中国沙洋-保定教育考试院

The Differences between Chinese and Western Culture from
the Perspective of Myth



Author: Ma Ya’nan
Supervisor: Pan Dandan



A Thesis
Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirement for the Degree of B.A. in English



College of Information and Engineering
Fuyang Teachers College, Anhui Province


May, 2013

学位论文


从神话看中西文化差异



马亚楠
（学号2）



指导教师姓名 潘丹丹

职称 讲师
单 位 阜阳师范学院信息工程学院
专业名称 商务英语

申请学位级别 学士
学位授予单位 阜阳师范学院信息工程学院



2013年5月

The Differences between Chinese and Western Culture from
the Perspective of Myth

Thesis Statement
This essay put emphasis on the differences of myth and the causes of the myth
between Chinese and Greek myth, and hope that it will helpful to the cross-cultural
communication teaching from the perspective of Greek mythology.

Outline
I. Introduction
II. The Differences between Chinese Myth and Western Myth
A. Individualism and Collectivism
1. Individualism in Greek Myth
2. Collectivism in Chinese Myth
B. People of God and Deification of Man
1. People of God in Greek Myth
2. Deification of Man in Chinese Myth
C. Unity and Conflict between God and Human Beings
1. Antagonism between Nature and Man in Greek Myth
2. Human as an Integral Part of Nature in Chinese Myth
III. Causes of the Myth Difference
A. Time
B. Geographical Environment
C. Preservation and Spreading Process
IV. Cross- cultural Communication Teaching from the Perspective of Greek
Mythology
A. The Authentic Material Selection
B. Infiltration of Culture
C. The Use of Modern Means

V．Conclusion

从神话看中西文化差异

内容摘要

在人类文明中，东方文化与西方文化存在诸多异同，中国文化作为东方文 化
的代表，其文化表征首先反映在神话上。西方文化一样其表征也首先反映在古希
腊罗马文化上 。本文通过对希腊神话和中国神话的详细对比分析，找出了中西神
话之间的差异。中西方文化的最大差异 表现在：1,集体主义与个人主义；中国人
重视人的社会价值，仅把人看作群体中的一份子；西方人强调 人作为有理智尊严
和自由意志的个体，要求人对自己的命运负责。2,人的神话与神的人化；希腊神话毫不避讳地把神的性格特点甚至是缺点展现出来，而中国由于受到漫长封建及
其资本主义的压制， 这或者也与含蓄内敛的民族性格相关，人性、人欲的思想没
有得到充分的抒发。3,天人合一与天人对立 ，在西方人眼中，承认命运是一种美
德，而这种宿命论的观点在中国被看作是种消极反面的人生态度。本 文通过对产
生差异的原因进行分析，并在前人研究的基础上，研究西方神话在英语教学课堂
中的 影响。


关键词：神话；文化差异；原因；教学

The Differences between Chinese and Western Culture from
the Perspective of Myth

Abstract

In human civilization, there are many similarities and differences between
Eastern culture and Western culture, Chinese culture plays an important part of the
Oriental culture, its cultural representation was first reflected on the myths. Western
culture whose cultural representation is first reflected on the ancient Greek and
Roman culture. This paper compares and analysis the Greek and Chinese myth, and
finds out the differences between Chinese and Western mythology. In Chinese and
Western culture, the biggest difference in: First，Collectivism and Individualism; In
Chinese people's social value, person is only a member of the group; Westerners
emphases on people’s rational dignity and free will of the individual, for man should
be responsible for his fate. Second, People of God and Deification of Man; Greek
myth tells about the character of God and even shortcomings without shy, but due to
the repression of the long feudal capitalism, human nature, the idea of the human
desire has not been sufficient expressed, which may be related to the reserved style of
national character. Third, Unity and Conflict between God and Human being;
recognition of the fate is a virtue in the eyes of Westerners, however, this fatalistic
view in China is considered as a kind of negative attitude towards life. In this paper,
the analysis of these differences as well as the causes of the differences are on the
basis of previous studies, which will promote the study of Greek mythology in the
English language teaching class.

