Our experience this weekend is a great example of an important and difficult (for us) cultural difference which we must embrace if we want to live in China and share life with Chinese people. We learned a lot.

We returned from Beijing Sunday night, where we were on the receiving end of Chinese hospitality for an entire weekend. (All day yesterday we were helping orient some new language students.) Hospitality is one area where Chinese and Westerners have very different expectations, and it’s quite easy to cause misunderstanding or even offense. Of course we’ve read about the rules and expectations, and had previously experienced the great and eternally forbearing hospitality and generosity of our friends in Taiwan. But this was our first time to actually stay in a Chinese person’s home in China (we lived with a Taiwan family in the States for two weeks once, but that’s a little different).

Our friends, a young couple about our age with no kids whom we first met when they were studying in North America, came into Tianjin late Friday morning. They wanted to see where we were living before heading to their place in Beijing for the weekend. Since they were in ‘our’ town, I supposed we were supposed to be the hosts, but it wasn’t totally clear since they were playing host to the foreigners at the same time. In China, the host pays for everything. So we went out for lunch (first time to eat rabbit) and I managed to get away with paying, but only because I employed the oft-used sneak-away-from-the-table-3/4-through-the-meal-and-pay maneuver. Basically, I got the jump on the husband and he couldn’t stop me (I tried and failed to get the jump on ‘Shine Far,’ our language partner, when we went to the zoo). Mingdaw, our friend and employer in Taiwan, is a master at this – though at the time we were so ignorant we just assumed he was always excusing himself to use the bathroom and thought it was a little weird that he did it at the same time every meal. In fact, there’s no Chinese word for American-style dining out where everyone splits the bill. They call that “AA制”, creating a term with foreigner letters for such un-Chinese behaviour!

That meal was the only thing were we allowed to pay for, aside from a small bag of peaches, from Friday afternoon until returning to Tianjin Sunday evening. This couple has personal reasons for being generous with their money, in addition to the regular Chinese cultural hospitality expectations and concerns about getting “face.” They aren’t among the rich Chinese, but their experience in N.America meant we were able to talk explicitly about cultural hospitality differences in a way that (I hope) wasn’t impolite. They paid the taxi to the train station, train tickets both ways (at 165 km/h!), every meal, entrance to tourist spots like the Temple of Heaven, and even bought Jessica a souvenir in spite of her objections. In their one-bedroom apartment they made us sleep in their bed while they slept in the living room. Saturday night a bunch of people came over for a big family-style meal, and some stayed the night – all guests of their hospitality. We sincerely tried to help with the costs, but knew from the outset it was a lost cause. Once we were taken out to a ridiculously fancy restaurant by the Chinese friend of an American friend who was visiting us – ordering food was like walking through an aquarium – and when we mentioned to the American friend we didn’t mind helping with the bill he said emphatically, “Not a chance.” Your role is to humbly receive their generosity, whether it strikes your cultural fancy as excessive or not.

Jessica and I are both really thrifty-borderline-stingy by temperament, and I shudder to think what they spent on us. But I think North Americans in general cringe at the thought of being indebted to someone that way. We’re much more comfortable with AA-zhì because it affirms our desire for self-sufficient independency and frees us from expectations of reciprocation; N.Americans can feel hindered or trapped by “owing people” in this way.

In addition to being blown away by their generosity and greatly enjoying their company, the weekend was great for many reasons. It was fantastic language practice (in which Jessica lost no time in showing me up). We saw the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen), the Great Hall of the People, the Temple of Heaven, and other famous sites which we’d previously only seen in history videos and news footage. It was actually a little eerie to see Tiananmen square and the Great Hall of the People. We watched our first Korean movie (“Our Happy Time” aka “Maundy Thursday”). Many Chinese love Korean films, and this one has some interesting messages about guilt and forgiveness in addition to the usual pathos-saturated romance-doomed-by-impending-death plot line. We also ate fish eggs and lotus (not together) for the first time, and Jessica had her first ever train ride. My one regret is that I passed up the chance to buy a pet cricket in a cage from a lady selling them from her bicycle (they looked just like in the Disney movie Mulan). But we did buy a jiàn zi (Chinese hacky sack, far superior to that of the West).

Click here for more photos from this weekend!

