The cultural differences between East and West in one series of illustrations

What might be considered rude in one culture can be a compliment in another, and navigating these differences can be difficult.

Artist Yang Liu was born in Beijing and has been living in Germany for over 20 years. This gives her an insight into the way Chinese and German culture differs, and Liu created an exhibition which was later made into a book, called ‘East Meets West’.

Part tongue – in – cheek, part insightful observation, the series picks a variety of subjects and illustrates the way Germans (in blue) and Chinese people (in red) react to them.

Picture: Yang Liu

indy100 spoke to Liu:

What was the inspiration for the series?

Picture: Yang Liu

It was 13 years ago, when I moved from Berlin to New York, I wanted to do a documentation of my life so far. Since I am a designer, I decided to do a picture book. Now this series started with ‘East meets West‘, continued with ‘Man meets Woman‘ and the most recent one ‘Today meets Yesterday‘ is documenting changes from the past to today.

Your drew from experiences living in Germany and China. Do you have any stories about cultural differences that you experienced?

Picture: Yang Liu

The image ‘dealing with problems': German [people] prefer to resolve problems right away. Chinese people [believe] that problems are never stable, they are alive as everything else, so it is better to observe it and wait for the best moment to resolve the problem.

Picture: Yang Liu

How do you feel about the attention the illustrations have received?

Picture: Yang Liu

Since the exhibition, some pictures went online, unexpectedly they became viral. Back then we thought that this is absolutely out of control, but after almost a year the bloggers started to put up my name and my vita, many people were writing to me, telling me their personal intercultural stories. It was very moving to read so many peoples later from all over the world, and that this topic is moving so many people in almost every corner of the world.

Picture: Yang Liu

German and Chinese people who have seen these posters - do they agree or disagree with its sentiments?

Picture: Yang Liu

The majority seems to be agreeing with the images, even [though] it is only my personal diary. There are surely other opinions, but so far I’m very surprised how positively people are reacting to these images.

What do you think your work says about stereotypes?

Picture: Yang Liu

For me the definition ‘stereotype' didn’t affect my works at all. First of all, my first book ‘East meets West’ was a personal diary, so my focus [was] to express my personal experiences, if these experiences do help other readers, I would be very happy, but it wasn’t meant to be a teaching book.

For my second book and third especially, the themes were very moving so I had to do a book - not that I planned to do a book and look for themes - it is always the way around: I [wanted to] express many things I was thinking about and my platform was the books. So the question whether they could be considered as stereotypes never played a role.

Picture: Yang Liu

Picture: Yang Liu

Liu is a professor and the head of the department of communications design at the Berlin Technical Art University, and you can see more of her work on her website.

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