it just occured to me that my previous previous blog about exotic food market could be misinterpreted. I meant to say 'the food market' is popular among the tourists, not the sheeps penis is popular. And as for that poor white girl retching something out of her mouth, i don't know exactly what she'd been eating.
i was going to finish up writing about times in beijing, but had to write about this topic that came up in class today before i forget what was discussed!
Basically we were discussing about general differences between western and chinese character/behaviour. We got onto the topic after reading this story about misinterpretation, and i just couldn't understand how the people in this story could misunderstand and misconstrue each other. The story goes like this: one guy had invited 4 people along to dinner. 3 had already turned up and they were waiting for the 4th guest. so the guy tells the other 3 guests, "the one that should've come still hasn't come". From this, the other 3 guests think that this guy had only really meant to invite this 4th guest along, and that they really weren't invited, so after awhile they slip out and leave.
I told my teacher that if i heard this i wouldn't interpret it that way and get worried, but my teacher told me it has something to do with the way chinese think.
Now before i go on i must stress i'm talking 'in general' and dealing with averages, and not saying EVERY single westerner or chinese person behaves in a certain way.
I think most ppl would agree that westerners relative to chinese are alot more direct and open about their ideas and feelings. Even i hadn't really noticed this contrast until i came here to china. of course every pesron is different, but if you could quantitatively measure openness and directness of every person in a country and average it, hands down the western country average will be much higher than china's. my chinese teacher even told me the adjective commonly used to describe a more typical chinese trait : wei wan 委婉 which means 'tactful, mild and roundabout'. So thats why the 3 guests in this story interpreted the guy's words in this way. They thought he was tactfully trying to tell them something!
So this we definitely agreed on, and i think these are general and widely accepted contrasts btw westerners and chinese. We also agreed though that the contrasts are becoming less stark as time goes by, with many chinese becoming more and more open and direct. I reckon it's got to do with all of china's interaction with the west since china openned their doors 30 years ago! I wouldn't really say the west and east is converging to a middle point, since westerners don't seem to be getting any less direct!
I also recalled a western friend telling me about her experience working here with chinese co-workers. Now what i'm about to say maybe interpreted as criticism, but its both a good thing and a bad thing. You gotta say the chinese are some of the most hard working, dilegent and disciplined people in the world. Even us chinese brought up in the west are brought up in this way to a certain extent, but nowhere near to the level as our mainland counterparts. I remember when learning spanish the phrase the spanish use to describe a hard working person : trabajar por china , or 'work like a chinese'. And you only have to see china's dominance in certain sports to see more of this. anyway, being well disciplined and obedient is an invaluable trait, but naturally you would also tend not to question things and think in other ways. So coming back to this western friend of mine, she was telling me about her frustration with trying to get the workers in her team to express their own opinion or give feedback on the tasks she'd set for them.
The other thing my teacher taught me was that chinese qiu tong 求同 seek balance and to be similar to others, while westerners qiu yi 求异 seek to be different.
I then nudged my teacher into discussing about how these national characteristics developed, and i brought up the topic of governance.
China "technically" is still a communist country, and this would go far in explaining alot of the aformentioned traits - seeking to be the same, discipline, and not questioning things.
Once again its a dynamic thing, and china and it's people are changing so rapidly. And again, of course not every person is like this. We also came to agree that certain things needed to be done differently in china, due to the sheer size of its population and it's different circumstances. That doesn't mean i agreed with everything she said, but I think any westerner who comes galloping in trying to tell china they should adopt all these western systems is a bit misguided.
And i'm certainly not saying chinese should take everything from western culture and learn from it. Theres alot there the chinese wouldn't want to adopt! Theres alot westerners could take from chinese culture and behaviour too.
My teacher told me the chinese have this ideal of sacrifice of one's own welfare for the benefit of the whole. I thought this was a pretty admirable thing, and definitely this is not a big thing in the west. Well back in oz anyway.
From there the conversation naturally progressed to contrasts between media and the press, and we had a bit of a heated debate! I won't go into it here, but lemme tell you at this stage of the conversation i wished my vocab was alot wider than it currenlty is!
Todays lesson was a nice respite from our textbook, which talks about nice and quaint topics and goes on about how fantastic and peachy everything is in China. (I roll my eyes everytime i read a new chapter) Every country should acknowlege the good and the bad things. but of course what country does do this openly?!
No comments:
Post a Comment