When we talk about intercultural communication, it involves interaction among people from different cultural backgrounds. The cultural differences may occur due to differences in living regions, beliefs, point of views, language used or even ethnicity. Frequently, intercultural communication may end up with a conflict if both parties do not understand each others well.
Two years ago, I visited China with my family and relatives for a holiday trip. We went there through the travel agency and were guided by several local tour guides during our trip there. The tour guides told us a lot of interesting stories about the cities that we visited. They also told us about basic courtesies that we should take note when we are there. One of the interesting facts was that they have different interpretation for certain way of addressing people. For example, when we want to address a lady with " Miss", we shouldn't address them with "小姐" (pronounced as: Xiao Jie), instead we should address them by "小妹" (pronounced as: Xiao Mei). The tour guide told us that the local may regard "小姐" as very rude because they usually refer this word to mean "prostitute". However, "小妹" is seen as a more appropriate way to address a lady and it shows more respects towards the lady. This is a bit different from Indonesian Chinese who regard "小姐" as an appropriate and most commonly use to address a lady in a more respectful way. It is very good that the tour guide brought up this issue. Otherwise, I couldn't imagine what kind of conflicts that may happened from addressing people wrongly.
In conclusion, it is very important to really understand the culture of the people that we are interacting with. Even people with the same ethnic may have different views in interpreting certain things due to the different regions that they live. Therefore, we need to be tactful when we communicate with people from different cultural background. It is always help by knowing others' culture better.
