These were sent to me by a friend working at Reuters. They are all the copyright of Yang Liu, a Chinese raised in Germany, and appear in her book “Ost trifft West” (East meets West). Her biography is at the end of this post. These images depict differences & commonality between groups in their approaches, perspectives, and moments in history.
In the images, Blue –> Westerner and Red –> Asian.
Confronting a Problem
Sense of Self
Weekend Activities
How to Express Anger
Queue when Waiting
Status of Leader
Relationships
Punctuality
Transportation
Update: See this JapanNewbie.com’s additional narrative on the pictures.
Update II: at the request of the artist, a number of images were removed from the original post. Please visit the artist’s webpage below to see more and learn about shows of the artist’s work.
Update III: Yang Liu drew my attention to an “interview” with me in a Chinese newspaper. The “reporter” of that article never contacted let alone interviewed me.
Images are from the book “Ost trifft West” (East meets West)
Hermann Schmidt Verlag Mainz
-Differences between Germans and Chinese
- A diary of Yang Liu
@Yang
Liu Design, www.yangliudesign.com
BIOGRAPHY: Yang Liu was born in 1976. In age of 13, she moved with her parents to Germany. At the age of 17, she started her studies at the University of Arts in Berlin. After her master degree, she worked as a designer inSingapore, London, Berlin and New York City. 2004 she has started her own design studio. While she is giving workshops and lectures on several international conferences, she was as well as teaching at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and theGlasgow school of Art. Her works had been awarded with several international design awards and are shown in Museums and became partof the collections.
Anonymous says:
totally nonsense !
i was born in au,at the moment living in beijing , reckon the author just take a guess.
patrea says:
It is a great symbolism. But how do you know all these are true for western people?
umaid says:
hi
very good and different way to express the difference,,,,,its a bitter reality…..
earh says:
This information is very useful for spoken. I usually use this every term to different groups of students. The comparison is good except to other perspectives. As one of the Asians, WE do not use chopsticks in our country. Since 2 western countries colonized my country hundred years ago, people in my country are well-influenced by the western culture. First, we use chopsticks in Korean, Japanese and Chinese restaurants only. Second, we take a shower every morning or during daytime, we drink beer and sausages. Third, we always have queue every time like in fast-foods, paying bills even in the toilet. Elders do not abuse being one of the elders because there is special queue for them. Fourth, we dont eat with loud noise, this is disrespect to the food on the table. Last but not the least, we love soda or softdrinks, there are 4 different cola company in my country.
cosmic4444 says:
It’s cool, but some of the blue points are very German-centric (e.g queuing or puncutality) and wouldn’t apply to other western cultures at all (e.g. Italy or France).
anonymous says:
this just explains the big diffrences and it’s obvious it may vary for each country just because it doens’t aplly for you country doens’t mean it’s nonsence
Teacher of English says:
Wow, thanks for sharing these. I’m an American living in China. These are quite accurate of US and China Culture. I’m leaning to accept that the people here don’t get in a line to order food or other items. I’m going to share these differences in my classes.
Nick says:
Hello…. It’s the reason of many documentary… however I think there are mistakes on the “punctuality” and on “queue when waiting”. It should be opposites…. did you hear about “British punctuality”? and what about the episode which took place in Japan involving nuclear energy and earthquake? That time people was waiting religiously in line, in queue… not as we have in the American continent, for example…. Anyway, congratulations for this job of study our differences… I believe it is interesting and can help us to learn more about the people and about ourselves.