Key words: myth; cultural differences; causes; teaching

The Differences between Chinese and Western Culture from
the Perspective of Myth

I. Introduction
Myth is a cultural phenomenon in civilized society, and it was born in the early
stage of human being. From ancient time to nowadays, culture is an important part in
many civilized countries, especially in China and Greek, and myth is regarded as the
origin of the culture. As it is known that, people’s lives have been influenced by myth
for a long time, such as ways of thinking. China is the birthplace of Orient civilization,
just as Greek is the birthplace of Western civilization. Chinese and Western
civilizations were born in different geographical areas, produced in different times
and developed in different ways. Due to these reasons, Chinese and Greek myth
represented different spirits and moral conceptions. Through different cultural
identities comparison between Chinese and Greek mythology, we can keep our own
national characteristics in trend of global culture and have a better understanding of
cross-culture communication, thus advance English teaching in Chinese class.
When the world is becoming more advanced, more and more communications
are taking place in different countries. However, there are more mistakes when they
don’t understand each culture, because different countries have different cultures. In
ordered to they have a better understanding between each other, the related research
on the culture has been nourishing and booming. Hence one can see that, it is easy to
understand why many scholars and experts take this field seriously.
From here we can see that research on culture is the general trend of events in
order to get familiar with different cultures and to have clues to predict the way
people from different culture will behave. All in all, there are systematic similarities
and differences among them, although each culture is unique. In view of this, cultures
can be studied and predicted, thus a successful communication can be guaranteed. In
addition, we can give students a better understanding of other cultures, and this will
render the world more harmonious. Mutual influence between the Eastern and

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Western cultures are beginning to be recognized as an essential power conducting the
international life styles.
Under the circumstance of globalization, the rapid domestic economic
development, it becomes more and more important for students to communicate with
other Western students, therefore, the students should learn other countries’ culture,
and mythology is a useful way by which teachers can help their students to learn
Western cultures. Another important reason is that mythology can arouse students’
interest. Therefore, it becomes important that how the teachers use methods to
penetrate the mythology into class.
Prior researches have done a lot of studies on the differences of Chinese and
Greek mythology, for the reason that identifying and locating them is particularly
important for a comparative study of cultures. Many scholars have made researches
on such topic, they have established their theories and definitions about the mythology,
which serve as the theoretical basis of this thesis.
There are two general approaches to examine cultural process. One approach is
to look at how a particular culture works from the inside. When using this approach,
researchers are concerned with trying to understand the behavior of people in a culture
from their standpoint. Another approach to understand culture is to compare one
culture with another. This paper studies the cultural differences through case studies.
The thesis compares Chinese and Greek culture through some classical mythology
stories, such as Nüwa and Panggu , the war of Troy and so on. According to these
classical myth stories, we find out the differences between Chinese culture and
Western culture.

II. The Difference between Chinese Myth and Western Myth
There are many differences about god or godness in China and Western world.
As is known to all, in Chinese myth, their basic duty is to help human. The most
famous is about Yu. Yu devoted most of his life to tame the river for the happiness of
the people. But on the other hand, while in western world, myth shows a defferent
aspect of culture. In the ancient Greek myth, god of heaven, they have all the feelings

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of love, hate, anger, desire, and envy as the same as human. For example, when
Prometheus brought fire to mankind, Zeus was ver angry. So Zeus ordered other gods
to tied Prometheus on a rock with a chain in the Caucasus Mountains. A hungry hawk
pecked his liver every day, and his liver always grew back. His pain would last 30
thousand years. At the same time, Zeus began to plan to revenge to human, so he
created Pondora box which would bring disater.
Chinese peoole advocate ethics, while Westerners advocate freedom. All of
those can be told from their sight of love. First, Zeus married his sister which seems to
be unacceptable in China. Apart from this, Zeus often had dating with his lovers.
However, there is no such thing in Chinese myth. In Chinese myth, it told about love
between God and human being, such as Dong Yong and the Seventh Fairy.
All those differences between Chinese and western can be understood. While
Grace Myths were created several thousand years after China, Grace was in the
process of coming into civilized society. People have already been far from the time
when they admired the animals. Then Chinese cultures were influenced by Confucius,
but in the West, people believe Humanistic ideas and Catholicism, so they have
different culture consciousness.
A. Individualism and Collectivism
The Greek gods and Chinese gods have different opinions in value. In Greek
mythology the gods tend to regard their own interests as the center. They seek
happiness for themselves, for their own interests, arbitrarily, regardless of the interests
of the whole.
1. Individualism in Greek Myth
In Greek myth, people praised individualism and adventure spirit. To achieve
their personal aim, they even used force, and world got the balance and development
from the mutual check. Take the dispute of applefor example, the most
important time of the golden apple’s appearance was in the wedding of human hero
Peleus and the sea goddess Thetis. Nearly all of the gods were invited to the wedding,
only the goddess Eris was not been invited. Eris held a grudge, so she presented to the
guests in the wedding a golden apple that was said it to the most beautiful.

