Do You Need to Learn Foreign Cultural Taboos Before Traveling?

Today on Facebook, Mizuc saw an influencer living in Japan promoting several dining customs that Taiwanese people should follow when traveling in Japan. For example, do not serve food for your own companions, and do not share food with children, and so on.

After reading it, I had only one feeling: extremely troublesome — so troublesome that even Japanese people themselves would not necessarily copy his list. Those who do not know might think she is a cultural promotion agent dispatched by Japan to Taiwan.

In fact, Japan itself has different cultures in each region, and even living habits that cannot really be called culture. As foreigners, there is absolutely no need for us to find a high standard for ourselves to strictly abide by.

At this point, it feels as if the Party’s propaganda style of “be a proper and upright Chinese” is ringing in my ears.

A Japanese high school girl sleeping soundly on the train

Traveling Is Not Marrying Into the Family

We are just traveling to experience culture and enjoy the scenery, not to marry into a family or sell ourselves. How eager are you to hope they cannot tell you are a foreigner?

I, on the contrary, wish others knew I was a foreigner. Whether for travelers or locals, mystery is the unchanging rule that sparks interest and drives conversation.

It is like how when you go abroad you feel everything is fresh, yet forget that there is likely something similar near your own hometown. You may be keen to chat with foreigners, yet may not have said a single word to your next-door neighbors in ten years.

To put it another way, that person living in Japan may not even know how to hold chopsticks and bowls in the way Japanese people consider formal etiquette, so she probably could not marry into a traditional upper-class Japanese family (laughs).

Cultural Conflict?

Some people may know that in places like Italy and Greece, giving someone a thumbs-up may very likely get you scolded or beaten. You may think it just means “good” 👍, but to them it probably carries the same insulting meaning as our middle finger.

But have you seen them specifically protest against Facebook for using 👍 as the Like icon?

That said, I also do not understand why people go around making gestures at others 🙄️. I rarely even have the desire to make these gestures in my own daily life.

Also, when Mizuc was young, I met an Indian person for the first time. At that time, the Indian person offered me home-cooked food he had made himself. My first thought upon taking the food was that I was trapped in the so-called “cultural taboo” concept, thinking left and right that I remembered it seemed impolite to eat with a certain hand, so I still used the wrong hand (I fell into the trap of thinking I would remember it specially precisely because it was different from usual).

Seeing this, the other person was also very curious and asked me why I suddenly switched hands to eat. After hearing my confused thought process, he just laughed a few times and then told me how the correct table etiquette in his country should be — and then we just learn it. It can even create a beautiful scene of cultural exchange between the two countries.

Common Misunderstandings About Cultural Taboos

In fact, so-called cultural taboos, put another way, are mostly just old, pedantic things whose origins no one even knows.

For those that can be reasoned out, we just need to acknowledge and accommodate them. As for the many that force a reason onto you, just smile and let them pass. After all, that is not our homeland, let alone those people who are so lacking in self-confidence that they wish all day long that they were someone else.

Rather than carefully learning the taboos of other cultures everywhere, Mizuc actually has a simpler way to face this kind of cultural conflict. The method is simple: come from the heart, and face what happens on the road with an attitude of politeness and respect for everything.

Learn to accept, to accommodate, to be humble, and to smile.

Complain less, see more, listen more, and never regulate others with your own one-sided thoughts and understanding. Let everything be spoken by the facts. In fact, this is not only a way to face foreign cultures, but an attitude we should all learn and put into practice in our daily lives.

When we are abroad and cause a foreigner to get angry because of our own habits, there is no need to passively complain or loudly protest. Just positively and proactively extend goodwill to the other person and indicate that you now know, and that is enough.

If the person you meet insists on fighting you to the bitter end, then that person was not a good person to begin with. Either ignore him, or, depending on the local conditions, decide whether to fight back or quickly call the police — that is something you need to judge on the spot.

There is no reason we should let our own dignity be forced beneath others because of the habitual issues of another country’s culture (I do not mean the cultural conflict itself, but how to handle the conflict). This will never be a correct interpersonal relationship.

Well, in the end, Chinese civilization has since ancient times regarded itself as a nation of etiquette, but in modern times, it is actually the Japanese who have preserved the true rituals more. In contrast, we merely envy the Japanese for being very polite, yet forget the fact that we ourselves have learned nothing.