Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

In the past, travelling from one end of the world to the other end of the world was deemed as impossible. Even if it was possible, the travelling might amount to weeks and months. Hence, it was very rare for one to experience the completely different culture of someone living in another part of the world. However, today in the 21^st century, we are living in a more globalised world where travelling around the world is made much easier and more convenient. We can easily travel to most areas of the world within just a few hours or a few days. Thus, it is inevitable for us to encounter a culture that might be totally different from ours when we choose to travel out of our home country.

Let me share with all of you an incident that I encountered when I was in Hong Kong for summer exchange programme. While I was living in Hong Kong for my studies, I was staying together with a Canadian friend. During our first week’s stay in Hong Kong, both of us were very excited about the local dim sum delights so we decided to wake up early one day to try one of the dim sum eateries near our hostel. When we arrived at the eatery, the place was already full of local Hongkies. After waiting for some time, we finally managed to find an empty round table and happily sat down and ordered our food.

While we were eating our food, two local Hongkies suddenly came and sat at our table and started ordering food. Both of us were puzzled by their actions and at the same time felt very awkward to have two strangers sitting directly opposite looking at us eat. However, since we were in foreign territories, we chose to remain silent and continued with our food. Not long after the two Hongkies sat down, they started talking very loudly in Cantonese and this made my Canadian friend very uncomfortable. Furthermore, we couldn’t even have a proper conversation with the two strangers around us talking loudly. I can see from my friend’s face that he was very upset so once we finished eating, we quickly moved out of the eatery.

On the journey back, he complained about the incident all the way back to our hostel. School started a few days later and we got to know some Hongkie students. It is when we shared the unpleasant incident that we had to our local Hongkie friends that we realized it was just a culture misunderstanding. Eateries in Hong Kong have the culture of squeezing as many customers into their place so that they can earn as much as possible. Hence, very often strangers have to share the same table and this was totally normal for the local Hongkies.

After this incident, we realized that there was still a lot to find out regarding the culture of Hong Kong. Hence, the moral of the story is to do more research about the culture of the country you are travelling to so as to have a more pleasant stay in that country and to avoid any unnecessary misunderstandings or conflicts.