Chapter 1 Understanding Culture 1.1 Culture: The Definitions 1.2 Characteristics of Culture 1.2.1 Culture is learnt 1.2.2 Culture is shared 1.2.3 Culture is transmissive 1.2.4 Culture affects human behavior 1.3 Classification of Culture 1.3.1 Visible and invisible culture 1.3.2 High and low culture 1.3.3 Mainstream and sub-culture 1.4 Culture, Race and Ethnicity 1.5 Comparing Cultures: An Anti-essentialist Perspective 1.5.1 Cultural differences and cultural similarities 1.5.2 Comparing individuals: behaviors: differences and similarities 1.5.3 Comparing cultures: Some problematic tendencies 1.6 Understanding Culture: A More Appropriate Attitude Chapter 2 Comparing Origins of Civilizations 2.1 Origins of Chinese and Western Civilizations 2.1.1 Origin of Chinese civilization 2.1.2 Origin of Western civilization 2.2 Differences between Chinese and Western Civilizations 2.2.1 River civilization vs, sea civilization 2.2.2 Agricultural civilization vs. trading civilization 2.2.3 'Family state' vs. city state 2.3 Origin and Development of Civilizations 2.4 Summary 2.5 Questions and Activities Chapter 3 Comparing Religious Beliefs 3.1 Major Chinese and Western Religions 3.1.1 Chinese religions 3.1.2 Western religions 3.2 Differences between Western and Chinese Religious Beliefs 3.2.1 Monotheistic vs. polytheistic 3.2.2 Salvation vs, a carefree life 3.2.3 Religion vs. politics 3.3 Summary 3.4 Questions and Activities Chapter 4 Comparing Values and Social Codes 4.1 Historical Influence and Values Shaping 4.1.1 Religious reformation and individual freedom 4.1.2 Self-reliance and the rugged individualists 4.1.3 Equality of opportunity and competition 4.1.4 Hard work and material wealth 4.1.5 Development of feudalism and loyalty 4.1.6 Filial piety and collectivism 4.1.7 Hierarchical structure and social relationship 4.2 Social Codes and Behaviors 4.2.1 Friendship 4.2.2 Social relationship 4.3 Summary 4.4 Questions for Discussion Chapter 5 Languages and Thinking Patterns 5.1 Language and Language Families 5.2 Differences between English and Chinese 5.2.1 Tone vs. stress and one syllable character vs. multi-syllable word 5.2.2 Inflectional vs. non-inflectional at the morphological (word) level 5.2.3 Synthetic vs. isolated in terms of word construction 5.2.4 Subject-prominent vs. topic-prominent in terms of syntactic structure 5.2.5 Hypotactic (form-focused) vs. paratactic (meaning-focused) 5.2.6 Hierarchical vs. linear structure 5.2.7 Low-context vs. high-context 5.2.8 Alphabetical vs. ideographic 5.3 Thinking and Thinking Patterns 5.3.1 Analytical vs. holistic 5.3.2 Deductive vs. inductive thinking 5.3.3 Linear vs. dialectical 5.3.4 Abstract vs. imagery 5.4 The Relationship between Language and Thought 5.5 Summary 5.6 Questions and Activities Chapter 6 Comparing Education: An Anti-essentialist Perspective 6.1 Key Concepts: 'Teachers', Learning Styles and Learning Strategies 6.2 Differences between Western and Chinese Educational Practices 6.2.1 Goals of education 6.2.2 Teachers and teaching methods 6.2.3 Learners and learning strategies 6.2.4 Teacher-student relationship 6.3 Differences between Western and Chinese Educational Practices: An Anti-essentialist Perspective 6.3.1 Goals of Education 6.3.2 Teachers and teaching methods 6.3.3 Learning styles and learning strategies 6.3.4 Teacher/students Relationships 6.4 Further Discussion 6.5 Summary 6.6 Questions and Activities Chapter 7 Comparing Cultures through Visual Arts 7.1 Cross-cultural Communication between Two Painters 7.2 The Beginning of Visual Art 7.2.1 Cultural background 7.2.2 Cave or rock paintings in Europe and China 7.2.3 Sculpture in Europe and China 7.2.4 Summary 7.3 Divergence between China and Europe in Visual Art 7.3.1 Visual art in Bronze Age 7.3.2 Visual art in ancient Greece and Zhou Dynasty 7.3.3 Visual art in ancient Rome and Qin-Han Dynasties 7.4 Distinctive styles of Chinese and Western Visual Arts 7.4.1 Visual art in Medieval Europe and China 7.4.2 Visual art in 16-17th century Europe and China 7.5 Beyond the Differences 7.6 Cross-cultural Perspective and Modern Painting 7.7 Questions for Discussion Chapter 8 Comparing Cultures through Poetry 8.1 Comparison of Two Love Poems 8.2 Poetry in Different Cultures 8.2.1 What is poetry? 8.2.2 The sound of poetry 8.2.3 The sight of poetry 8.2.4 The 'soul' of poetry 8.3 Sonnet and Ci: A Comparison 8.3.1 The development of sonnet 8.3.2 The development of Ci 8.3.3 Summary 8.4 Cross-cultural Perspective and Modern Poetry 8.5 Questions for Discussion Chapter 9 Comparing Cultures through Music 9.1 Music and Popular Music 9.2 Brief History of Music 9.3 Essential Appeals of Music 9.4 Significance of Traditional Folk Music 9.5 Mnemonic Devices in Folk Songs of Both Cultures 9.5.1 Narrative aspects 9.5.2 Rhetorical aspects 9.5.3 Song forms 9.6 Summary 9.7 Questions and Activities