英语毕业论文----中美饮食文化差异.doc

Food Culture Generally speaking, we Chinese think food is very important to man. People often associate food with important holidays and the chance to meet distinguished guests. The Chinese food not only is very delicious and tasty but also very pleasing to your senses and many of dishes have very beautiful and fancy names. The Chinese have the food culture of our own which are quite different from the US. In the US, people pay more attention to the nutrition of food rather than the looks of it. The cuisine and table manners are quite different from ours in a great extent. Greeting by Asking Your Meal in China It is a very common practice we Chinese people say Have you had your meal? when they meet each other around the time before or after meals. Sometimes they even ask this question everywhere even in toilets. In fact, it is a kind of greeting to communicate with each other. But foreigners cannot understand that because they think why you ask me this. They tend to think you want to invite me to dinner or I am not rich enough to feed myself regularly but that is my business not yours. Chinese think food is very important and essential to people so it shows some care and concern about you. Everything is eatable in China It seems that we eat everything and everything can be eatable in Chinese food, whether it comes from land or from the sky or from the sea or whether it is wild or domestic or whether it is inside or outside. Foreigners cannot imagine we eat the food like snakes, dogs and even frogs. When we sell the meat from the animal and poultry, we normally sell it as a whole or cut it from the whole body. A woman American teacher didnt want to buy and eat pork when she first came to China because she saw the meat cut from a certain part of the pig. In English, we know the animals and their meat are used different words because the words of the meat from animals originally come from French and they are used by upper class while t