How might people from diverse backgrounds profit by encountering one another’s customs and norms?
Each race has its own unique custom, distinctive culture and religious belief. Generally, all these characteristics reflect their racial resilience and dignity, solidarity and social values.
In social life, we have a host of opportunities to taste various traditional foods while we mix with people from other race groups. A wide variety of spices may impart an Indian flavor to the Chinese dishes. Thus, the Chinese people may enjoy delicious foods besides Chinese cuisine.
While different races of people live in a multilingual community, they inevitably have the chance to learn other languages besides their mother tongue. Fluency in other languages is conducive to one’s career and also will help one to know different cultures in depth.
Cultivating a moral education is an approach to maintain ethnic harmony. People from diverse backgrounds come to know each other and learn from each other. “Among any three people, there must be one who can be my teacher.” (The Confucian Analects) From this quotation by Confucious, we explicitly know that despite diverse cultures or backgrounds, people should learn to inculcate values such as modesty towards other tribal groups.
Potential difficulties that could arise out of the differing cultural groups
When people have guests from other ethnic groups and religions, they tend to be very fastidious about hospitality, and an offer of food is an essential etiquette requirement. Offering an indecent food may be offensive to the guests. For example, a Chinese family hosts Malay friends or neighbors to visit and eat delicacies during religious holidays. If non-halal foods are served, the Malay guests may feel disrespected. To avoid such an awkward situation, the Chinese must be cautious in preparing the foods.
Gift giving is a courteous behavior and common custom in every culture irrespective of age, race, creed or color, and also one of the decent ways to express concern, gratitude and appreciation. However, we must take into account that what kind of gift to give will not cause a misunderstanding. As for instance, buying a clock as a present for any Chinese friends is taboo in Chinese culture. The word “clock” has similar sound with the “end” in Chinese Mandarin, giving a clock as a gift sounds like being a gift at the bedside when a Chinese person takes his last breath.
Certain colors such as white and black are considered inauspicious. The white and black color tend to be equated to that of mourning or death while the red color is considered a very auspicious color for new year festivals, weddings and other happy occasions. Wearing a black shirt or skirt to attend a Chinese wedding ceremony will be regarded as an impoliteness and will make the host feels uncomfortable. These auspiciousness and inauspiciousness are identically carrying the same weight in Indian tradition. Therefore, we must be extremely discreet when attending other culture occasions, try to dress up decently.
Significant differences between nonverbal practices in two cultures
Malaysia is a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual society that comprising Malays, Chinese, Indians and some indigenous tribes. Malay and native indigenous groups make up 50.4% of the population while Chinese comprised 23.7%, the second largest ethnic group. Although the Malays and the Chinese hold the similar citizenship in one nation, but due to the religion, they in fact have their own unique and distinctive cultural identities. For instance, the Malays mostly are Muslims and they do not eat pork, whereas most of the Chinese in our country are not prohibited to eat pork unless some of them are abide by the rules of the religion of Buddhism.
Because of the feudalistic thoughts which have been passed down by the ancestors over the centuries, the Chinese people generally do not like the number “four”, as it sounds like “death” in Mandarin and some Chinese dialects such as Cantonese and Hokkien. However, there is no such taboo in Malays’ culture. The Malays prefer to have repeated “four” for their vehicle number plates while the Chinese refrain to deal with the number “four” due to the immense influence of ancestors.
All ethnic Malays are Muslim in our country. According to the tenets of the Islamic faith, dog is fall under “Najis Berat” in the religion of Islam, which falls in the same category as pig. As we know that Muslims are not allowed to touch, eat, and keep pig. This applies the same to the dog. Muslims cannot adopt dogs as pets unless it is for guarding purpose. In addition, the dog must guard outside the house and not remain inside. The majority of Chinese people treat dogs as pets, and even as friends. The Chinese can groom their pets without any constraint; they can even touch dogs’ saliva, but this kind of action is severely prohibited in the world of Islam.
One of the significant differences between nonverbal practices in both Malay’s and Chinese’s culture is the way of greeting people. Malay women shake hands with men is forbidden, and vice versa. But Malay women may shake hands with members of the same sex. However, the handshake is also the way of greeting in Chinese social context. But Chinese men and women may shake hands with each other, provided the Chinese woman extends her hand first. While many older Chinese will lower their eyes during the handshake as a sign of respect, the Malays may place the hand on their heart after shaking hand with others to show their respects.
According to Islamic custom, in the occasion of funeral, the Malays should not show their grief in public. Instead, the funeral should be solemnly held and the dead should be buried as soon as possible. On the contrary, due to the influence of Confucian virtue the members of Chinese younger generation are urged to cry out loudly and sorrowfully during the burial ritual, for the sake of manifesting their filial pieties. Usually, a funeral of Chinese will be held at least three days, the number of days implies the value of dignity the deceased had.
