This section expounds the concept of culture which reveals the power relations behind the representation of the East and arguments of cross-cultural communication to explore the issues involved in the UK-China cultural comparison of gender representation.
Since the early 1980s, the appearance and the abundant accumulation of various academic works in post-colonial studies have marked an attempted transformation of the bygone main way in thinking certain relationships and conflicts existing in the world especially between Western and Eastern cultures (e.g. Spivak, 1988; 1999; Gandhi, 1998; Chambers & Curti, 1996; Ashcroft & Griffiths, 1990; Geneva, 2000). Many academics today, especially those concerned with trans-cultural processes (e.g. Wu, 2017) and with the world systems associated with global cultural capitalism (e.g. Appadurai, 1996; Li, 2016), have noticed that the world has been a congeries of all aspects of interactions and blends from economy and education to policy and culture for many years.
According to Giddens (1999), 'globalisation is becoming increasingly decentred', and the development process of globalisation is also the current changing processes of the structures of our culture, family, and governance. Globalisation represents the core characteristics of our modern world (Dirlik, 2002: 20). Our modern world is characterised by increasing global cultural interconnections and a dramatic 'space - time compression' (Harvey, 1989). The globalisation as a cultural phenomenon is partly generated by the development of mass media that makes people better connected to each other and easily access to more information all around the world, as Ien Ang (1990: 252) states: 'the transnational communication system[...] offers opportunities of new forms of bonding and solidarity, new ways of forging cultural
communities'. Waters (1995: 136) also points out that globalisation is pluralising our world 'by recognising the values of cultural niches and local abilities'.
The trans-cultural process under the globalisation system is not always amicable and harmonious, as culture is a highly competitive area filling with conflicts between different groups (defined by ethnicity, social class, gender, age, sexual identity, etc.) (Longhurst et al., 2017: 167-168). Thus, if we believe there is a global cultural system emerging, this cultural system will be 'filled with ironies and resistances, sometimes camouflaged as passivity and a bottomless appetite in the Asian world for things Western' (Appadurai, 1990). The reality is that the modern world is still unequal. As Yang (2002) states:
'In simple terms, the west-non-west relation was thought of in terms of whites versus the non-white races. White culture was regarded (and remains) the basis for ideas of legitimate government, law, economics, science, language, music, art, literature - in a word, civilisation.' (Young, 2002: 3).
Yet the global cross-cultural communication is not entirely negative. As a result of globalisation and worldwide migration, the clear racial division between the West and the East is at least not as absolute and apparent as it once was (Young, 2002). In terms of broad consensus, the gap between the West and the East which was mainly manifested in the domination of Western political force in the colonial era, has now been gradually dissolved into a more generous interaction system which shows more tolerance and acceptance towards multi-culture and diverse identities (Young, 2002; Shands, 2008; Murden, 2011). The post-colonialist discourse which is reshaping our cultural relations, according to Young (2002), not only supports the right of non-Western peoples to access to material well-being and resources but also asserts 'the dynamic power of their cultures, cultures that are now intervening in and transforming the societies of the west'.
So, what is culture? Said (1993:7) concludes two levels of the concepts of culture: First, culture means all of human practices including arts, literature, description, communication, representation, and other aesthetic forms. Culture also includes 'specialised knowledge available in such learned disciplines as ethnography, historiography, sociology, and literary history.' Second, culture can be understood as 'a concept that includes a refining and elevating element, each society's reservoir of the best that has been known and thought'. In other words, culture is the reflection of ourselves, our society and our traditions (Said, 1993: 7).
Regarding the second level definition of culture, Said points out that culture can be seen as a storage of social knowledge in a certain context which on the one hand create the same or similar national identity and recognition, but on the other hand could cause a certain degree of exclusion and rivalry to other cultures (Ghazoul, 2007; Liu, 2015). So he argues that: 'in this second sense culture is a sort of theatre where various political and ideological causes engage one another. Far from being a placid realm of Apollonian gentility, culture can even be a battleground on which causes expose themselves to the light of day and contend with one another [...]'(Said, 1993:7).
Said states that culture has played a sophisticated and indispensable role in the process of colonialism and an unchanging Eurocentrism always existed in the cross-cultural communication during the decades of imperial expansion (Said, 1978). Let us go back to the current situation. Due to the colonial history and synthetic effects of other factors, the expansionism of culture hegemony does exit in the interactions of cultures in the current globalised context (Liu, 2015:2). The imbalance in the human civilisation today makes the issue of national cultural identity more daunting than ever (Greig, 2002), which will be further discussed in the following sections.