Citizenship and Social Development / Liberal Studies
Web-based Resource Platform

Information of the book

• Title: East meets West
• Author: Yang Liu
• Year of publication: 2015

Introduction of the author

Yang Liu is a graphic designer who was born in Beijing, and she moved from to Berlin at the age of 13. As she developed into an artist, she started an illustrated project to document her dual experiences in China and Germany by visualizing and contrasting the cultural differences she noticed over the years between the East and the West in the form of pictograms.

About the book

The book East Meets West is a pictorial representation of cross-cultural differences from the author’s perspectives. The book displays a wide range of discrepancies between the Eastern and Western culture, ranging from the more superficial and obvious forms of daily habits and lifestyles (e.g. restaurant etiquette, meal options, etc.) to social norms and underlying values.

Enquiry questions

• Culture can be defined as a set of shared behaviors, beliefs or values within a community which is passed across different generations. Identify and elaborate on some types/ examples of culture reflected in the book.
• What are the characteristics of traditional Chinese culture? Do the examples of Chinese cultural characteristics portrayed from the book still exist in nowadays Hong Kong and Chinese societies?
• Compare the culture between the East and the West. Can you find relevant examples of co-existence of Eastern and Western culture in terms of the way of life, social contacts and family roles described in the book?
• Hong Kong is a place of cultural diversity where we can be exposed to various types of cultures. What are the positive significance of the characteristics of cultural diversity to the Hong Kong society? On the other hand, what is the importance for Hong Kong to preserve traditional Chinese culture?