China Hope Live » Face

Morality, ‘Face’ and China’s religious market

Joel 大江 — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:37:59 +0000

From Caixin, a translated interview about the moral state of Chinese society, the religious market in China, and the commercialization, vulgarization and voodooization of religion written by Yang Fenggang, professor of sociology and director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University.

I don’t actually agree with a lot of what he says – both in fundamentals and particulars – but it’s interesting to read an outsider’s take on Americans and American society, and I found the bit quoted below particularly interesting for the way he distinguishes external (Chinese ‘face’ concerns) and internal (“religious faith”) motivators for acting ethically and morally in a modern, urban context.

The Problem with Chinese Religions: Vulgarization and Voodooization
I don’t think all religions have positive impacts on social morality. But … Why does modern society seems more than ever need religious faith? Because modern society has turned society to be strangers society. … So, this is the real problem: in a “strangers society,” losing face is no longer a big concern in most people’s life most of the time. People can only be moral out of their own consciences. But where does this sense of conscience come from? Religious faith. When you don’t have a faith, you may say to yourself that ‘I want to be a good person, do good things,’ but very often people tend to give up halfway, especially when you encounter sticky problems and when the conflict of interest is very severe. It is usually human nature to think for self-benefit, thus, only with firm faith can we be moral and ethical. As China is developing rapidly, China needs a basis of faith to greatly improve its ethics and morality.

A recent commenter noted that in China people assume a legitimate moral double-standard between insiders and outsiders (the degree of perceived moral obligation to each is drastically different). Another culture reading I’m in the middle of right now talks about Chinese culture’s honour/shame orientation, how those are moral categories in China, and how “individuals do not exist apart from a web of relationships”. So several things I’ve come across at the same time are talking about how Chinese communalism and the relatively bright insider/outsider distinction plays out morally. And all that ties into the larger on-going discussion surrounding “Good Samaritans” in China — a topic recently big in the news but one on which I’ve been writing for a while.

Morality — the lack of it, actually — is a hot topic in China right now. So here’s some more about Mainland China’s moral collision with its post-Reform and Opening modern society:

The Tianjin Chengguan Street Market Game

Joel 大江 — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 08:22:50 +0000

Watching the street vendors and the chéngguǎn do their little dance at the street market near our apartment provides an interesting anecdote for two crucial Chinese cultural concepts: 人情 and 面子。

There’s a colourful, bustling, crowded and filthy street market near our neighbourhood (see here for more photos), and I suspect its days are numbered.

Every time I go recently in the late afternoon there are chéngguǎn (城管：”city management” by-law enforcers) cooperatively hassling the illegal vendors who choke the roads leading to the Jade Spring Road Vegetable Market (玉泉路菜市场). By “cooperatively” I mean it’s a big game. The chéngguǎn deliberately and obviously drag their feet. Their van inches around the corner at the far end of one street, giving the vendors plenty of time to yell, bundle up their stuff, and, sometimes laughing, sometimes running, make a show of clearing off. Or they cover up their produce and act like they’re just hanging out… next to closed boxes full of tomatoes. The chéngguǎn take their sweet time pulling around, parking, and getting out. Then they saunter up the street, and as soon as they’ve passed by the vendors roll their sacks back out on the pavement and re-stack their cabbages, fish, rabbits, fruit, or whatever. The day I took the following photo, three of the chéngguǎn were sitting on the side of the road having tea with a couple vendors who had boxed up their stuff and had it stowed away right there beside them. I would have taken their photo, but we had our daughter with us and they were smiling and making faces at her. In the picture below, a chéngguǎn (on the left) ignores a vendor who has obediently folded up her produce in blankets in a pile beside her. She’s just waiting for them to leave so she can uncover her vegetables and start selling again.

I have seen a chéngguǎn in this market get a little mean (it was the guy in the picture above, about 30 seconds before I took the picture), and it was when a cucumber seller decided to ignore him and not make a show of clearing off as he approached. That seemed to make this particular chéngguǎn a little angry and he lunged for the guy’s wooden vegetable box, which was quickly yanked out of reach by a rope and dragged off down a side street. No attempt to pursue, even though he would have easily had it in about two or three steps.

