Talking About "Friends"

Yesterday, I read an article about friend which is from the general view of Americans. After I read it, a lot of thoughts emerge from the depth of my heart.
For they Americans, the word “friend” can be applied to a wide range of relationships. In other words, a friendship may be superficial, casual, situational, or deep and enduring. Coming as a guest into an American home, you find no visible landmarks, the atmosphere is relaxed, and old and young people are called by first names.
As in many European countries, in France, friends are of the same sex and a friendship is basically seen as a relationship between men. They even doubt the possibility of a friendship between a man and a woman. For the French, friend is a one-to-one relationship that demands a keen awareness of the other person’s intellect, temperament and particular interests. These friendships are not made part of family life, and different friends fill different niches in each person’s life. Friendship heightens the sense of each person’s individuality.
In contrast with France, in Germany, friendship is much more articulately a matter of feeling. They make friends to share their hopes and fears and dreams, to form a common front against the world of school and family and to join in a kind of mutual discovery of each other’s and their own inner life not to polish their wits. They also appropriately bring friends into the family. Compared that French friends view lively disagreement and sharpness of argument are the breath of life, German’s friendships are based on mutuality of feeling. Germans also usually have difficulties in establishing such friendships with Americans who see friendship more tentatively.
English friendships follow still a different pattern. Their basis is shared activity where discover a common interest in school, serve together in the armed forces. People, sometimes two men or two women, sometimes two couples, sometimes three people, establish friendships by taking part in the same games or undergoing the same experiences. Moreover, English friendships are formed outside the family circle, but distinguish from German and French.
Look at these different styles. And what’s about our Chinese? We are enthusiastic at making friends and like to invite our friends to home, in other words, we are often hospital. Like Germans, close friends are brought into the family and even regarded as members of family. For Chinese, forming a large number of relationships with different people in various fields seems to ensure the success of businesses or provide some “benefits” in our life. But, generally speaking, we often make friends just for pleasure and sharing our sweetness bitterness of life. A friend is someone who chooses and is chosen. And between friends there is inevitably a kind of equality of give-and-take. The most important things about forming friendships is sincereness and sympathy. No matter where you come from, if you can open your mind to tolerate variety of cultures and characters, as the saying goes “Take all people in the world as your brothers or sisters”, you will find all people in whole world are your “friend”.