companies the simple act of saying “hello” to a friend. From the stimulation of your nerve endings, to the secretion of chemicals in brain, to the moving of your lips to produce sound, thousands of components are in operation. We can notice how the notion of complexity is clearly captured. Communication becomes even more complex when we add cultural dissensions. Although all cultures use symbols to share their realities, the specific realities and the symbols employed are often quite different. In one culture you smile in a casual manner as a form of greeting, whereas in another you bow formally in silence, and in yet another you acknowledge your friend with a full embrace.
We claim that when you engage in intercultural communication, it is important to know your actions have the potential to convey many meanings.
2.1.2. Characteristics of communication
（i）No direct mind-to-mind contact
We begin with rather obvious and universal characteristics of communication that has always frustrated human beings: it is impossible to share our feeling and experiences by means of direct mind---to---mind contact. We are all isolated from one another by the enclosure of our skin, so what we know and feel remain inside of us, unless we communicate.
Although the inability to have direct mind---to---mind contact is universal, the methods used to adjust to this limitation are culturally based. Some cultures believe that because they share a common pool of history and many similar experiences, they do indeed know what their partners are feeling and thinking.
(ii)Communication is self---reflective
When we communicate with others, we need to think what we should do and what we should say. In other word, we need to reflect during the communication. So communication is self-reflective. This unique ability lets us be participant and observe simultaneously, we can watch, evaluate, and alter our performance as a communicator at the very instant we are engaged in the act.
2.2. Understanding culture
2.2.1. Definition of culture
Some people in Korea and China put the dogs in the ovens, but in the United States some people put them on their couches and beds, why? People in Tehran sit on the floor and pray five times each day, but people in Las Vegas stand up all night in front of slot machines. Why? Some people speak Chinese; others speak English. Why? Some people talk to God, but others have God talk to them. And still others say there is no God. Why? The general answer to these questions is the same. People learn to think, feel, believe, and act as they do because of the message that have been communicated to them. “Culture is socially constructed by human beings in interaction with one another .Culture ideas and understandings are shared by a group of people who recognize the knowledge attitudes, and values of one another.”[2] P19 Culture governs and defines the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent, noticed, or interpreted. Remember, we are not born knowing how to dress, what toys to play with, what to eat, which gods to worship, or how to spend our money and our time. Culture is both teacher and textbook.
2.2.2. Characteristics of culture
(i) Culture is learned.
All of us are born with basic needs---needs that create and shape behavior---but how we go about meeting those needs and developing behavior to cope with them is learned. Just as Hu Wengzhong pointed out: “the culture is not inherited, but learned.”[3] P37 From infancy, members of a culture learn their patterns of behavior and ways of thinking until most of a culture learn their patterns of behavior and ways of thinking until most of them become internalized and habitual.
Conscious learning is easier to understand and to explain than is uncon