“Humanity” 人情 and “Face” 面子

I described all this to one of my Chinese coworkers, and he explained it with two terms: 人情 and 面子。 “Human feelings” 人情 is how he explained why the chéngguǎn carry out their orders to the absolute bare minimum ‘letter of the law’ degree, and how they can sit down and chat over tea with the same people they’re supposed to be hassling. They recognize a lot of these people, he said, and don’t want to stop them from trying to make a living; they personally couldn’t care less whether there’s a street market here or not. It’s nothing personal. But they have their orders, and the point of orders in China is to do just enough so that you can tell your superiors that you did them. The actual purpose of the order, the ‘spirit of the law’, is entirely beside the point, especially when your superiors are only giving you the order because their superiors gave it to them and they want to make their superiors happy because they’re working on a promotion.

The other key term he used was “face” 面子。 Why do they bother with the silly charade of bundling up their cabbages in full view of the chéngguǎn (who’s walking toward them maybe only a few meters away), and scooting off down an alley only to come back a few minutes later? It gives face to the chéngguǎn. It’s an acknowledgment of who’s in charge. Chéngguǎn can give these kinds of people all kinds of trouble if they want to; sometimes they can be brutal (see here, here, here and here). Sometimes the vendors fight back. The vendors are almost all illegal migrants near the bottom of society and without legal protection. They’ll yell and run and make a sincere effort to clear off as quickly as possible when they sense that they need to; they aren’t always laughing and you do sense fear sometimes, depending on the circumstances. But at least for now, in our particular street market, all the chéngguǎn require is a little “face”, a show of deference, a lack of defiance, tails between legs, and they’re satisfied.

These streets are easily the most lively (热闹) in our area, but with the consistency of the harassment, half-hearted as it appears, I bet it’s only a matter of time before this one goes they same way as the street markets near our old place.

There are more street market photos in the Our Tianjin 2010 photo gallery, which I just now finally finished uploading. So if you’ve seen it before there’s some new stuff (like sheep brains and an explosive dog). You can also see video of what it’s like to try and ride a bike through this market here: Tianjin Street Market Dash video.

Related stuff from the blog:

Related stuff from the web:

Foreigners encountering ‘face’ in China

Joel 大江 — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:21:51 +0000

‘Face’ is a key aspect, perhaps the key aspect, of social interaction in Chinese culture. It’s also something that all routinely trips up and confuses foreigners. Here are two examples of foreigners trying to understand ‘face’ better: the first from a Black American woman married to a Chinese guy, and the second from a Finnish girl dating a Chinese guy.

“So, how much did you donate?”

Joel 大江 — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:40:06 +0000

Donating money is a public thing in China — like a big group peer-pressure exercise. In your company, they might send an e-mail around listing everyone’s name and how much they donated. In neighbourhoods like ours, they’ll put up big posters by the main entrance with the names of residents who’ve donated and how much (and maybe whether or not they’re a Party member). Though there’s a common public standard for how much you should donate, you can’t donate too much or you’ll make other people look bad. For example, you wouldn’t want to publicly donate more than the company boss. Sometimes it goes beyond peer-pressure to coercion:

A few days ago a public servant friend said that, for the Wenchuan earthquake last time, at least the employees had been “mobilized” to donate; this time they simply had our salaries docked. The boss hypocritically notified everyone: Whoever doesn’t wish to donate, come talk to me in my office. Who dares to go to his office and say “I’m not willing to donate”? Unless one doesn’t wish to live! [from Yushu Earthquake Donation: Compassion or Tyranny?]

Our first encounter with this quirky (to us) practice of very public charity was after the Sichuan earthquake, when neighbours asked me point-blank home much we’d donated.

“For Qīnghǎi Yùshù Disaster Area Donation Name List”
为青海玉树灾区捐款名单
wèi qīnghǎi yùshù zāiqū juānkuǎn míngdān

This time we decided to donate through our neighbourhood committee rather than through our N.G.O. Although the money would be better accounted for with our NGO (there’s controversy over what happened to large amounts of the Sichuan earthquake donations – see here, here, here and here) and we have a closer personal connection to how it would be used, this time we wanted to try a more local approach and we were curious to see how it would go over. Plus it’d be kind of funny to see our names up on the poster by the front gate.

If you haven’t heard, there was another big earthquake in which thousands of people died, this time in Yùshù, Qīnghǎi (青海玉树). See these links for more photos and controversy:

Related stuff on the blog:

Chinese people like it when you “lie” to them?

