Chinese and American Cultural Differences Reflected by Their Totems: Chinese Dragon and American Eagle

摘要

Totem, as the national symbol, reflects a nation’s culture, spirit and traditional values. This paper, basing on a lot of reading on Sino-US cultural differences, will explore the Sino-US cultural differences from a totally new way, the different characteristics of the totems of the two countries—the Chinese dragon and the American Eagle, and the different values, ways of thinking and cultural traditions show n ?by their totems respectively. This paper not only reveals the cultural differences between the two countries, more importantly, from the outside phenomenon to the inside nature, it finds out the underlying causes of these differences through comparative analysis. Hoping to enhance the mutual understanding between the two peoples and show the world that the Chinese people has always been a peace-loving nation since ancient time under the current situation that the Western countries strongly play up the theory of? “ China threat ” .