The photos below are from Tiananmen square (at night), and the Temple of Heaven (day time), Jessica on her first train ride, and (just for mom) a pile of “blood tofu” (congealed pig’s blood) at a local supermarket.

You can read about this weekend here:

• A Weekend of Chinese Hospitality

Scroll down to read or write comments!

We’re off to Beijing this afternoon to stay with some friends to two nights. It’ll be our first time to get outside the airport and see some stuff.

Plan to Reincarnate? I’ve got news for you!
Normally we don’t do news, especially government news, but this one… I’m sort of in awe, actually: “Reincarnation of Tibetan living Buddhas must get government approval”. You can’t even reincarnate without government approval:

All the reincarnations of living Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism must get government approval, otherwise they are “illegal or invalid,” China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) said Friday.
[...]
“It is an important move to institutionalize management on reincarnation of living Buddhas,” the SARA said in a statement issued Friday.

“Puff-puff Slams” and “Chinese compliments”
Got another ‘Chinese compliment’ yesterday (in Chinese):

“When you say ‘hello,’ it sounds a little bit like a real Chinese person.”
“Oh, no, no. My pronunciation is still not too good.”
“Well, a little bit like a Chinese person… a little bit.”

‘Chinese compliments’ pop up in foreigners’ discussions occasionally because they are a bit of a jolt to your default cultural expectations. They’re similar to the “puff-puff-slam” that was a regular feature of our university classroom discussions. If you wanted to put someone (or their idea) down, it was standard practice to give two nice, token compliments before saying what you really wanted to say, often following this pattern: “Well, [concede the person's good intentions] and [acknowledge/implicitly blame the person's historical/cultural sub-context], but [state, using more words, "That is SO obviously stupid-not-to-mention-immoral because of (blah blah blah)"].” One philosophy prof said he just waits until he hears the “…but,” and then starts listening.

“Chinese compliments” are when a Chines person gives you a compliment but then immediately follows it with a criticism or some unsolicited advice about some area in which you need to improve. Foreigners often don’t realize that this is a pretty standard way of showing care and concern – if you didn’t love someone, you wouldn’t bother to criticize them to help them improve. Parents do it to their kids, friends do it to each other. In some Chinese stories we read, a character (like a mother) shows her disapproval or rejection of a person (like an adopted daughter) by ceasing to criticize and offer free advice. Often the one no longer receiving the criticism feels hurt and unloved, like the person doesn’t care about them anymore. Ha – I wonder if that counts as a 6th “Love Language.”

Oh, and a biān fú somehow got into the yáng tái where we hang our laundry. I only noticed because for some reason the clothes were swinging at night, as if in a breeze, only the windows were all closed. The thing was flying in frenzied circles crashing into everything and squeaking, but when I turned the light on it hid under big piece of furniture. The yáng tái is only about 5×1 meters, and I decided to open the windows and see if he can escape on his own.

Pronounced: biān fú
Means: a bat (the flying mouse kind, not the ball-hitting kind).

A friend first recommended we watch the 1990 movie made of this book because it was full of examples of Chinese culture, but in a way that’s accessible to foreigners who know little about China. I barely remember the movie because we watched it in the wee hours of the night while working the night shift at a Hurricane Katrina shelter. But after reading the book, I can see our friend was right.

Iron & Silk is an effortless, PG-rated read that a junior high student could finish in just a couple hours. It’s really a collection of short stories that highlight various cultural differences the author experienced in the two years he spent teaching English in China in the early 1980′s, and this keeps the content varied and interesting. Iron & Silk doesn’t explain anything about Chinese culture, but it’s a clear window into entertaining and unique experiences among everyday Chinese people of that particular time and place. It’s also rather unique among the “I taught English in China” travel books.

Author Mark Salzman‘s experiences were pretty unique for a few reasons. First, Salzman could speak an exceptional amount of Chinese before he arrived, which he learned while completing an Ivy League degree in Chinese literature and doing some serious martial arts training. This means that, unlike the rest of us, he could hear and see what was going on around him starting the first day, and this opens up a whole new world of possibilities among locals that most of us only dream of. Second, he was already rather accomplished in 武术 by the time he arrived, and his experiences of training with some famous Chinese wǔshù masters certainly makes for unique reading material. Third, he taught in China for two years starting in 1982; he experienced a China that may not exist anymore (at least I hope it doesn’t… I don’t know if I could stand having to listen to and negotiate that much political-ese every day, never mind imagining masses forced to endure it). And forth, he sticks to narrating and almost completely refrains from commentary; aside from relating how he may have felt at a particular moment, he allows the people to speak for themselves and leaves the reader to decide what to think. Several reviews describe it as unpretentious.