Joel 大江 — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:13:47 +0000

(This post comes with a soundtrack; you can play it while you read! ;) )

C’mon baby, go ahead ‘n’ liiiie to me!

This is the unedited version of an expat magazine article about Chinese-American interpersonal miscommunication. It’s mostly to help new foreigners in Tianjin, especially Americans, deal with a common cross-cultural miscommunication problem.

It’s a little cheesy; just some basic Cross-Cultural Communication 101 kind of stuff in an area that routinely trips up American-Chinese communication (I’ve heard that Germans can be pretty bad about this particular problem, too).

To Lie or Not to Lie – that is (not necessarily) the question

Interpersonal communication ‘with Chinese characteristics’: A little understanding goes a long way when feelings get hurt by Chinese/Expat miscommunication

Cross-cultural conflict flashpoint: “honesty”
“Honesty” is a common miscommunication flashpoint between Mainlanders and Westerners – especially North Americans. Sometimes foreigners feel like their Chinese friends lie to them. They say they agree even when they don’t, and reply, “OK” even when they mean, “Not really.” Even if the foreigner later realizes that their Chinese friends didn’t intend to disrespect them, the foreigner might then feel like Chinese politeness requires lying. Chinese cultural expectations sometimes seem to demand a daily dose of “white lies” and multiple possible meanings to the word “yes.”

But things look different on the Chinese side. Our “undercover foreigner” friend confirms what the culture scholars are already telling us. She reports that one of the biggest complaints her Chinese friends have against their Western friends is that foreigners too often think that Chinese people lie to them. From their perspective, they’re communicating perfectly clearly and often being extra courteous. It’s frustrating and offensive when friends accuse you of lying, especially when you’re going out of your way to be nice!

In every culture there are genuine liars who disrespect and cheat others. Other than not be one yourself, there’s nothing you can do about this. But your Chinese friends probably don’t intend to deceive you any more than your other friends do. If it seems like they are, most likely you’re just reading them wrong. The problem is largely about conflicting culturally-conditioned communication styles, not dishonesty, and it plagues personal relationships, workplace discussions, and even international business negotiations. But you can understand “interpersonal communication with Chinese characteristics” and learn to use it without feeling personally compromised or overly suspicious toward your Chinese friends.

The “Meaning Beyond the Words” (言外之意): So, you’re saying “yes” really can mean “no”?
Every day we each “say” a lot without using words. Even when we do use words, nonverbal “statements” can be so powerful that the meanings conveyed by our posture, tone, facial expression, timing, or the context in which we’re speaking can sometimes completely override the literal meaning of our words. Sarcasm is one obvious example.

But different cultures don’t all rely on nonverbal signals to the same degree. Chinese typically express more of their meaning through nonverbal signals than Westerners do – especially Americans. We all make regular use of both verbal and nonverbal forms of communication, but comparatively, Americans are more “tuned in” to the words; Chinese are more tuned in to nonverbal channels.

A style of communication that especially emphasizes nonverbal signals makes it easy to clearly communicate a meaning that is different or opposite of the words’ literal meaning. To Americans, who focus relatively more on the literal meaning and fail to “hear” many of the nonverbal cues, this can easily look like lying.

It often happens that when a Chinese person wants to communicate a certain meaning to their American friend, they take their intended message and express large portions of it through their tone of voice, delivery, posture, and timing of their words. The actual words themselves may be relatively understated and hinting. But their American friend notices the literal meaning of the words more than anything else. The American may also notice some of the nonverbal signals but he might not understand all of them, and he wouldn’t think they’re that important anyway. The American leaves thinking he’s understood his Chinese friend clearly, but it’s only a matter of time before he’s disappointed. His Chinese friend will probably act on the meaning he intended to communicate, much of which was determined by his nonverbal signals. But the American’s expectations were built mostly on the literal meaning of the words that were spoken. And when his Chinese friend doesn’t do what he “said” he would do, it looks an awful lot like lying to the American.

Is all this really necessary? You bet your face (面子) it is!
All this laborious subtlety can annoy Westerners. Why can’t Mainlanders just be blunt and “say what they mean”? They certainly have no problem being blunt when they’re using “guān xīn talk” (关心) and publicly commenting on how fat we are, asking about our personal finances, or telling us what we ought to wear, eat, or how to handle our kids!

