a lecture? What is the meaning of renao(热闹) in the Chinese culture?
2. Reading the following passage about time (by Aldous Huxley,1894—1963, taken from 胡文仲，高一虹，1997 ) and answer the questions below.
Time, as we know it, is a very recent invention. The modern time sense is hardly older than the United States. It is a byproduct of industrialism…
Time is our tyrant. We are chronically aware of the moving minute hand, even of the moving second hand. We have to be. There are trains to be caught, clocks to be punched, tasks to be done in specified periods, records to be broken by fractions of a second, machines that set the pace and have to be kept up with. Our consciousness of the smallest units of time is now acute. To us, for example, the moment 8:17 a.m. means something—something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant as without significance—did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stephenson were part inventors of time.
Another time—emphasizing entity is the factory and its dependent, the office. Factories exist for the purpose of getting certain quantities of goods made in a certain time. The old artisan worked as it suited him; with the result that consumers generally had to wait for the goods they had ordered from him. The factory is a device for making workmen hurry. The machine revolves so often each minute; so many movements have to be made, so many pieces produced each hour. Result: the factory worker (and the same is true of the office worker) is compelled to know time in its smallest fractions. In the handwork age there was no such compulsion to be aware of minutes and seconds.
Our awareness of time has reached such a pitch of intensity that we suffer acutely whenever our travels take us into some corner of the world where people are not interested in minutes and seconds. The unpunctuality of the Orient, for example, is appalling to those who come freshly from a land of fixed mealtimes and regular train services. For a modern American or Englishman, waiting is a psychological torture. An Indian accepts the blank hours with resignation, even with satisfaction. He has not lost the fine art of doing nothing. Our notion of time as a collection of minutes, each of which must be filled with some business or amusement, is wholly alien to the Oriental, just as it was wholly alien to the Greek. For the man who lives in a pre-industrial world, time moves at a slow and easy pace; he does not care about each minute, for the good reason that he has not been made conscious of the existence of minute. Questions:
1) Where did the western time sense come from according to the passage?
2) According to Huxley, what‘s the difference in the time sense of the East and the West? Do you agree?
3) Why did the author say that Watt and Stephenson were part inventors of time?
4) Do you think that the Chinese people‘s time sense has changed? If yes, what are the manifestations and why?
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3. Compare your choices with others and see if there are any individual differences. Discuss what effects such differences may have upon your interaction with each other. 1) If you were invited to another family‘s house for dinner when would you arrive?
a. Just on time.
b. A few minutes before the scheduled time. c. 10 minutes later. d. 20 minutes later. e. Half an hour later.
2) How long would you have to wait in a line in the post office before you became upset?
a. 5 minutes. b. 10 minutes. c. 15 minutes. d. 20 minutes. e. Half an hour.
3) How long do you think a party at which dinner is served should last?
a. 1 to 2 hours b. 3 hours or so. c. 4 hours or so. d. 5 hours or so.
e. As long as people involved like.
4) If you were having a party in your class, how many days in advance would you invite your teachers or students from another college? a. Just on the day of the party. b. One day in advance. c. Several days in advance.
d. More than on week in advance. e. Three or four weeks in advance.
5) When first meeting a newcomer to your class or a friend‘s parents, an appropriate amount of time to talk with them would be a. 5 minutes. b. 10 minutes. c. 20 minutes. d. Half an hour. e. 1 hour or more.
6) If you had an appointment with a professor at 8:00 and arrived at 8:45, how would the professor react? a. He wouldn‘t care.
b. He would refuse to talk with you.
c. He would excuse you if you had called. d. He would consider you irresponsible. e. He would be insulted.
4. Visiting a friend can be full of fun and enjoyment, but sometimes you need to be very considerate not to wear out your welcome. Read the following case and think over the questions following it.
Magid was an Arabian working in a company in the U.S.A. One Sunday morning he was home and didn‘t have much to do. He thought of his good friend, Jock, an American, who he used to study with. They had not seen each other for a
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long time though they lived in the same city. And he had told Jock that he would come and visit him long before. Now this Sunday morning seemed like a wonderful time for him to fulfill his visit. Without informing Jock of his visit, Magid went to Jock‘s house and rang the doorbell.
At the same time, Jock, after a whole busy week, was just looking forward to spending his Sunday reading and relaxing himself. Just as he started to read in his most comfortable chair, the doorbell rang. He opened the door and to his surprise, it was Magid who was standing at the door. He didn‘t look completely happy to see Magid. Then, after a few seconds, he smiled and said, ―Hi, Magid, come on in.‖ They drank coffee and chatted about their life after their separation. Magid stayed about four hours and he decided to leave. Jock walked Magid to the door. They said goodbye to each other and Jock thanked Magid for coming. After they left each other, both of them felt a little uncomfortable. Questions
1) What feelings do you think Jock had when he saw Magid again? 1) Why did both of them feel a little uncomfortable?
2) What do you think Magid should have done before he actually visited Jock?
三、思考题
Find as many expressions and proverbs as possible relating to time in English and Chinese respectively. Examples are: ―Time is money.‖ ―Bu zhaoji, manman lai ‖(不着急，慢慢来). Then sum up and compare their attitudes towards time.
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Part Nine Improving Intercultural Communication
一、 讨论题
Read the following cases and discuss the answer to the question below each one. A. Soon after Li Ying arrived in the states, an American friend invited him to a party. He got to the party on time, only to find that many people were late and dressed in a very casual way. There were only a few kinds of beverage and some simple food. Few people there knew him, and he at last found Mark, his friend, and began to talk with him. They talked about only yen minutes before Mark said that he had to talk with another friend and left, to Li‘s great disappointment. The host introduced him to a couple of people and then left too. Two hours later, Li found an excuse and returned home. He had to cook some noodles, as he was still hungry. He thought he would never participate in this kind of parties again. Why was he so disappointed?
B. One Japanese student in America said: ―On my way to my school, a girl whom I don‘t know smiled at me several times. I was a little surprised.‖ Why was he surprised?
C. A South Korean student in American wrote: ―We went to visit an American friend. When we saw him, he opened the window and said to us: ?I‘m sorry, I don‘t have time. I have to work at my studies.‘ Then he closed his window.‖ Why was this student confused?
D. An Arab student in America said: ―When I was walking on the campus the first day, many people smiled at me, which made me quite ashamed. I hurried to the bathroom to see if anything was wrong with my clothes. Now I‘m used to all the smiles.‖
Why did he first feel ashamed?
E. Xiao Yan got her Ph. D in American studies from Yale University. She was going to another university to teach when one of the authors met her in America. She said that, in spite of her Ph. D and other success in career, she had a lot of problems, which made her quite unhappy, sometimes even more so than when she was in Beijing. She wrote to her friends back in Beijing, but her friends couldn‘t believe her: How could you be unhappy? You were in the United States! Why didn‘t her friends understand her?
F. Mr. Bias is a director of a small private company. He is interviewing candidates for the position of assistant manager. He selects a bright and ambitious applicant. Later, he discovers that this applicant is from the country of Levadel (a fictitious nation). Since he thinks that all Levadelians are stupid and lazy, he decides to select someone else for the position. (Levire and And Adelman, 1982)
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