I went to Canada three year ago, actually it's my first time to go to Western country. Every time when I meet new people, they introduced themselves and shacked hand with you naturally. At that time, I started to suppose that this kind of action is one way to show you're friendly. For me, it's comfortable to learn this greeting way. I even don't notice it's become part of my way to say hi gradually, so I did this greeting to my both of new and old roommates after I came back from Canada. One of my friend told me in private, she shocked when I did so. Until she said that, I didn't notice that this is “so-called” culture difference.
In Taiwan, we may not introduce ourselves actively expect someone asking you to do so. Also, we are not familiar to shack hand expect in the business context. After this experience, I started to think what is Taiwan’s culture. When I lived in this little island for a long time, nothing looks special unless comparing to other culture. I felt when you do know where the differences are, you would start appreciate your own culture, and put yourself into others shoes to learn others culture.
I still leave a question here. When I studied at Canada language school, most of student shout out they question when they don’t know what teacher’s saying or answer teacher’s question quickly and actively. I think this is a really good interaction to enhance my learning. But when I try to use this leaning phrase in my Taiwan’s class, I can feel that my classmates unfamiliar with my behavior, even my teacher gave a great grade at the end of class for me. So the question is it properly to interact with teacher like this way and ignore what your classmates’ feeling?
