Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

I witnessed this incident at a formal Chinese dinner at a rather expensive restaurant. There was a extended family dinner that was in about to commence. There was an elderly lady, possibly the grandmother, present with a young gentleman, possibly her son, and his fiancee. The fiancee was very well dressed and had professional make up done. As she greeted the elderly lady, the elderly lady praised her in the Chinese language that she was very beautiful and her dress was well chosen. Replying in the Chinese language but with a very strong English accent, the young lady thanked the elderly lady profusely. Upon hearing that, the elderly lady shook her head and turned away with a unhappy look on her face.

I believe this miscommunication was due to the lack of cultural understanding between the Chinese educated elderly lady and the English educated young lady. In the Chinese culture, praise by someone is normally brushed aside with words of doubt of the recipient on herself. To receive the praise would imply pride and poor upbringing on the receiver. However, in the English culture, one normally receives the praise with words of gratitude.

Thus, I envisage the elderly lady thinking that the young lady is a prideful person with little respect for her elders. The young lady on the other hand could possibly be in a state of confusion as she most probably put in extra effort to dress up for the event in respect for her fiancee's relatives and upon receiving the praise in way deemed polite in her culture was given the disapproving face by the elders.

Blog 3: Potential Research Project Topics

During my group discussion with survey team mates Pei Yu and Nicole, we came up with many topics that we were interested in surveying. However, one of the more prominent survey topic was ‘What physical attributes of a female are male Chinese attracted to?’. The female physical attributes include height, build, features like color and size of their eyes, skin color and hair type.

We decided on this topic as we believe that with the change in the social landscape from yesteryear, gender roles and expectations have changed dramatically. In the past, females were expected to assume the domestic and child-bearing role with a subservient and demure attitude. However, with the rise in the standard of living and education level, women now enter the workforce with equal footage as males and command leadership positions. With the advent of the mass media, flashes of anorexic, heavily made up models strutting down fashion walkways has contorted meaning of beauty. Many girls have resorted to health threatening methods to conform to the twisted form of beauty the media portrays as glamorous to gain the attention of males. However, do males really idealize the stereotype of beauty offered by the media?

Problem Statement:
The objective of this study is to analyze the physical features of females that males are attracted to and from the data to see if those features correlate with that portrayed by the media.

Reader:
Females in NUS of any race, culture or religion, NUS Social Relations Office

Purpose Statement:
The objective of this report is to inform females in NUS of the traits that Chinese males are attracted to. This is especially targeted at single females who may tend to be more desperate and thus resort to dangerous means to make themselves more attractive by conforming to the ‘beauty’ that the media portrays it to be.
Another objective of this report is to analyze if the media has had a negative impact on males by contorting their perception of beauty. If such a trend is observed, steps can be taken by NUS to engage external speakers or social work lecturers to educate the students in such areas.