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Hera, Athena, Aphrodite disputed for the golden apple .The other gods were afraid to
speak out, because they didn’t want to offend the goddess. Zeus let the Trojan prince
Paris to do the judgment. In order to obtain the golden apples, three goddesses were
out seductively conditions: Hera would give him supreme authority, and blessed him
to do a superior ruler; Athena were willing to give him wisdom and strength,
encouraged him to have the courage to take risks, and broke a heroic glorious way;
Aphrodite promised to let the world's most beautiful woman fall in love with him and
to be his wife. After much deliberation, Paris felt that power and domination which he
could inherit from his father, but love is not every day he could encounter. So he gave
the golden apple to Aphrodite. Later, with the help of Aphrodite, Paris abducted the
queen of Sparta - beautiful Helen, which became the fuse of Trojan War. The gods let
human Paris to judge, and brought huge disaster to Paris. However, they don’t care,
the most important is they didn’t offend the three goddesses, and they were not
punished.
2. Collectivism in Chinese Myth
In Chinese myth, the derivation of the ethical standard is collectivism. As the
perfect ancient deities in the hearts of Chinese nation, all of them devoted themselves
to their nation and people until death. For example, Long time ago, the water god
Gong Gong and Vulcan Zhu Rong, in order to strive to become leaders, fighted with
each other. Gong Gong was defeated. He rather die than surrender, he hit northwest
mountains in a rush moment, knocked down the mountain. That turned out to be
Buzhou Mountain stays as pillars of heaven, the pillars felled, the sky was falling
because of a big hole. The water of Milky Way were pouring down, flooding farmland,
crops, livestock and houses. Humans were in dire straits. Goddess Nvwa, it was said
the godness who made the man. Nvwa was very worry to see her sons and daughters
were in such a huge disaster, so she led the fight against human and flood. Water was
from the hole of the sky, so she tried to block the vulnerabilities of the sky. Nvwa run
around, collecting the red, yellow, blue, white, black colors of stones, burned nine
days and nine nights, melt into colored magma, patched the hole in the sky. In
Chinese people’s heart, Nvwa is a god who put their interests at first. She is not kind,

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but has mercy on human kind. In Chinese myth, there are a lot of such stories. These
stories influenced many Chinese people, and encourage them to devote themselves to
their nation and people until death.
B. People of God and Deification of Man
Myth originated in primitive society. In the age of barbarism of primitive people,
in the face of mysterious origin of the world, natural and social phenomena change
unpredictably, they think there will be a superhuman, supernatural forces dominating
everything. So they created God, then myth emerged. Marx said: myth is the
imagination and the imagination to conquer the forces of nature, control the forces of
nature, to visualize the forces of to conquer the forces of nature,
control the forces of nature, must be extraordinary, power is infinite, divine, a divine
power, which is the myth called So do the Chinese myth of Pangu,
NuWa, Yi, Greek mythology Zeus, Achilles, Hera Chris, Aetna. However, the
primitive people can not create imaginary of God, they can only follow their own
needs, starting from their own experience, basing on their own image to create. A
large number of Greek mythologies of the Homer epic is
the gods, gods and human is his artistic characteristicsTherefore, God also have
varying degrees of The people of the world God has a
apotheosisand character. Interestingly, we are comparing Chinese
mythology and Greek mythology, China God will be found more
the Greek gods are more
1. People of God in Greek Myth
Greek mythology shows a kind of human society for us, headed by Zeus who is
the leader of twelve LORD God living in Olympus, hey had supreme power in charge
of all affairs of heaven, sea even hell, but they have seven emotions and six sensory
pleasures, they also aspire to lead a happy life. In Greek mythology, each had a
distinct personality, such as Hera’s jealousy, Athens’s integrity, A Flo Dieter’s
universal fraternity, while Zeus is lecherous. Zeus is the king of gods of Mount
Olympus, the highest rulers. But he is lechery, often acts as the embodiment of
everything, makes merry everywhere, about which there is an interesting legend. It