First, it helps to remember that we all make regular use of nonverbals and subtlety, it’s just that Chinese people usually do it differently and do it more. Second, Chinese rely more heavily on nonverbals for a very big reason: it’s safer. In a social environment where concern for “face” (面子 / miàn zi) governs social interaction — one Chinese scholar calls “face” Chinese culture’s “social grammar” – blunt, direct talk is reckless. Indirect, implicit meanings are less potentially threatening to one another’s “face.” Of course, “face” is a concern that Americans neither understand nor care much about, but it’s an unavoidable characteristic of Chinese interaction.

Enough with the theory! Give me a real life example!
I was surprised one day when my Chinese teacher told me to “lie.” That week several people had pressured me for English tutoring, which usually involves asking for my phone number. This is common in Tianjin, where there are plenty of mothers willing to haggle a foreigner into some sort of English tutoring agreement. But I don’t want to just blow people off; often these are people I’ll continue to see regularly, like neighbours. Plus, I don’t blame them for taking a shot when they have the chance.

I asked my teacher how to refuse in a way that works – meaning they “get the message” and quit bugging me for English – but allows me to keep up a relationship with them.

My teacher suggested that making up a deliberately transparent excuse is better:

You can tell a ‘lie.’ Tell them that you’re in the middle of getting your phone number changed and you don’t have the new number yet.

I passed this suggestion by several locals and heard unanimous agreement. But in North America, that’s a lie – relatively harmless and obvious, but definitely a lie.

However, we’re not in North America. Does that make a difference in this case? What if everyone involved understands the words “my phone number is being switched at the moment” to actually mean “I don’t want to give you my phone number, but I also don’t want to create any bad feelings between us and I care enough about our relationship to protect your face in front of your coworkers”? The spoken words aren’t meant to be taken literally and they won’t be, but plenty of meaning is still accurately conveyed. The meaning isn’t in the words; it’s “beyond the words” (言外之意 / yán wài zhī yì).

They might not like that I refused, but they’ll see that I’m refusing in the nicest way possible. In fact, my teacher joked that if I tell this ‘lie,’ “…they might even think, ‘Wow, this foreigner really knows Chinese culture and how to be polite!’”

The experts’ advice
Learning to tune into our Chinese friends’ nonverbal cues will take time. Having a good friend who is patient with our lack of understanding and comfortable enough to be honest is invaluable. The following parallel advice from two Chinese cultural scholars* reflects the ideas I’ve written above.

Advice for foreigners interacting with Chinese:

Focus on how something is said – relational and mutual-face meanings often outweigh literal, content meanings.
Learn to read paralinguistic cues, such as facial expressions, body movements, gestures, and pauses.
Develop a belief that words can be inadequate and insufficient.

Advice for Chinese interacting with foreigners:

Focus on what is said; try not to read too much into the words or be oversensitive to nonverbal nuances.
Learn to accept what is said.
Develop a belief that verbal messages and feedback are powerful and effective.

———————
*From Communicating Effectively with the Chinese (1998) by Ge Gao and Stella W.C. Ting-Toomey, pp. 85-86.

National ‘Face’ & Local Sensitivity (Part 1): Not fit to print in Tianjin

Joel 大江 — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:34:59 +0000

Below is the un-censored version of a story that I wrote for the Sept. issue of a local expat magazine about our Opening Ceremony experience. It was originally rejected by the Chinese editor, who deemed it “too negative and too sensitive.” The red text is what I deleted or completely reworked to make it patriotically palatable (other stuff was edited out for space).

There are two editors, and in this case the (apologetic) American editor passed on the Chinese editor’s objections to me, which were mostly about offending patriotic sensitivities (paints a “too negative” image of China) and less about being politically careful. The American editor suggested several edits, including that I “really butter it up” regarding people not singing the national anthem and not cheering as much as I thought they would (it was “too negative” to mention these things). In ‘protest’ (for fun), I submitted this over-the-top rewrite, which they printed:

As the flag was raised the entire park immediately stood up for the national anthem. At first I was surprised that most people chose to stand respectfully rather than sing. But in hindsight, the piqued crowd was more likely struck speechless by the sight of their flag and national anthem being honoured before the entire world.

In the local atmosphere surrounding the Olympics, China’s “image” in the eyes of foreigners was (and still is) an intense concern. The same week that the article was rejected I received an hour’s worth of similar complaints about my previous articles from one of my teachers.

