Probing into the Sino-American Cross-National Marriage Failures:An Intercultural Perspective

The open policy initiated in the late 1 970 s notonly brings abouta great boom in economy,but al-so accelerates the transmutation of Chinese people‘s traditional attitude towards marriage.In thepast,affected by Cultural Revolution ( which regards overseas relations as an evil thing) ,people hav-ing overseas relatives felt rather uneasy and had a sense of inferiority,not to say having a foreignspouse.However,with China‘s opening to the outside world,people‘s attitude toward marriage is un-dergoing great chan...

Probing into the Sino-American Cross-National Marriage Failures:An Intercultural Perspective

With China's opening to the outside world, Chinese people's attitude toward marriage has been undergoing great changes. Cross National marriages(CNMs) emerge as a result of economic development, social progress, cultural exchanges and freedom of marriage. However, according to statistics, CNMs are not always successful and satisfactory as they look: the divorce rate is reported to be on the increase. The paper studies several Sino American CNM cases which ended in failure from an intercultural perspective, and on that bases it points out that it is not cultural differences but people's attitudes toward cultural differences that lead to the breakdown of the CNMs. In this paper, ethnocentrism is specially discussed as a major barrier to successful intercultural communication. And suggestions such as developing empathy, learning about cultural adaptation are offered to improve the quality of the CNMs and the competence of intercultural communication.