中西花卉文化内涵浅析.doc

中西花卉文化内涵浅析

An Analysis of the Differences of Flower Culture Between China and the Western Countries

Abstract: There is a long history of flower culture in China and the western countries. Flowers are related to many historical events and people and local customs and rituals. Flowers, as a species in nature, have been flowering in the aesthetic field of vision for thousands of years. Endowed with various spiritual connotations, they become a specific cultural sign. People show a constant favor to flowers for their beauty, their fragrance and charm. A certain cultural structure is a combination of people who utilize this language and the way of their living, including geographic environment, folklore, religious belief, custom, aesthetic interest and the way of thinking. Influenced by those factors, flowers with rich connotation may have chance of resulting misunderstanding in the intercultural communication.
Key words: flower; culture; intercultural communication.

摘 要：中西花卉文化都有很长一段历史。语言是文化的载体。任何语言都是根植于特定的文化背景，反映着特定的文化内涵。作为一种自然生物，花一直盛开在中西方民族的审美视野中，成为一种特定的文化符号。由于花卉千姿百态的造型，绚丽的色彩，迷人的芳香，给人类带来美好的心情。一种语言的文化结构是使用该语言的人的生活方式的总和，它包括地理环境，宗教信仰，民族风情等。受这些因素的影响，具有丰富文化内涵的花卉词语极有可能导致人们在中西方文化交际中产生误解。
关键词：花卉；文化；跨文化交际

Contents

I. Introduction………………………………………………………1
II. Different Traditional Values Present in Flower Culture… …… 1
III. The Flower Images in Buddhism and in Christianity………….3
IV. The Flower Connotation in China and in the West…… ………4
V. The Senses of Flower Image in Chinese Culture and in the
Western Culture ………………………………………………..…6
VI. Conclusion …………………… ………………………………..…8
Works Cited …………………………………………………..……...9

An Analysis of the Differences of Flower Culture Between China and the Western Countries

I. Introduction

Both the Chinese flower culture and the Western flower culture have a long history. Flower is of close relationship with a lot of historical persons, historical events, customs and habits, the weather and regions, and fashions and so on. In China and the western countries, flowers have different cultural connotations and they reflect the difference between their own cultural psychology and appreciation of the beautiful things. In this thesis, we will try to chiefly present the relationship between flowers and the traditional values, religious tales, customs and habits as well as language traditions in both China and the western countries.
There is a long history of flower culture in China and the western countries. Flowers are related to many historical events and people and local customs and rituals. As we know that language is the carrier of culture, any language in the world is rooted in peculiar culture and background, and reflects cultural connotation. Flower-related words are important as a component of almost all the human language and carry their own connotations. Flowers, as a species in nature, have been flavoring in the aesthetic field of vision for thousands of years. Endowed with various spiritual connotations, they become a specific cultural sign. People show a constant favor to flowers for their beauty, their fragrance and charm, and those we know necessarily generate a common ground in connotations of flower-related words between Chinese and English. However, every language has its own ethnic culture. A certain cultural structure is a combination of people who utilize this language and the way of their living, including geographic environment, folklore, religious belief, custom, aesthetic interest and the way of thinking. Influenced by those factors, flowers with rich connotation may have chance of resulting misunderstanding in the intercultural communication.

II. Different Traditional Values Presented in Flower Culture

There is a special way of realization when the Chinese appreciate flowers. Chinese people like to experience objects though their spirits and they pay more attention to the intuition and the power of understanding. As is known to all of us, Chinese people prefer to advocating human’s spirit and soul while the western people uphold science and technology, concerning about the reason, and may be it is because the western culture has always been affected by the scientific thought for centuries. However, the Chinese like to talk about the art of existence or the poetic quality of life. “The main course of the western culture is object and it is the so called scientific culture while the Chinese culture is about human and spirit, and it is called art culture” (Qian 138).
The Chinese traditional philosophy always emphasizes the union of the human and the Heaven and they emphasize the close relationship between human beings and the nature. They often view the nature as human beings and human beings as nature. As for the comprehension of nature, the ancient Chinese always thought that all the objects of nature are made of the same certain factors, even we human beings are also made of the same certain factors, so we often hear people say that they want to return to the bosom of nature. In the ancient Chinese people’s opinion, animals, plants, even the stuffs which have no life all have soul, but at the same time, human beings have the intelligence. That is why Chinese people would like the flowers to be their friends and they gave different flowers different connotations, such as, orchid is noble, plum blossom has the high spirit of struggling with the cold, and lotus “is clean even born out of the ooze”. As a matter of fact, while people appreciate the flowers, they are appreciating the inner quality of humans.

Relatively speaking, the western traditional thinking is based on the cognition of the nature, they thought only when they understand the nature, they can master it; as long as they explore the nature well, they can conquer it. The western people lay stress on the scientific thinking traditions and they pay attention to the essence when they master something, and they attach importance to the objective, they always analyze and reason nature as it is an object. It is very clear to them for what is objective and what is subjective, what inner world is and what outer world is and they can reasonably distinguish human’s sense from the outside world. Anyway human is always outstanding. Thus, when the western people appreciate flowers, they often take flowers as some kind of symbol to express their feelings of their ideas, for example, John Wordsworth’s poem I Wander Lonely as a Cloud:
I Wander Lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Besides the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze (Wu 19).
The beauty of nature is presented by the lovely and exuberance daffodils and the beautiful flowers make the poet happy. So, we can see that the Chinese and the western people have different opinions about the relationship between nature and human beings while appreciating flowers. Bases on this opinion, the Chinese will think it has the unyielding character when talking about pine, and think it has the character of clean and honest when talking about lotus, the real friendship when talking about begonia; while to the western people, they think in different ways. They think that pine stands for pity; lotus stands for estranged love; and begonia stands for deformity. It is obvious that we can hardly find any real relation between human beings and the flowers.