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was said that Europa is the Phoenician princess. One day, she and her partners went
out and picked flowers, and they met a pretty big bull. The princess touchs the bull,
the bull is very docile; he gave a sign to ride on its back. Europa just rid on the bull’s
back, the bull flied away from the Asian mainland, brought the princess to a new
world. When the bull turned to Zeus, he asked Arroba courtship, and married her. And
the ground beneath her feet was named after her name, this is the European continent.
Greek mythology never shied to show up the character of God even defects. In fact,
these Gods are the representative of the will and spirit of human, which also
represented the Greek national. What the future generation see from the Greeks are
free, optimism, their original vitality and passion, fully embodies the cultural values
of individual standard.
2. Deification of Man in Chinese Myth
Compared with the Greek mythology, God's world in Chinese mythology seems
to have less complete organizational structure. Their true face is also blurred for us.
We could not find a specific description of their personality, or all of them are
described into a moral continuum with a set of all the virtues. Among them, males are
the leaders; they have great wisdom and think people should go first. Women are the
symbols of mother love, kindness, gentleness, virtuous moderate nature. They do not
have human’s love and hate, the most original desire of human. Of course, there is
no lack of moral flaws and virtues insufficiency. Their images are not only tall but flat,
both beauty and nothingness, intuitive and one-sided. Their moral height is
insurmountable to human. Chinese mythology embodied the sense of distance of
Eastern nation and the God. They will never put God down to the position of the
ordinary people, confused with the secular. But the Greek mythology testified truly
the evidence of the status of human with God’s substitute, and described that the
human are the measure of all things. The expressions of individuation and
self- awareness in Greek mythology have also become an important source of
Humanism in Renaissance. But in China, due to the prolonged feudalism and its
oppression to capitalist, human nature, the idea of the human desire have not been
fully exploited, and this may have some relations with the national character of

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reserved style.
C. Unity and Conflict between God and Human beings
In the low productivity of the primitive society, what human ancestors faced is
the primary problem of the existence of human beings. If mankind wanted to survive,
they must be available to the nature, they must struggle against nature, the nature of
God into the relation between the heaven and human, in the concept of the ancient
Greek myth, including more human nature to punishment and the people of God
struggle; Chinese ancient myth writes about God for blessing and people on the day of
adaptation.
1. Antagonism between Nature and Man in Greek Myth
In the mind of ancient Greek, man and nature is in the situation of contradiction,
which was reflected on the relationship between deities and human beings. In Greek
myth, the deities do not always get along well with human beings and human beings
often challenge deities. They cheat deities with their intelligence just like Sisyphus,
Odysseus. So there are many wars between deities and human beings in Greek myth.
Greek civilization is marine civilization; ocean is their womb of civilization, so they
think highly of the exploration and subjugation of nature. Deities in Greek myth are
symbols of nature. As the father of gods and men, Zeus is the leader of the lightning
bolt; Poseidon is the ruler of the sea; Apollo is the god of sun; Artemis is the goddess
of the moon; Iris is the goddess of the rainbow. They dominate nature. As a matter of
fact, the war between gods and human beings is the war between nature and human
beings. Ancient Greeks have encouragement to fight with nature. This has promoted
the formation of scientific culture, which makes Western countries develop fast.
2. Human as an Integral Part of Nature in Chinese Myth
Chinese myth holds a great idea that is unity of man and nature, that is to say
harmony. But Greek myth approves of a contrary idea. That is antagonism between
man and nature. For example, the myth of Pangu can demonstrate Chinese’s idea of
natural world. It was recorded in a book of history called Yishi that Pangu, who was
born before anything else, went through great bodily changes when he was dying.


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“His breath became winds and clouds, his voice thunder,
his left eye the sun and his right eye the moon; his arms and legs the four
poles of the earth and the five parts if his body the five mountains; his
blood formed the rivers and his veins the roads; his flesh and skin
became the soil of the fields and his hair and moustache the stars; the
fine hair on his skin turned into grass and trees, his teeth and bones
metals and rocks; his narrow changed to pearls and jade, and his sweat
fell as rain that nourished all things; the insect on his body, caressed by
the winds, took the shape of men and women”. (Ding Wangdao,1995).

Ancient Chinese reckoned the derivation and formation of universe by their
own deliberation. Pangu and the world are melted into one, an identical and
imdiscerptible whole. Namely, world is Pangu, Pangu is the world. They share the
same form, body, stem and progenitor. From this myth, we can find the archetype of
the ancient Chinese’s idea of nature: the harmony and unity of man and nature. This
conception was developed later by philosophers into various similar theories.
Zhuangzi’s oneness of life and death, unity of objects and the self, Dong Zhongshu’s
sympathy of man and nature and so forth, all followed the spirit of this myth. On the
basis of ancient Chinese, man was a reproduction of natural world. Man and nature
are functions of each other, references of each other. And there are a large amount of
intimate connections and identies between man and nature. In ancient Chinese mind,
deities will help human beings getting through difficulties and miseries, just like
Nüwa.

