Chinese culture:

Chinese culture is based on Confucianism that is an ethical and philosophical system, on occasion is described as a religion, developed by philosopher Confucius. Confucianism had developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han Dynasty. Following the official abandonment of Legalism in China after the Qin Dynasty, Confucianism became the official state ideology of the Han. However, from the Han period ahead, most Chinese emperors have used a mix of Legalism and Confucianism as their ruling doctrine.

About the concept of «face», “mianzi”, is a very difficult one to explain in a few sentences. It is also impossible to discuss «face» without introducing the related concept of “guanxi”, «relationship» or social networking. Nevertheless, these two concepts, and how they are expressed in daily life in China, are absolutely essential for foreigners to understand, prior to their arrival, if they are to avoid numerous misunderstandings and angry blow-ups. From a Western countries perspective, it is very difficult to fully appreciate just how critically important the role of “face” is in the daily lives of the Chinese. “Face” is very important to them because making a mistake in public is, by far, the most humiliating experience they could ever have. In other words, most Chinese will do whatever they can to avoid looking bad in public and that often manifests itself in an unwillingness to openly admit to any wrongdoing, no matter how small or insignificant the error might have been. This phenomenon goes a long way in explaining, for example, why the vast majority of Chinese students are so reluctant to voluntarily participate in the class room, the fear of making a mistake in front of others is just quite enormous.

Comparing Chinese and Spanish culture by Hofstede´s cultural dimensions theory which it´s a framework based on five dimensions: Power Distance Index, Individualism, masculinity, Uncertainty Avoidance Index and Pragmatism. About Power Distance Index this is bigger in China than in Spain and it means that the relation between China workers and their supervisors is high and employees don´t take any initiative in making non-routine decisions. Talking about Individualism, Chinese populations are less individual than Spanish because they have less desire of freedom, time and challenge. Considering Uncertainty Avoidance, Spanish people tend to stay in their actual Company and on the contrary Chinese people are similar to USA and they have a fewer fear to change their current Company. The last point to consider is Pragmatism; Chinese people compared with Spanish are more pragmatic and compared with American people even more. Chinese find the practical way to set things and go straight into the efficiency.

Colors are one of the most important topics in Chinese culture. They are concern about the meaning of each one and this is a handicap for foreign business companies, some of them had to change their colors in the product just to be accepted in China. For instance red means fortune and good luck, white is the color of death and black represent formality.

Animals are even more relevant than colors, each year they choose a different animal. These are some examples: Fish is “more – extra”, Dragons and phoenix are used in weddings for good luck, dragon in men and phoenix in women, mandarin ducks symbolize couples and loyalty fidelity, cranes and turtles are longevity, bats mean good fortune and for example tigers mean strength.

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