Abstract Marriage is always seen as a big deal in one’s life. And to some extent, it plays a critical role in one’s following happiness. However, everyone has his or her opinion for marriage and the differences are especially obvious in different countries. So this essay is based on a movie called the wedding banquet which includes many cultural conflicts between China and America to study their different marriage concepts. And I summarize them into three parts: differences in ceremonies, differences in choosing marriage partner and differences in values. By knowing these , on the one hand, it is good for us to have a better understanding of American culture and avoid conflicts in cross-cultural communication. On the other hand, it can also give us some inspiration for the base of our future marriage concepts.54092

Keywords: China and America; marriage concepts; differences; conflicts

摘要婚姻一直以来被称作是人生中的大事，从某种程度上说它对一个人后半生的幸福起到了关键的作用。然而每个人对婚姻都有不一样的观点，这样的差异在两个不同的国度尤其明显。本文通过对一部有着浓厚中美婚姻冲突电影——《喜宴》的解析来研究中美婚姻观的差异,并且将这些差异归结为三大类，分别为婚姻形式，选择对象和价值观的差异。从这些差异中，一方面可以了解美国的文化，在跨文化交流中有效地避免文化冲突。另一方面，也可以从差异中获得启示，为未来自我的婚姻观打下基础。

毕业论文关键词：中美；婚姻观；差异；冲突

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Brief Introduction of The Wedding Banquet 2

4. Differences between Chinese and American Marriage Concepts in “ The Wedding Banquet” 3

4.1 Differences in ceremony 3

4.2 Differences in choosing marriage partner 6

4.3 Differences in values 8

5. Reasons for the Different Concepts 10

6. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction 

     Facing the growing trend of the integration of our world, we are now in touch with more people from all over the world than ever before, which sometimes will lead to several intercultural problems. For example, we may hardly understand American way of shopping, ceremony of marriage or their world values, etc. On the contrary, it may also difficulty for them to agree with us. So in this way, it’s necessary for us to communicate with each other, know the differences, understand the reasons and accept different cultures at last.

     This essay is focus on the differences of marriage concepts between Chinese and American culture. As it is known to all that marriage plays a significance role in one’s life and has great influences on one’s happiness. Then what does marriage mean? “Marriage is a socially legitimate sexual union, begun with a public announcement and undertaken with some idea of permanence; it is assumed with a more or less explicit marriage contract, which spells out reciprocal rights and obligations between spouses, and between the spouses and their future children.”(Stephens 5) Or generally speaking, marriage is known as “ the legal relationship between a husband and wife”.(Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary, 1236).

     The Wedding Banquet, which is a well known movie for its cultural conflicts between Chinese and American marriage concepts, is very appropriate for the analysis. Besides, movie as an efficient mass media is popular among people of all ages. By watching movies, people can not only enjoy themselves , but also get knowledge of different kinds of cultures. Therefore, this paper takes the wedding banquet as a case to get a better understanding of different marriage concepts.