Important Difference Between Vietnamese And American Cultures example essay topic

Culture between America and Vietnam America is a country with diverse ethnicities and cultures. We are all from different backgrounds with our own set of cultural values and beliefs which makes us unique among each other. With these differences, we are able to learn interesting new things from our friends and people we meet. For instance, I've made a friend named David. He is Caucasian. We ask questions about each other's culture when we hang out and exchange with each other the Vietnamese and American values and ways of life.

Exploring the cultural similarities and differences enables us to learn more and distinguish between the two unique countries of Vietnam and America. First of all, one of the similarities between the Vietnamese and Americans is the value of the family. To both cultures, the family is the most basic but important part of our lives. We always want to have good and happy families. To us, family is the place to share happiness and sadness and encourage ourselves when we " re in difficult problems. As a result, we can get over all the problems in our lives and live happily.

The second similarity is that a man can only have one wife and that both men and women have equal opportunity in society. Women can do just as much as the men and have their own voices and freedom as the men. The third similarity is that almost any family in both cultures wants their children to be well-educated and successful in their children's lives; they always help and encourage their children to finish college so that they can get good and reliable jobs. There are differences between David's culture and mine. In my family, the men rarely express their emotions to others because they are considered to be strong and stern. Therefore, my cousin who is born and raised in America always feels a lack of her parents' love even though she knows that they love her.

She feels this way because very little interaction takes place between her and her parents. Consequently, the lack of interaction results in an unspoken distance between them. However, in David's family, he says that communication is the key to their relationships. Everybody expresses his emotion naturally so that it makes them feel they are loved and the house is filled with happiness.

Moreover, parents and children can be closer together, and they can share difficult problems and sympathize with each other easily. On the other hand, according to the Asian culture, children have to obey their parents without resisting; therefore, parents have an important position in making decisions for their children. As a result, many Vietnamese parents want their children to marry under their arrangement because they think they have more experiences than their children and know who is good or bad, so they can choose the best spouses for their children. However, parents are not always right; they can put their children in difficult and unhappy situations because children can not marry the ones they love because their parents disapprove. On the other hand, David's family gives him advice and he will make decisions for himself because they want David to be happy being with the person he loves. Moreover, my family doesn't want me to marry someone from a different religion people because they don't want me or my children to change our religion; but David can marry whoever he loves and religion is just not an important factor.

Another important difference between Vietnamese and American cultures is that young Vietnamese people are still dependent on their parents until they finish their schooling and find jobs or their parents can not support to them anymore. This point has good and also bad sides because if the children realize the importance of studying, this will be a chance for them to concentrate on their study and finish it soon; but for those who don't know how to use this chance, they will be dependent on their parents, so they don't want to work or study. Consequently, it makes them become lazy and dependent people forever. However, David's family's attitude is totally different.

He has to be independent when he is eighteen years old because his parents want him to stand on his own feet and become a mature person. However, David has to work to support to himself, so it will take him longer than other people to finish his study. Another interesting different point is that most of Vietnamese children inherit their parents' properties such as house and other valuable things because they want to give their properties to their children to help them live better before the parents pass away. So in Vietnam, anybody can pay off their house without down and monthly payments and that really helps them with financial matters.

However, in America, especially David's family, parents like to enjoy their lives after they retire such as traveling and other entertainment; so when they pass away, David will not inherit from his parents as much as I do. However, David and his family's lives are more interesting and enjoyable than Vietnamese lives. The last interesting point is my family likes to cook meals and eat together everyday. My mother cooks for us. The Vietnamese culture considers that meal time is the time for everyone in the family to sit down, talk, and reminisce on events, either personal or social, that happened in the day.

Then we give advices to each other. However, David's family doesn't like to cook because they think cooking takes a lot of time and it is almost impossible to cook in a fast-paced American life in which both the wives and husband work. Therefore, they prefer to eat fast food, cooked meals or eat in the restaurant. So in exploring different views between American and Vietnamese cultures, especially that of David's and mine, we learn many appealing things about each other and what makes each one of us unique. It makes me realize that there many things that I need to learn about the American ways of life and adapt myself accordingly and at the same time making sure that I avoid culture clash as much as possible..