maintain friendship is different from western. In China, if you want to build up a strong friendship with someone it will cost you lots of time and energy. Only after frequent communication, can both parties become intimate. However, westerners can make friends within only one minute. But it’s also difficult for them to reach intimate state. That always causes causes misunderstanding. When Chinese think that they have become friend’s .While they find that westerners have already forgot their last conversation at the same time.
After building up friendship, what we should do is to maintain it. Chinese more expect to own an everlasting friendship. Most of them have some steadfast friendship which last in all their life. In addition, the friendship won’t disappear with changeable environment. On the contrary western friendship is relevant to specific condition and situation. Once the environment change, the friendship won’t last forever. Just as Sophia Rolland said that not a friendship is forever, sometimes, friendship process is short, limited. As we know, westerner admire individualism, they prefer fresh things and people. When resetting to a new place, they will make new friends constantly. And meanwhile lose contact with old friends. Then the old friendship will disappear, because of the long distance and lack of connection.
Thirdly, friends’ responsibility is different. Chinese endowed friendship with great responsibility. They have high expectations to friends. For them the purpose of making friends is to mutual help and look out for each other. In Chinese culture, you must prepare for taking risk and sacrifice anytime. As a saying goes, depend on parents when at home, depend on friends when outside. The friends is deserve to trust in Chinese culture. To a great degree, Chinese depend on their friends a lot. Whereas,
westerners think friends is someone you can exchange hobbies and feeling. The friendship is an easy relationship. So they expect to own an independent friendship. And they don’t like to rely on friends too much. Edward Stew-ard & Milton Bennet discusses friendship that although many westerners maintain friendly and informal relationship, but they rarely have the kind of deep and hold many years in a relationship. They choose their friends, at the same time; they also make friends with social or work obligations separately.
After discussing so many differences between Western friendship and Chinese friendship .You must confused that why there exiting differences? Totally speaking, it is result from the different culture basic. What is known to us is that in the past, China was a agriculture society for thousands of year. The agriculture required the labor to have concentration of cooperation. So the interpersonal relation was quite important. And friendship was one kind of interpersonal relation also being valued. As a result, it became a tradition to influent us until now. But the western culture was base on commercial community. They valued individualism and advocated personal freedom. So they can’t understand why Chinese will offer some material or money to help their friends.
From what we have mentioned above, we can draw a conclusion that there are many divergences about friendship between China and western. But what we should do is to respect and understand each other. After realizing the differences, we can dispel the misunderstanding and remove obstruction in communication. We should try our best to build up a favorable between Chinese and westerners.
The differences between Western friendship and Chinese friendship