III. Causes of the Myth Differences
Due to many reasons, there are many differences between Chinese and Greek
myth, which demonstrate their own conceptions of moral principles and unique
national spirits. Through different cultural identities comparison between Chinese and
Greek mythology, we can keep our own national characteristics in trend of global
culture and have a better understanding of cross-culture communication, thus advance

8

English teaching in Chinese class.
A. Time
The myth is the reflection of ancient people on the origin of the world, natural
phenomena and social life of the original understanding, and through the supernatural
image and fantasy form stories and legends. Because the ancient productivity level is
low, people can not scientifically explain the origin of the world, natural phenomena
and social life of the contradictions, change, so the use of fantasy, the force of nature
personified produced. The myth of the ancient people tends to natural force of
struggle and the pursuit of the ideal. In early BC ancient works in the pre-Qin period,
such as the ShanhaijingZuozhuanMandarinSongs of the SouthLüshi
Spring and AutumnChinese classical mythology famous has been recorded. The
Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms HuainanzirecordsHanshu
Spring and Autumn in Wuy
ue
SoushenjiShuyiji
and other books also have many classical mythology records. In the middle,
Shanhaijing
the original. These are the books which record the myth in different time. On the
contrary, the history of Greece is shorter, and Greek myth produced later than Chinese
myth.
B. Geographical Environment
Due to different natural environment in the West, it created a different character
in the western people. China belongs to the ancient inland country, agriculture is the
foundation of China,
Chinese mythology, there is such conquest of the landform. Such as Yu
combating the flood
the same time, because of those reasons, it makes the Chinese tend to be stable and
harmonious , also the Chinese have conservative ideas and hedonic characteristics. So
the myth system is also more closed and self- sufficient. Greece is in the
Mediterranean coast, the sea culture occupies a very important position. Mythological
Sea King Poseidon settings and many myth related to marine stories express the
Greeks have a colse relationship with the sea. At the same time, the ocean makes the

9

Greeks have strong oversea trade and colonization of the traditional. The mythical

Westerners yearning for freedom and personality of courage, wisdom, wealth for
technology.
C. Preservation and Spreading
The preservation and Spreading of Chinese myth and Greek myth are different.
Chinese ancient culture had strongly spontaneous tendency, spontaneous and
development of hieroglyphic system is so complex and slow that it cannot catch up
the record of the myth at the turn of barbarism and civilization, and hieroglyphs use
alphabetic writing system state unlike to Greece, with the other minority language
form so easily. And the text in the spring and autumn period is as all classes of authors
to express their philosophy with political philosophy tool. We are precocious and
advocating the actual ancestors quickly dispelling unrealistic fantasy, but that is
committed to the realistic ideal “regulate the family and rule the world”, so myth were
not too much to carry forward, but small, scattered, no system myth can be found in
general articles, such as Shanghaiing Huainanzi
was scatted in pieces of reservations. However, in Greek myth, most have inherited by
folk song singers. Then after processing the creation of poet and dramatist, in this
process, they are often added to the individual's imagination and polish, and because
of their life and responsibilities, this process requires they must win plot and be rich in
content. Therefore, Greek mythology frequently is long, such as
and the epic and so on.

V. Cross- cultural Communication Teaching from the Perspective of Greek
Mythology
Hellenist has long been hailed as the culture of occidental culture. As an
important part of Hellenistic culture, the Greek mythology severs as an embodiment
of Greek national spirit and culture and thus exerts far-reaching influence on Western
and European culture. As a form of literal representation, it leads the affective

10

intercultural culture and its deep structure hidden behind, into now dimensions. Based
on analysis of the multi- layer influence of Greek Mythology on the occidental culture,
this thesis brings froth the constructive suggestions that we may tap such literary
reasons as Greek mythology to conduct culture teaching and solve some practical
problems arising from it.
A. The Authentic Material Selection
Teaching content should be conducive to the culture of the target language
teaching. In addition to offer the culture of the target language and literature courses,
professional language should be relative to the language knowledge and language
skills of the traditional courses, such as intensive reading, extensive reading,
newspaper reading, listening, conversation, writing teaching material, which should
be chosen have some relationship with the target language culture and customs of the
original materials, and not using the language and cultural content. If the use of
mother tongue culture content materials to teach foreign languages (this is more
common in China before 10 years in the foreign language teaching), in the form of
language is new to the learner, but the content is often familiar, understand it without
much effort, like this, once exposed to realforeign language materials, and
understanding of nature is difficult, or not understanding. Therefore, foreign language
teaching should use the authentic language materials as far as possible, so that the
students on the whole learning process in the target language culture atmosphere,
which is undoubtedly conducive to cultural awareness training objective language
students, thereby reducing the interference of native language and cultural factors.
Lectures on the classic story and fragments in Greek myth, such as, Pandora's box,
this phrase is very common in some science and current affairs articles, if students do
not understand the vocabulary stems from which allusions, this will greatly influence
on the text comprehension. The teacher can tell the allusion to students.
B. Infiltration of Culture
Infiltration of cultural knowledge consciously reflected on the teaching process.
The teacher explained in the text, should provide relevant background material to
students, make students deepen understanding the material, and can obtain that cannot

