In the book named Chinese People and Chinese language, Luo Changpei mentioned that language is the crystallization of the culture of a certain nation. And the culture of this nation in the past needs the language to hand down and that in the future needs it to promote. The diverse cultures of different nations not only produce the special parts of the language, but also have great influence on the model of words and sentences structures. We can say the language of each nation is the merrier of the culture of that nation. We can also say language is the living fossil of the history and culture.
The distinctive features of various cultures are crystallized on the level of words after the sediment of the history. As a result, the vocabulary of a certain language can directly and sensitively reflect the cultural value orientation of that people. Just like any other languages, the foreign students got internships in China need to know Chinese vocabulary can be divided into the cultural words and the ordinary vocabulary.
The so-called cultural words in Chinese are words in the specific cultural field. They are the most direct or indirect reflection of the national culture in the vocabulary of Chinese language. As a matter of fact, there are a variety of relationships between the cultural words and the culture of the nation, some are the direct reflection of the culture such as 龙、凤and华表 while some are the indirect reflection of the culture like the color words like 红、黄、白and黑as well as the symbolizing words 松、竹 and 梅.
Of course, some words have various origin relations with the various cultures. For example, there are many words are from the cultural classical books and also from the religion field. The words in Chinese language are not only the carrier of the Chinese culture, but also the crystallization of it which inherit the ancient culture of China. The connotations of many language phenomenon and words in Chinese always directly or indirectly related to the cultural backgrounds.
Seeing further from the word level, we can see the relation between the Chinese cultural conditions and the cultural origin of the words. For instance, the word红娘was regarded as the indication of the people who help others fulfill the perfect marriage. However, you may fail to understand it totally if you do not know Romance of the Western Chamber.