The world today, ethnically diverse; all of us come from different cultural background, brought up with cultural different beliefs and linguistic. Why is intercultural communications so important, it help us to seeks and understand how people from different countries and cultural beliefs, communicate and perceive the world around them.
Communication is important in many aspects. We need to communicate with one another when we are dealing with our business partners, military cooperation, science, education, mass media, entertainments as well as tourism.
With the lack of knowledge of another person culture, it can lead to embarrassing or amusing mistakes. Such mistake can lead to confusion or even worst we might offend the other party unintentionally. Take for example; if a Chinese businessman who wish to strike a deal with a Caucasian and he is not able to express himself clearly it will be difficult for him to secure the deal.
Here are some examples which Donnell King from Pellissippi State Technical Community College has kindly provided us from the advertising world of how simply translating words is not enough – a deeper understanding of the other culture is necessary to translate the meaning more effectively.
- Pepsi Cola’s “Come Alive with Pepsi” campaign, when it was translated for the Taiwanese market, it conveyed the unsettling news of, “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.”
- Colgate-Palmolive toothpaste named “Cue” was advertised in France before anyone realized that Cue also happened to be the name of a widely circulated pornographic book about oral sex.
- A General Motors auto ad with “Body by Fisher” became “Corpse by Fisher” in Flemish.
Learning about someone culture is a great way to improve one’s intercultural communication. All this can be done through reading and watching documentary. However, the best way to understand another country culture is to travel to there and experience it yourself first hand.
It will be ideal if you can do a research on the country which you will like to visit. Taking note of the type of local foods available, the way the people live, learn their spoken language, their history. It is only through mingling with the local, trying out their local cuisine and join them in their festival can you truly understand their rich culture. One should also take the effort to understand the new environment and modify our behaviors so that we do not cause insult or disrespect.
Take for example Spain, where they have this annual Tomato Fight the worlds’ biggest food fight: every year the last Wednesday of August, around 30,000 people will descend on the Spanish town of Bunol (in the Valencia region of Spain) to throw more than 240,000 pounds of tomatoes at each other. This culture can only be found and appreciate in Spain; can you imagine if we also have tomato fight in Singapore? 
Thailand is another country which has a rich culture. The locals celebrate their Thai New Year, which is also known as Songkran every April 13 – 15. This festival can be concluded as one of the world largest water fight. Please visit this link to catch the locals in action!
Students exchange program is another way which you can experience another country culture. As you will be staying with your host during your exchange program, you will get to experience their cultures and they will introduce you to things which you have not experience before. But then again if their culture is something which you cannot perceive, then culture shock might set in.
I remembered visiting China with times with my family. I was “warned” by friends who has visited China before; that the toilet does not have a door especially in the rural area and it will be advisable to bring an umbrella along. As we are all living in a city, many of us are accustom to have a door to protect our privacy when we are in the toilet. Can you imagine going to a toilet without a door? I really can’t imagine but decided to go there with an open mind. I can’t really remember which province I visited but I was in for a real culture shock during my first visit. Never in my wildest dream did I expect the toilet to be what I was seeing. Their toilet is design in such a way that it look like a drain with a waste paper basket at the side of it for you to throw you tissues. As the place we visited was one of the tourist attractions, out of consideration two cubical at the back happen to have a small piece of cloth to cover tourist who were shy. The moment I saw it I freak out, so did the rest of my tour mates. If you are unlucky and u happens to go to a cubical when the previous user did their “business” in it, then you will get to see it! They will only flush the toilet once a week during winter season! (If I don’t remember wrongly) There you go this is their culture and the locals are used to it. After this trip I still continue to visit china as it is really rich in culture and the sceneries are really beautiful!
I feel that it is really important that we are open-minded; we must learn to understand the way things are done base on each culture and appreciated what the local does. Although it might be a huge culture shock for us.
If we take the conscious effort to understand and respect each other culture, don’t you agree that the world will be a better place to live in? 
Reference:
http://www.geocities.com/travelwithyour/m_cult1.html
http://www.diplomacy.edu/Language/Communication/main.htm
http://www.spain-info.com/Culture/tomatofight.htm
No Man is an island meaning “Human beings do not thrive when isolated from others”. This is a quotation from John Donne (1572-1631).