11

get from the text information. Foreign language teachers should have a strong cultural
awareness, always make use of culture instruction in teaching.
C. The Use of Modern Means
With movies, television, audio-visual equipment and data assisted foreign
language teaching, a variety of forms, vivid and interesting contents are very popular
with the students. Now, the audio- visual information in foreign language teaching,
story, very rich, reflect the target countries of social culture of different aspects of data
used in teaching, will certainly be able to receive good results, students can learn the
target language living language, and can intuitively understand the target society and
culture. Such as: can play Greek mythology about the legendary hero Achilles epic,
skilled computer stunt students like battlefield in Troy, this can let students obtain
more intuitive knowledge; (Achilles heel of this famous story). Therefore, it often
means the
horse
virus, the virus is also the name comes from the Greek myth, the big horse was
horse
the future
their own cultural accomplishment, learning the knowledge of a foreign culture, at the
same time, imparting knowledge of the language to teach more cultural knowledge to
students. Knowledge is an important part of English teaching, students can learn
culture through the language and learn language through culture, then achieve the
perfect combination of the two which is the highest realm of foreign language
teaching. English teachers and learners are disseminators, we must have a profound
knowledge, and adopting various teaching methods can be effective, handy in
teaching, help students to correctly understand the content.

V. Conclusion
Chinese and Greek explain the world with mythology, when they try to
understand it. Therefore, the myth is one of the most concentrated and unique
manifestation of the national spirit, it is the oldest and solid root, also the essential

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characteristics of the national culture. There are many other cultural differences
between Chinese and Greek mythology. Chinese mythology, however, focusing on the
moral more emphasis is conservative, and the power of Greek mythology is focusing
on open. Chinese and Greek mythology helps to further our understanding of the
cultural differences between the literary works of the Western countries, and promote
our cultural change.
Culture teaching is to cultivate students' intercultural communicative
competence. Both sides of foreign language communication always exist cultural
differences, and often causing communication barriers, but it is also very subtle, and
not easy for both sides of communication to perceive. Therefore, cultural differences
are more likely to lead to misunderstanding and failure in communication than the
language differences. Sapir pointed out that
in fact, the two isomorphism largely homogeneous.“In cross-cultural communication,
differences between native culture and target culture communication, it is necessary to
the intercultural communication teaching to compare the two kinds of culture in
common but meanings of culture phenomenon is different, that is to say, comparative
analysis is often used in culture teaching .
Greek and Western national spirit, customs and habits, social customs, ways of
thinking, philosophy of life and so on, which can be used as a good material for a
comparison between Chinese and Western cultures from multiple dimensions,
especially the covert culture with the corresponding Chinese culture, let the students
deepen the culture of the target language perception in contrast, strengthen their
cultural sensitivity.
Language is affected by culture; it is an important part of culture. So if you
want to learn English well, to improve the ability to use English for communication, it
is very important to be familiar with the background knowledge of English. Greek
mythology is the cultural heritage of the world, plays a very important role on the
development of the western culture, and is the precious wealth in the history of human
civilization. Therefore, when teachers are teaching students the knowledge of English
language at the same time, they also want to try to give the students some knowledge

13

about English culture background. It can not only help students to improve English
communication ability, but also can stimulate students' interest in English learning,
expand their horizons, enrich their knowledge. Therefore, the cultivation of
cross-cultural communication ability with Greek mythology enhances students'
sensitivity of cultural differences, tolerance and flexibility in dealing with cultural gap,
which is an important content in college English teaching at our university stage in the
future.






















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Works Cited

Ding Wangdao. 100 Chinese Myths and Fantasies, Beijing: China Translation &
Publishing Corporation and Commercial Press (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd.,
(1995).
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