III. The Flower Images in Buddhism and in Christianity

The Chinese flower culture is deeply influenced by the Chinese profound spiritual culture, such as folk beliefs of different dynasties, the thought of the Taoist school and the thought of the Confucian school, mostly the Buddhism that came from India.
Flower and Buddhism have deep relationship in history. In the classical novel, The Pilgrimage to the West, Ru-lai and Kwan-yin are always sitting on the cushion made of lotus. According to the Buddhist Scripture, when Sakyamuni—the father of Buddha—was born, all the flowers are blossoming at the same time, especially the lotuses which live in the pond suddenly came into bloom and it is as big as the upper pat of a carriage (Zhou 253). It is said that the most popular Buddha idol—Kwan-yin was also born out of a lotus. Because the lotus’s lofty character “clean and honesty” is similar with the Buddhism idea “free from vulgarity”. When the Buddhism came to China, people naturally have at heart the lotus when referring to the Buddha is lotus and lotus is Buddha. Lotus becomes a symbol of Buddhism.
The western religious culture has many allusions which relate to flowers, especially Christianity’s most important book—the Bible. In this book, rose has the closest relation with the Christianity. According to the literary quotation in the Bible, the birth of Christ opens the door of atoning for his people’s crime, which is why many roses bloom on the land of abundance. What’s more, white rose suggests pure and virgin, and symbolize Christ’s mother—Saint Mary, while red rose means blood, death and the suffering of crucifixion Christ bear.
The original religion of China or the West is the worship of the nature. People personify the power of nature and the phenomena of nature and they respect nature as god. In the ancient China, human beings and the nature has an original sincere relation and the folk tales about human mix together with the folk tales about nature and all kinds of natural phenomena become the most wonderful carrier of various tales or legends. Flowers, as the quintessence of all things on earth, of course, have its related tales. The Chinese have flower tales in our legends stories, for instance, “Nv Yi” is the flower god of the ancient China. In the West, the ancient Greece and Roman people endowed human’s spirit with nature. They have flower gods, too, such as Flora and Artemis.

IV. The Flower Connotation in China and in the West

In both the Chinese and western culture, flower is not only used for appreciation but also used as a tool of sending messages. In China, as the Spring Autumn times, people send plum blossoms as a habit of suggesting friendship in the south of China. What’s more, peony is a massager who sends love between the young. There are abundant flower connotations, for example, orchid means lofty, Chinese rose represents wealth and rank, and chrysanthemum symbolizes the aloof from politics. In modern life, flowers mean happiness when comes to a wedding. If someone is ill, sending flowers means you hope the patient to recover soon; if someone goes to the west, people often send a flower ring in order to express sorrow. Flower has become a silent language for expressing feelings and communication thought among people. “Flower can send love without words” (Feng 33). As we know that language is the carrier of culture, any language in the world is rooted in a peculiar and its background and reflects cultural connotation. Words, as the window of culture, are the most basic and flexible factors in a language, so different culture have different flower-related words (huayu in Chinese). Flower-related words are important as a component of almost all the human language and carry their own connotations. With the intercultural communication between China and the West, it has been realized that flower-related words can not only lead misunderstanding because of the diversities of their cultural connotations, but a vital factor that cannot be neglected in language learning. “Chinese rose stands for thriving and prosperous in China, but means shyness in the West” (Feng 48). Flower, as a species in nature, has been favoring in the aesthetic field of vision for thousands of years. Endowed with various spiritual connotations, they become a specific cultural sign. People show a constant favor to flowers for their beauty, fragrance and charm, and those we know necessarily generate a common ground in connotations of flower-related words between Chinese and English. However, every language has its own ethnic culture. A certain cultural structure is a combination of people who utilize this language and the way of their living, including geographic environment, folklore, religious belief, custom, aesthetic interest and the way of thinking. Influenced by those factors, flower with rich connotation may have chance of resulting misunderstanding in the intercultural communication.
Flower-rooted languages are also very rich. For example, rose means love, lotus means estranged love, blue violet means keeping one’s word, rose acacia stands for elegance, begonia is on behalf of ill-looking of deformity, apricot is on behalf of distrust, pine is in the same name of pity, peony is in the name of disgrace, mistletoe is in the name of overcoming difficulties, striped carnation suggests refusing and so on. Since the western people endow special meaning with kinds of flowers, people combine different flower meticulously by their imagination; plenty of flower-rooted languages come into being. For example, sending a red rose to someone you love, it means you love her very much and the flower conveys your hot love, and if she returns you a primrose, it means she accept your love, because this kind of flower means lasting love, but if she returns you a striped carnation, it suggests that she refuses your love, because the meaning of this flower is refusing. If a friend of yours comes across difficulty or setback, it is a good idea to send him a bunch of flowers which combines with mistletoe and holly, it means he or she will overcome the difficulty or setback if he or she uses his or her head because holly means “more thinking and foresight”, and mistletoe means “overcoming difficulties”. Rose is the national flower of America and Britain as well. The westerners love rose very much. Rose stands for love. People will think of A Red Red Rose when mentioning rose,
“O, my Luve’s a red red rose
That's newly sprung in June
O, my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune” (Wu 295).
Robert Burns compares his sweet heart as a rose and sweet music and he express his strong affections to his love, swearing that he will love her forever. This poem is very popular in the West and it is a quite popular love poem in the West. Rose is also used in the English slang, such as, “roses all the way”, “not all roses” (Cai 284). But rose is not always the symbol of love in the West. In 1455, House of Lancaster and House of York were at war in order to get the Authority of England. The two Houses were the branches of Plantagenet and they are the generations of Edward III. In fact, “the Wars of Roses” is not the name used by then but came fr