Etiquette culture America is a country with fierce competition, fast pace of life and great work pressure, which has caused many social problems. The United States in the radio and news is often associated with violent incidents, which makes people feel that this is an unsafe country. But in the small and medium-sized cities that best represent the typical living conditions of Americans, I find myself in a particularly peaceful world, and the friendship between people makes me seem to have entered a paradise. What constitutes the main theme of American daily life is actually not fighting and violence, but comity. I use the word comity to express a double meaning: politeness and avoidance. American politeness is reflected in all aspects of daily life: when you meet in the community, you should say hello whether you know each other or not (good morning, good afternoon, good evening, etc. ), when you meet by phone, you must greet each other with sweet words (they are used to sweet words), at least nod when you meet in public, pay attention to each other as much as possible when you talk to others, and so on. Moreover, this politeness is generally expressed through language, and just smiling is not enough. When I first arrived in America, I was not used to greeting strangers. I always use a smile instead of greeting. I soon found that Americans didn't respond to my smile, so they had to speak, and gradually adapted to this lifestyle that always needed to greet others with words. Politeness conforms to the daily habits of Americans. In the supermarket, people always consciously don't stand in the way of others. If someone wants to walk past you, he will almost certainly say "I'm sorry". It is considered extremely uncivilized to walk past others without saying a word. Courtesy culture is mostly reflected in the road: it is common for pedestrians and motor vehicles not to give in to each other in developing countries (including China of course), but I have never seen it in the United States. Americans always look around when driving, and stop at the intersection to make sure there are no pedestrians and other vehicles before passing slowly. If a pedestrian happens to pass the intersection, the driver will wait patiently until the pedestrian passes before moving on. Pedestrians sometimes deliberately let the car go first, but drivers will almost 100% wave to let pedestrians go first. Once, I walked through an intersection without a red light and saw a car about to pass by, so I signaled the car to go first. Seeing that I was waiting, the driver quickly backed the car back a few meters and waved me over first. In some small cities with high civilization, drivers usually park at a distance of ten or even twenty meters from pedestrians. It is an American rule that cars give way to pedestrians. It is said that it is written in the traffic law, and violators will be severely punished. American drivers will not only avoid pedestrians but also avoid each other. When two cars meet, drivers usually wave to each other to let them go first. This comity civilization on the road amazed many visiting China people. Although China has a Confucian comity culture, this comity must obey the hierarchical order. Therefore, people with low grades always give way to those with high grades. In China, car drivers either belong to the elite or get rich first, so they avoid pedestrians, which is not in the registration order. Some places have also enacted the so-called "killing" law, which is a symbol of modernization. The makers of these rules may not have thought that in the most modern United States, comity first is a moral law that citizens must abide by and a habit in their daily lives. Therefore, I think China people who are pursuing modernization should seriously study American etiquette culture. Politeness means respecting others and recognizing their rights. It is a sign of your growth as an individual-it means that you have the ability to be responsible for others. The consciousness of individual rights and responsibilities is the foundation of comity culture and the core of American modern consciousness. It creates a public culture that respects everyone's living space. At present, most people in China do not have this spirit of comity. Therefore, a deep understanding of American comity culture will be beneficial to China's modernization. Most Americans I have met are not only very polite, but also very helpful. On the second day in America, I went shopping in the supermarket, but I didn't know the specific address of the supermarket. When I was looking nearby, an American young man came up and asked politely, "What do you seem to be looking for?" I asked, "Where is the supermarket?" The young man laughed and pointed: "It's right there!" It can be seen from his expression that he is happy to help a stranger. I got lost several times in America, and in the process of asking for directions, I really realized the American culture of helping others. When I asked a female bus driver for directions, she even stopped her work, looked up a map for me and spent a few minutes looking for the right way for me. When I got off the bus and walked in the right direction, she kept waving at me in the car until I was sure I was on the right road before driving away. There are few pedestrians on the streets of most cities in the United States, and sometimes there are no pedestrians on the whole road. It is not easy to ask for directions, but as long as you meet other people, they will definitely give you directions seriously, and their enthusiasm and sincerity are often touching. The culture of helping others in the United States is very different from that in China: helpers usually don't interfere with the freedom of the helped, and try not to involve money. My landlord Sally is an old lady in her seventies. She is very kind. When she saw that I didn't have a car, she took me out on business several times. Every time she decides to give me a lift, she always asks politely, "Dr. Wang, I wonder if you are free?" If you are free, you can take my car out. I'm going to work anyway. "In fact, at the destination, I found that she had nothing to do. She said that in order to make me a helper without psychological burden. She gave me a ride in her car for my convenience, but she thought it was necessary to ask the other person's permission to help others. This is the embodiment of the American spirit. It is important to help others, but it is more important to respect others' freedom. The American culture of helping others is based on individualism, which advocates one person helping another. In this process, we must respect the