People tend to generalise when they talk about going to Asia, whether it’s for a holiday, for work or for any other reason such as relocating to that part of the world to live forever. It would be folly to leave it at that though, because even in the case of neighbouring countries within the continent of Asia, the diversity is clear for anyone to see. You wouldn’t even have to look too hard to notice the subtle differences between someone who lives in Malaysia, someone from Thailand, someone from the Philippines, and someone from Singapore.
Okay so those are Southeast Asian countries that are mentioned and even though all the differences in culture are clear among the Southeast Asian countries alone, you’d definitely expect there to be even greater differences when regions such as Southeast Asia or compared to East Asia, South Asia and even as far as the Middle East.
So Asia is indeed a huge continent, but there are some elements of modern-day Asian culture which appear to be common to pretty much every single country within the continent of Asia.
Family
As much as modern-day culture is centred around making money and to a certain extent catering more for your retirement than anything else, the pursuit of money takes nothing away from the strong focus Asian families have on the family structure. Unlike in the West and in places such as Africa, it appears as if there’s a stronger bond between family members of the same sex, so you’d have a mother who’s particularly close to their daughter and the father who’s particularly close to the son. In other parts of the world it’s usually the father who’s closer to the daughter and the mother who’s closer to the son.
Asian family structures usually form around the nuclear family as opposed to being big on relatives and extended family members, who are only really made contact with when the nucleus structure wants to boast about any achievements their children might have amassed. I hate to say it but it’s true. I know this coming from what you could legitimately call a middle-class family from Singapore which enjoys a relatively high standard of living.
So we’re big on family throughout Asia but it’s more around the nuclear family structure.
Career
Throughout Asia business is a big part of what brings in the money, but parents typically want the next generation to get into professions such as being a doctor, lawyer, an engineer, or any other highly-rated career. It’s about prestige for the next generation.
Entertainment
Modern-day Asian culture has a pretty capitalistic take on entertainment which is why you find malls packed to the rafters during weekends. People like to spend the money that they work hard for and that in itself constitutes entertainment. Taking a place like China into account, you might realise that a disproportionate number of Chinese people are the first to snap up the UK no deposit bonus available to each new player on popular online casinos.
Gambling is huge in Asia and it goes beyond the online space, particularly for those Asian countries where gambling is perfectly legal. We love our gambling.
