There are many famous heroes both in China and America in history。 The kinds of Chinese heroes can be pided into three kinds: revolutionary heroes, mythical heroes and civilian heroes。For example, Liu Hulan,Dong Cunrui,and Zheng Chenggong are revolutionary heroes。 Pan Gu, Fu Xi, and Sun Wukong are mythical heroes。 As for civilian heroes, everone can be a civilian hero if he or she can make some contributions to the society。 America also has many famous heroes。 Such as Spiderman, Ironman, Captain America and so on。 The thesis mainly compares Chinese hero Sun Wukong with American hero Spiderman to find the differences of culture and analyses the causes of cultural differences。
2。 Literature Review
For many years, great deals of scholars are exploring culture, but there is still no settled definition。 Culture is an enigma (Ting-Toomey; 1997)。 This word "culture" originated from the Latin word cultura or cultus as in agri cultura, which means the cultivation of the soil。 Later culture grabbed a set of related meanings: training, adornment, fostering, worship。。。。From its root meaning of an activity, culture became transformed into a condition, a state of being cultivated。
The constructs of inpidualism and collectivism have been widely discussed in the literature and have attained the status of a paradigm in cross-cultural psychology。 According to Gelfand, in just the past 25 years, more than 1,400 articles on inpidualism and collectivism have been published, and numerous books have been devoted exclusively to the constructs。
Systems in different countries can be arrayed。 These dimensions are accepted far and wide and have been used by a great number of researchers to interpret and compare cultural groups。 Among the five dimensions summarized by Hofstede (1980), I/C has been the most widely adopted theoretical concept that has been used to understand cultural differences between groups。 Although Hofstede is often given credit for investigating the concepts of inpidualism and collectivism, he is not the only scholar who has researched these crucial intercultural dimensions。 Triandis, Samovar and etc。 also have researched these concepts。 Triandis, for example, has focused on inpidualism-collectivism to have an entire cross-cultural research。 In 1990, he published his Cross-Cultural Studies of Inpidualism and Collectivism in which he offered an excellent summary of inpidualism and collectivism, and estimated that "about 70% of the population of the world lives in collective cultures" (Triandis, 1990) Samovar in 1998 published Communication between Culture in which he used Hofstede's value dimensions 一 inpidualism and collectivism to explore cultural persity in perception and mentioned that inpidualism and collectivism are learned through the family, which teaches children to know whom they must obey and who the dominant figures are in their lives。 In studies of forced compliance, Chinese subjects show much compliance but little attitude change。 文献综述
In China, many scholars, such as Pan Zhangdang, Jia Yuxin and Feng Qi did some researches in this field。 Pan and his colleagues did deep research and gave a more concrete framework on cultural differences between America and China。 Jia Yuxin analyzed interpersonal relationships and intercultural communications of East an West through the perspective of inpidualism and collectivism。 Lu Zaorong and Wang Xiu analysed cultural differences from the origin of heroism。
3。 Differences of Heroic Characters
To find cultural differences between China and America, we should learn something about heroic characters like Sun Wukong and Spiderman。 They have something different and same in their image, characters and abilitoes。
In image: Sun Wukong is a monkey which was borned from a stone in Hua Guoshan。 As time went on, he led all monkeys there into the Shuilian Dong and became the king, and he was respected for the "Monkey King。" He looked just like a monkey with hairy body and he acted like a monkey too。 The real name of Spiderman was Peter Benjamin Parker。 An ordinary student in the United States, after graduation, he became a reporter of "Horn Daily"。 Accidentally, he was infected by a radioactive spider。 From then on, he has got some super abilities。 These super abilities are all connected with spiders。