As of today, this book can be delivered to your door for under $5. And in the movie, Salzman and his most famous wǔshù instructor play themselves.

Pronounced: (learning to say this will not change your life.)
Literally: “releasing foreign farts”
Means: “Imitating Westerners” – an accusation leveled at people back in the day who appeared too enamoured with Western things. It’s used by a character in Iron & Silk (written in 1986), but is no longer in use today, according to one of our Chinese friends here.

Our third floor neighbours have son who’s attending university in Beijing. When he’s home during semester breaks, we do language exchange and hang out. This day we had a language exchange afternoon at the Tianjin zoo. He doesn’t have an English name yet. His Chinese name literally means something like “Shine Far.”

You can read about this trip here:

• At the Animal Garden with ‘Shine Far’

Scroll down to read or write comments!

For this week’s language exchange, ‘Shine Far‘ suggested we go to the zoo. He doesn’t have an English name yet, nor have I decided how to do people’s names on the blog yet, so for now, he’s ‘Shine Far.’ We saw a watermelon-eating giant panda who appeared bored to tears, some red pandas climbing a tree, baby tigers taking baths and fighting pieces of meat, a python kill and eat a fuzzy black bunny (should’ve run for it, stupid bunny!), two cobras strike and hiss at each other, and lots of other stuff. The animals were cool, but the cages were depressing. We had fun practicing on Shine Far, and he on us.

Photos are here!

Afterward I stopped at the old guys corner to chat and unload some oral homework. There was a new old guy there, and after looking in my notebook and seeing my hàn zì, he ordered me to go buy calligraphy stuff and start practicing and said a whole bunch of stuff in really fast Tianjin-huà, which I think basically meant my writing is in need of some serious help.

Pronounced: dòng wù yuán
Literally: animal garden
Means: zoo

We’ve reached the first rung on the long ladder of cultural understanding – the “make cheesy over-generalized anecdotes from movies like in a bad sermon” rung. The “actually know what we’re talking about” rung is somewhere in the upper atmosphere… we have a ways to go. But still – let the irresponsible illustrating begin!

In the movie Hero, the main character (who may or may not be the story’s true hero), is an assassin who allows a ruthless, oppressive warlord to kill him, rather than take revenge when he has the chance and kill the warlord, who had massacred the assassin’s family along with a whole lot of other people. This allows the not-assassinated warlord to eventually conquer all the other warlords and unify China, thus ending the interminable fighting between the Warring States. The assassin chooses peace and subjugation for his people and death for himself over giving this guy what he deserved. The movie ends with the usual death, suicide, bittersweet (mostly bitter) romance, sorrow, and generally amplified pathos that we’re coming to recognize in a lot of Chinese stories, as all the people who personally sacrificed so the assassin would have a chance eventually realize the superiority of peace and harmony through submission to authoritarianism over revenge, justice(?), and more war.

Now, imagine if Star Wars embraced this approach. Instead of a bunch of cocky, colourful space cowboys taking on an oppressive, British-accented galactic Empire through coordinated feats of individualistic heroism, not the least of which involve Luke Skywalker pursuing and fulfilling his very own special, personal destiny, they decide to just submit to the strong-arm overlords, go back to their own lives, mind their own business, keep their heads down, and each look after their own (assuming that they didn’t realize the wisdom of this approach too late and so end up dying anyway, but not before their unenlightened quest manages to tear all their romantic hopes to pieces, for good measure).

At the risk of peddling tired cultural stereotypes, the idea that individuals should give up their personal desires and ambitions (like vengeance and justice) and ultimate self-determination for the sake of peace and “harmony” is hardly a new one. And I imagine it has something to do with why things are the way they are in China, and why they’ve been that way for thousands of years.

(This more in-depth analysis puts it less cynically, and considers the movie’s interesting messages regarding violence.)