I’m posting this to give you a local snap shot of what can be considered offensive in Tianjin these days. It’s an unavoidable part of our China experience; people’s (hyper)sensitivity — especially our friends, neighbours, and teachers — is something we’ve had to navigate carefully during the Olympic summer.

Some caveats: While a lot of people here have similar feelings to this particular editor, there are also lots of other magazines in China publishing deliberately edgy material. There’s plenty of variety of opinion in China. Also, the degree of censorship varies from city to city and is largely determined by the particular tolerance level of local authorities. Tianjin is more conservative than many other areas.

Just skim down to the red text to see the naughty bits.

Watching the Opening Ceremony… with a few thousand Tianjiners!

It’s the sticky, steamy, most auspicious night of 08-08-08, and six foreigners from four different continents have decided to join thousands of Tianjiners in Tianjin’s “Milky Way Square” (银河广场 / yínhé guǎngchǎng) on Yǒuyì Lù (友谊路). We’re convinced there’s only one way for non-ticket holders to truly experience the most anticipated Opening Ceremony in the history of the Olympics: immersed in a crowd of excited Mainlanders. We unfold our 8 kuài folding stools, let some friendly fellow spectators take our picture, and settle in for a night we won’t soon forget.

You can watch a video of the crowds’ reactions to different segments of the Ceremony online at www.YouTube.com/BigNoseForeigner. Neither the video nor these accompanying photos do the scene justice. They only show part of one crowd, but because of how the park is designed there were actually three large separate crowds around the double-sided screen.

Spectating the Spectators
The last time I was with this many outdoor spectators I was on the beach in the next Olympic city: Vancouver, Canada. It was the Symphony of Fire, an annual international musical fireworks competition. But in Vancouver, large dense crowds often mean booze, marijuana, and some inevitable rowdiness. These few thousand Tianjiners behaved much more civilized than the Vancouverites; they were a giant Sunday school class by comparison. But it was still lots of fun watching them watch the dazzling and inexorably interminable Ode to Chinese Civilization-minus-the-20th-century that was the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony (开幕式 / kāimùshì).

The crowd applauded when the honour guard took the Chinese flag from the 56 minority children and marched smartly toward flag pole. As the flag was raised the entire park stood up for the national anthem like I expected, but hardly anyone sang! I thought they’d be going nuts. In Vancouver – where our meager patriotism mostly involves affirming that we’re not Americans – people would have been hollering O Canada half-drunk by that time. Maybe the outdoor sound system was too low, or maybe it was just too hot and humid. At that moment Tianjiners were piqued but respectfully restrained.

People ooh’d and aah’d at the artistic performances, yelling “hǎo!” (好 / good!) at especially impressive parts. Repeated shots of former president Jiāng Zémín (江泽民) and his wife Wáng Yěpíng (王冶坪) provoked a curious response from the crowd, as if they were laughing lightly in a good-natured sort of way.

Parade of Nations
The more exotic costumes and ethnicities provoked responses from the crowd. Particularly dark Africans and particularly fat women would cause scattered giggling or comments from a minority of the spectators near us. When one of the African flag carriers smiled big into the camera a guy sitting next to me said, “Wow, look at his teeth!” Close-ups of particularly glamourous female athletes got a reaction every time from some in the crowd. George Bush was given plenty of screen time, and he seemed to get a mild but positive response. Of the individual foreigners the biggest cheers probably went to LeBron James of the U.S. men’s basketball “Redeem Team.”

Taiwan’s athletes received big cheers from the crowd. Japan didn’t get booed much – just a handful of loud-mouths who were joking around, and they got disapproving looks from their neighbours.

Team Canada came out, and who did they have with them but the ubiquitous Dà Shān (大山) – “the most famous foreigner in China”! As a Canadian language student in China I have a special, complicated relationship with Dà Shān, whom I’ve never met. During my first few months of language study in Tianjin, it seemed every other sidewalk conversation went basically like this:

“Where are you from?”
“Canada.”
“Oh, Canada! Dà Shān’s country! Do you know who Dà Shān is?”
“Yes.”
“Your Mandarin isn’t as good as his.”

