Difference in the attitude to senior people. On a bus, if you tell an old Chinese people, " Please sit at my seat because you are old." you might get sincere thanks from him. But if you say to a western old people," You are old. Please take my seat." he might be irritated. This is the difference between Chinese and western cultures on the attitude toward "oldness". In China, such words and idioms like "sophiscated, old but strong, mature, an old horse on a manger tends to run 1000miles" show respect to "oldness". But in America, people use euphamistic words like
senior, aged, veteran, elder" to replace "old". Old people and their residential places are called "senior, citizen, golden ager, evergren clubs" etc. In English, "old" is given a negative sense, which indicates "past, useless, hopelss", and this also indirectly shows American's "future time" orientation.