freedom of the helper and the helped. This is essentially different from the helping culture of oriental collectivism. Respect for property rights makes the American culture of helping others have distinctive capitalist characteristics: helping others usually adopts the principle of not involving money, and when money is involved, a contract must be signed, and the helped person either pays the money involved in some way or has a clear way of thanking. However, some China people in the United States have gone beyond this principle and added oriental style to the American culture of helping others. Zeng Qinghua is an influential entrepreneur in the Chinese community in Los Angeles, and his selfless help is well known. As long as a tourist from China arrives there, no matter how late, he will always pick him up by giving him a call. When China intellectuals get together, he often serves as a driver to pick up old people and visitors. His assets are not very abundant, but he often donates to China Cultural Foundation and China scholars, expecting nothing in return. I have had several in-depth conversations with him, and I know that his helpfulness is not only influenced by Christianity, but also stems from Confucian culture's worship of benevolence, righteousness, loyalty and sincerity. Because he has become an American citizen, I regard his helping behavior as a part of American helping culture. Although this culture of helping others beyond the principle of money is not mainstream in the United States, I have seen some exciting things from it. This is the unique contribution of Chinese to American helping culture. Gratitude culture has a dissolute beauty in the imagination of many people in China. Many people even come to the United States with the expectation of romance and carnival, but when they arrive in the United States, they will be disappointed to find that most Americans are very serious and conservative. Hippies, punk and beat elements collectively retreated to the depths of history and were replaced by modern Americans who followed the rules, which has a causal relationship with the mainstream position of American Christian culture. Most Americans are Christians, and gratitude to God, the world and others dominates their daily life style. Christianity emphasizes that people's happiness comes from the grace of God, so people should be grateful to God and the world created by God. The influence of this idea on Americans is decisive. Regardless of the size of the collective activities in the United States, there are basically short-term gratitude ceremonies. The host is the most prestigious person among priests, convenors and participants. Gratitude speech has a certain pattern, but the specific content is created by the host on the spot, and the participants recite or meditate with the host. The content of the big body is to thank God for giving us abundant food, opportunities to meet and a happy life. May the grace of God be with us forever. Most of the activities I participated in in the United States had an atmosphere of gratitude, and Americans were very serious and sincere about it. American-style individualism does not create an atom-like lonely individual as we imagined, because gratitude to God, the world and others makes American-style individualism contain a kind of collectivism centered on God. Everyone is a grateful person and an object of gratitude, and an individual connected with the existence of God and others. Therefore, gratitude culture is actually a group culture with the individual as the basic unit and the secular as the purpose. Thanksgiving culture is reflected in every aspect of American life. Thanking God means thanking others, because God's love is reflected in others. " "Thank you" is the most common sentence in the United States, and those who are thanked always use "you're welcome" (meaning not only "you're welcome", but also the affirmation of the grateful person). Even many couples keep saying "thank you" and "you're welcome" in their daily lives, which is neither necessary (why couples are so polite) nor stylized (why they always express their gratitude in one way) in China, but it can be seen how deeply rooted the gratitude culture is. In America, you have to thank others. This is a culture of gratitude that appeals to language (probably because God created the world through words, while westerners always try to turn everything into words). It is impolite to express your gratitude without words, especially in public. American customers will not be regarded as gods (it is disrespectful to compare people with gods), but they will actually be the objects of gratitude. You bought the goods of the merchants, which not only brought profits to the merchants, but also paid taxes to the government (everything in the United States has to be taxed), so the employees of the stores will definitely say words of thanks such as "Thank you" and "Wish you all the best today" (China merchants have also begun to introduce a culture of gratitude). After my speech in the United States this time, most people who came to the lecture (many of them are famous scholars) shook hands with me and thanked me. I know they may not get much enjoyment from my clumsy English, but they think that since I have worked hard and sincerely, they should thank me. This kind of gratitude seems to be stylized, but in fact it is completely sincere. Thanksgiving culture in the United States combines Christian thought with respect for individuals in modern society. It unifies divine existence, others and self into a whole in daily life, which is the unity of ultimate care and secular care. There are many reasons for the great success of American modernization, but the role of gratitude culture is irreplaceable. In order to realize modernization and even post-modernization, China should also establish and carry forward its own gratitude culture, so that individualism has a deeper foundation. What I'm talking about here is the mainstream American daily culture. It is relatively pure in small and medium-sized cities with relatively high cultural level and living standard. In a big city with a large number of poor people and floating population, although the above four daily cultures still exist, they are weakened by complex contexts. As a cultural and social phenomenon, what we usually call American disease mainly exists in these big cities. Because the focus of American life has shifted from big cities to small and medium-sized cities, the four daily cultures mentioned in this paper are the mainstream of American folk culture. Knowing this is very important for understanding American culture.