Drink Bump
Culture bump is a social phenomenon all over the world. As Dr. Carol M. Archer wrote in her book, culture bump has been defined as a “cultural difference”. To tell the truth, culture bumps are visible or invisible and different depending on the individual and the situation. People are usually unaware that they are in a culture bump. During these days in Houston, we have gradually realized that many different culture bumps exist everywhere. They involve drink, food, space, time, etc. Since water is the source of life, we selected our drink bump to share with you.
Cold water in America
We came to the University of Houston for studying international finance. During the class break of the first day, we wanted to find some hot water to drink. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any. We were astonished about cold water and disappointed without hot water. When we asked a beautiful girl how to find hot water, she was also confused about it.
When we go into a restaurant in America, the first thing that the waiter does is to give us a cup of cold water. One more thing, there is no hot water in hotels, either. My Chinese friends take electric kettles to America in order to boil hot water by themselves.
When we interviewed Americans on campus, the common answer is that they enjoy drinking cold water. In the meantime, they don’t think that it’s harmful to health.
Hot water in China
Chinese people consider drinking hot water as a traditional concept. The most important thing is that it is healthy to drink hot water. Parents make us cultivate a good style of drinking hot water instead of cold water or even ice water in our childhood. On the other hand, traditional Chinese medicine judges cold drinks as a bad idea because cold drinks slow down the movement of blood.
If we invite friends to our home, we will give them hot water or hot tea which is regarded as polite and friendly. When we have dinner in a restaurant, waiters often hand out hot water. When we go to offices, barbershops, hotels and other places, we can easily find machines for hot water.
It is interesting that Americans focus on the taste and feeling of cold water and Chinese people focus on the benefit of hot water.
Commonalities
All in all, whether drinking cold water or hot water is a matter of life style. Nowadays, Americans drink hot tea and hot coffee the as same as Chinese. More and more Chinese people begin to understand cold water. Besides water, both Americans and Chinese people like various kinds of cold drinks whatever the season is.
In addition, both Americans and Chinese people pay attention to health. The difference is how they pay attention. For Americans, cold water is more beneficial to health. At the same time, Chinese people think hot water is more healthful.
As the globalization and integration of cross-culture communication is moving forward rapidly, both Americans and Chinese people gradually respect, recognize and appreciate drink styles of each other.
(The Squirrel Team)