I took another couple months before I learned to say, “Yeah, and I hear his Mandarin is probably even better than your’s!” Dà Shān is the ultimate language and culture acquisition role model, with his flawless Mandarin and mastery of traditional Chinese stand-up comedy. As annoying as it is to be constantly compared to his virtually unattainable standard, he got a good rise out of our crowd that night, and I was proud to have him representing the Canucks.

Team China
By the time China’s athletes finally appeared we’d been there sweating for about three hours and the crowd had thinned a little. People’s newspaper seats were baked with sweat into the pavement. But when Yao Ming carried in the Chinese flag, flanked by a pint-sized earthquake hero from Sichuan, the fatigued but happy crowd loved it. People started cheering, clapping, waving flags and chanting “Zhōngguó jiāyóu!” (中国加油 / Go China!). People also loved seeing wider shots inside the Bird’s Nest that showed how big the Chinese team was.

During the final hour the cheering and enthusiasm really picked up, but only in pockets and for a minute or so at a time. I don’t know why but our self-appointed cheerleaders couldn’t get the whole crowd into it all at once. A couple times a small group around the TV crew would cheer with wild abandon while they were being filmed, but in general I was surprised that the crowd wasn’t more enthusiastic than they were. I assume it was simply a matter of heat and fatigue – four hours is a long time! – although neither could stop people from celebrating as the cauldron was lit in epic fashion.

Reading the Chinese Tea Leaves
The Ceremony is a key part of the carefully crafted self-portrait that China’s rulers have anxiously placed before their own people and the people of the world (two very different audiences in some respects). Mainlanders, for their part, are seeing their nation being redefined. For better or for worse, China’s methods of trying to craft this gilded self-image for the rest of the world are making a bigger impression on the rest of the world than the projected image itself. There’s no doubt that the 2008 Opening Ceremony was intended to send some messages. I’m not qualified to interpret these particular tea leaves, but I still have some questions: There was plenty of Confucius, but where was Chairman Mao? For that matter, where were the 19th and 20th centuries? Why were the lyrics to “Song to the Motherland” (歌唱祖国), which were mimed by nine-year-old Lín Miàokě (林妙可), rewritten? And what do those edits mean? Some say the giant painting drawn throughout the performance makes oblique, politically-coded references to Mao, but the nations of the world colourfully trampled all over that painting.

I don’t know what it all was intended to mean, what the average Mainlander understands it to mean, or what it really does mean in the big picture. But I do know it meant a lot to a lot of people, and I appreciate our gracious Tianjin hosts for allowing us to experience it with them. Thanks Tianjin for a memorable night!

(P.S. — Expat magazines in third-tier Chinese cities are a good opportunity for nonprofessional writers to get some practice because the standards are relatively low. I use it as a no-pressure way to work on a style of writing that I’m not accustomed to, and practice oral Chinese (in the interviews). )

China’s “raging youth” (and don’t worry, we’re all fine here)

Joel 大江 — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:52:25 +0000

I don’t know what they’re showing in the news back home, so we just wanted to post a quick note saying we’re fine and Tianjin is real relaxed and there’s no danger, etc.

In case you’re wondering what on earth we’re talking about, there’re lots of stirred-up, angry folks in China right now. The Chinese term is “angry youth” (愤怒青年); fènqīng for short. In English they’re just called fenqing.

Carrefour (the French Walmart) is being boycotted/protested in cities across the country (because it’s French), and CNN is bearing the brunt of the (vitriolic) anti-Western-media sentiment for misreporting on certain recent events and for airing certain comments from an outspoken commentator. One American in an inland city was ~~punched around a bit~~ hasseled on Sunday by a mob when he tried to exit a Carrefour.

Our teachers and language helpers are talking about it in class. One of them forwarded me one of the many patriotic/anti-Carrefour text messages going around people’s cell phones. It says:

Carrefour showed its hand, buy 500 get ’250′ ["250" means "idiot"]. One supermarket and one lofty and unyielding character face one another in confrontation, in the end who wins?! All who don’t go, in order for the world to look up to China. Now must all in one heart please pass this on

家乐福出手了，买五百送二百五。一个超市和一把傲骨的对垒，到底谁赢？！谁都别去，为了世界看得起中国。这次一定要齐心请转发

Some of our teachers are “boycotting” Carrefour, but one complains that Tianjiners are so cheap that that Tianjin can’t pull off a real boycott like other Chinese cities because Tianjiners will shop where it’s cheapest no matter what (ha! – so Tianjin). Because Tianjin is a special economic zone on the coast, it’s a little more cosmopolitan than many inland cities (…I can’t believe I just called Tianjin cosmopolitan! :D ) We aren’t expecting any trouble.

