East vs West

Yang is Chinese, moved to Germany with parents at age 14. She is a graphic designer of international renown, her projects are connected with cultural identity, mainly introducing for public a complexity of Chinese/ Asian thinking in a very simple way. One of her best well-known project is called ” Ost trifft West” - “East vs West”. Has received many international awards. More about Yang on her website

http://www.yangliudesign.com/

Thousands of essays were written to describe differences between East and West, but unlike others Yang Liu presented it in a form of pictures exposing stereotypes which are only an ideal type, however, in someway it shows a modal characteristic of people from East and West.

Yang’s upbringing in Germany has influenced her perception of Eastern features. Through the pictographs the Western observer seems to emerge . Yang looks at the Asian culture from the position of German researcher whose ( German) culture was used as a pattern for general Western model - Ordnung ( Order) vs Chaos, Directness vs Two-faceness, Good Individualism vs Bad Colectiveness ect.

I have an impression that Yang’s work ends up with the conclusion that the West is OK and the East must learn lot, though East’s approaching to the reality is funny and provides good fun.


Here are pictures below showing what I called the clash of cultures.

Blue- West

Red- East

1. Anger

2. Contacts

3. Elderly in day to day life

4. Handling of problems

5. Beauty ideal

6. In the restaurant

7. Moods and weather

8. Novelties

9. Opinion

10. Party

11. Punctuality

12. Queue when waiting

13. Showering time

14. Sundays on the road

15. The boss

16. The child

17. Three meals a day

18. Transportation

19. Travelling

20. What’s trendy

21. Way of life

22. With belly hurt

23. Self