This is aptly described us human beings as being a social animals by which we thrive when we integrate with others. We understand each other and live better, then the world is a much better place to live in.
Your blog is very insightful on various cultural domains spanning across Asian countries.
I am fully agreed with you that human tolerant and understanding started by way of understanding and communication with each other by means of cultural exchange.
Human conflict started from intolerant and misunderstanding of the other culture because of fear and distrust.
As you have mentioned in your blog earlier, intercultural communication is a very important aspect of bridging cultural divide among different ethnic groups span across the different countries.
Again there is a saying the world is a book and those do not travel read only a page. So by that when we traveled the world, we see and understand how people in that countries live their lives through various cultural festivals as you have mentioned Songkran (water festival in Thailand) is one of them. It deepen our view, our understandings and our sensitivities of other ethnic groups.
Your blog also talked about cultural shock when you first visit one of China’s provinces. Though it was very normal there not to have toilet doors , you found it contrary to what you were brought up by having to close the toilet door each time you visit the restroom. Again as saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. We may think it was an awful habit but to the people in that part of China it was very normal thing. So by visiting the place you not only learn their way of life but also their habit first hand and we come to understand and be more tolerant toward their habit. A very powerful way to bridge cultural divide is to have intercultural communication and dialogue.
An enlightening blog that touch on various aspect of intercultural communication within Asia and could be extended to other countries such Middle Eastern, Western Europe just to name a few.
Keep your idea flowing and promote intercultural communication to bring world peace to the world.
By: Anonymous on March 12, 2009
at 7:38 pm
Yes! Understanding another culture is essential! It’s not only because you need to know for business deals or for work etc etc… It’s essential because we communicate for so many people! Even in our own country, we have so many ethnic groups within our community that we have to concious and understand the other group’s culture so as not to cause any misunderstanding.
By: moonprincess87 on March 19, 2009
at 5:01 pm
The world today lacks about opening up their minds and rather many are not as aware as they should be. Because we live in such a protected society, most of us have NO idea what so ever about the world around us. It is AMAZING what the world has in store for us, as you mentioned about the different countries and their cultures, it is important for us to be interested and knowledgeable about it (:
Yes, communication is key to knowing not only more about other people, learning about yourself too, but also it helps to avoid any misconceptions that could possible lead to embarrassment, it is fine to get things wrong once in a while, but you get to learn so much more in turn.
Communication is essentially for getting about everyday life, and yes agreed to the above, we are lucky enough to have a multi-racial country, yet many many of us do not know each others culture well at all.
By: valerie on March 20, 2009
at 3:18 am
The photos were beautiful!!
Communication improves relationships too, my ex-big boss used to send a email to my direct boss and my direct boss will forward it to me. This made my ex-big boss seems unapproachable. My new big boss emails me directly. Though i may not see him, an email makes me feel that me existence is felt.
And living in a multi-racial country, i do see racism quite often though we were generally living in harmony. Can we really open our hearts to the other race? I can! My good friend is an Indian! because I believe we were not born chinese, indian, or malays, we were all born as achild on earth! it is the heart that matters most!
By: Ah lay on March 26, 2009
at 5:39 pm
I totally agreed with you on this“I believe we were not born Chinese, Indian, or Malays, we were all born as a child on earth!” Dr Daisaku Ikeda has mention before that our mothers didn’t give birth to us thinking, “I’m giving birth to a Japanese” or “I’m giving birth to an Arab.” Their only thought was “May this new life be healthy and grow!” How true this is! In fact all of us are very lucky to born in this world. No matter which country we are born, we must remember that we are all the citizen of earth. Therefore, it is our responsibility to embrace each other culture and respect them.
By: annnee83 on March 27, 2009
at 9:21 am
Makes me appreciate SINGAPORE more!! where we are a mini melting pot of cultures and traditions…
Let’s start by knowing our colleague/ classmate/ neighbour/ of the other ethnic group more before we take the world!
BUT first, get rid of all stereotypes and be pure like kids as we do so!! if not we will have a super shocking/ miserable experience!
By: jinhaw on March 27, 2009
at 4:28 pm