Culture is certainly quite an abstract thing. Culture exists because the ancestors before us passed down the traditions and the ways they lived to us. For instance, an important Chinese event such as Chinese New Year, Chinese believes that red colour brings good luck, prosperity and every prospect to the family, while black colour is a sign of a bad omen or anything that leads to unfortunate. Thus, other friends who come to visit Chinese during Chinese New Year have to be understanding that they should not come in dark appearance. Thus, evaluating intercultural behaviour of other people is important, since it shows that you pay respects to their culture, in return they will respect yours too.
For people who may not know, I am a Malaysian Chinese, that is, a Chinese who was born in Malaysia. Before I came to further my study to Singapore, I had been reading newspapers on a lot of issues. Particularly, I noticed that there were quite a lot of racial issues brought up by the parties or certain ministers. Those issues were quite irritating and annoying, to the point that you would be disappointed towards the current government for not taking any further action. One particular issue I felt that it was really unfair to every Malaysian is Malays claimed that they were the "Bumiputera" (aborigine or native) in Malaysia, and Chinese and Hindus came from other countries and reside at Malaysia.
When this statement was made, the number of racial problems were rising up. Ministers in parliament threw anger and disappointments to the other for raising up such issue. Residents from other races such as Chinese and Indians felt a great sense of disappointment to the government that they had been relied on for past few decades. Intercultural behaviour is even harder now for people to understand.
Another issue happened in the past was a group of 12 Muslims protesters protested against construction of Hindu temple in Muslim neighbourhood by parading a severed cow's head. As you may not know, the cow is a sacred animal to Hindus. This intolerable action had lead to anger raised by the Hindus. Although actions had been taken by authorities through fining and sentence for jail, this issue had left a severe scar to every Malaysian regarding racism.
I feel that I may have a bit carried away while writing this post, since these issues in my own country have left me a deep impression. In my opinion, if we can evaluate and interpret the cultural behaviour other people perform in life and understand their culture, we wouldn't have communication difficulties. Therefore, it is important to understand and respect other people's culture and their cultural behaviours.
