This morning I received a really creative email forward that made fun of the cultural differences between East and West. And as someone who grew up in a Chinese household in the good old US of A, I found the email especially entertaining and accurate at the same time. In the email chain, the below is attributed to a Yang Liu Young (link), who was born in China and currently lives educated in Germany, but if anyone can point me to the official source, I’d love to attribute this work to the originator.
Updated: Thanks to commenter Alpha, who provided a link to her personal website, I now know Yang Liu has received numerous recognitions for her design work in London, Berlin, and New York. Check out her website at: http://www.yangliudesign.com/
Blue -> Western Red -> Asian/Chinese
1. Opinion
2. Way of Life
3. Punctuality
4. Contacts 
5. Anger 
6. Queue when Waiting
7. Me
8. Sundays on the Road
9. Party
10. In the Restaurant
11. Stomach Ache
12. Traveling
13. Definition of Beauty
14. Handling of Problems
15. Three Meals a Day
16. Transportation
17. Elderly in Day to Day Life
18. Shower Timing
19. Moods and Weather
20. The Boss
21. What’s Trends
22. The Child
23. Things that are New
24. Perception of Each Other
Filed under: Random | 4 Comments
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this is the artist’s website: http://www.yangliudesign.com/
via http://www.adinochang.com/archives/chinese-culture-versus-german-culture.html
I’m not sure how generalized they are for Eastern/Western. The blue items seem particularly German, and the red items seem particularly Chinese. If you were to look at it as, say, French and Japanese, some of them would be reversed.
That said, the series is brilliant and thank you for sharing them.
JD – Good point. The creator focused on her target audience of Germans (where she lives) and Chinese (her ethnicity), but living in the UK, and having grown up in the US, I thought it was relevant and appropriate to expand the generalization beyond just Germans. I’m sure there are examples where the generalization does not hold true, per your examples of French vs Japanese culture. But overall, it’s safe to assume for a number of western cultures and and a similar number of eastern cultures, this work of art is spot on. Thanks for the input!
Pretty darn funny. Only just found this, proper archive trawling.