Anyway, we don’t know how this is all being reported back home, and just didn’t want people to worry in case the coverage of overly sensational.

If you’re interested about the situation, here are some interesting, pertinent links in suggested reading order:

The Olympic Torch Tour As Public Relations Disaster
English translations of the Chinese news media, with images. Shows why France is a special target.
CNN’s failure to apologize rapped
Explains why people are hating (and hacking) CNN right now. See also China strongly denounces CNN host’s insulting words. Both from China’s English language news media.
Attack on an American volunteer by anti-Carrefour mob in Zhuzhou, Hunan
Zhuzhou is nowhere near Tianjin.
Dissenting Chinese voices have a hard time. Here’s one guy’s response to his “fenqing” critics (translated to English).
“2008 !China Stand Up! 2008,中国，站起来！”
A fenqing music video (with English subtitles, how thoughtful!) that gives you a dose of fenqing sentiment, opinion, and inspiration.
Anti-CNN.com (English/Chinese)
carrefourS.com.cn (the anti-Carrefour site)
“Everyone take a look at the videos below, our China’s current plight, after watching do not be upset, do not cry, take everything and transform it into struggle”

If you’re wondering why Mainlanders are apparently so hypersensitive, I suggest starting here:

Why Mainlanders are taking it personally, racially, and facially – the short answer

[Updated 08-05-02]: Text messages are playing an interesting role in Chinese society, from calling the patriotic masses to rise up (quoted above) to funny social satire, as seen here: “The text message as satire.”

No politically-oriented comments allowed – thanks.

Meeting the migrant workers

Joel 大江 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:46:43 +0000

Cool experience on the way home this afternoon: We met our first two migrant workers, and they met their first two foreigners. Judging from the looks on their faces, I think they might still be in shock as I type this. Of course, the fact that I’m blogging about them might say something, too. Crazy world…

Anyway, we’d started chatting with one of our retired neighbours outside our stairwell, which is also right by the migrant labourers’ camp. (I took the photo at right while we were talking.) We asked him about the work they were doing on the roofs, and got more of an answer than we were expecting. He said that not only are they building fake roofs on all the buildings visible from the main road, but they’re also going to paint the sides of the buildings that are visible from the main road.

He said it’s because our neighbourhood is opposite the Sheraton (one of the ritziest public places in Tianjin) and during the Olympics lots of foreigners will be there and China wants the foreigners to see good looking neighbourhoods, not ugly ones with flat roofs. (Of all the things that could be changed to make things look better in the eyes of foreigners, the shape of the roofs never would have crossed my mind….) Then he went off about how China is still a poor country and not fully developed, and that spending money on projects like this is a waste when so many people need food. Jessica asked him if it was about “face” and he agreed and said, “Yes, it’s about looking good.” He pointed at their open air kitchen, saying that the workers don’t get meat; just cabbage and bǐng (饼 – Chinese biscuit).

While we were talking, two really young looking workers with a wheelbarrow passed by, staring at us. Then they backed up and stood just outside the circle of conversation, and stared at us some more before asking our neighbour first if we were foreigners (we have no idea why) and then if our neighbourhood had a lot of foreigners. We started talking with them, and although they had that shocked look – the one that you get when you discover that the exotic animal in the zoo can speak – they were really friendly, and just a little shy. 18 year olds, working long days far from home (one was I think from Henan province, the other from Hebei). They said we were the first foreigners they’d ever met, but wouldn’t shake my hand, saying their hands were too dirty. We chatted a bit, asked some of the basic questions that always get asked, and then I headed off to the vegetable market.

I’d already planned to talk to this group of migrants as much as possible, since I didn’t with the last couple crews that came through. I figured it might take a few times to really get things warmed up with them – we’ll see how it goes!

p.s. - I am continually glad that we decided to ditch the foreign ghetto that we’d been placed in by our n.g.o. and move into a regular Chinese neighbourhood (as in, a neighbourhood full of Chinese people instead of foreigners). Yes, the plumbing is bad, the toilet’s in the shower, and you get woken up in the morning by groups of old ladies slapping their thighs in unison (assuming the migrant workers hadn’t already started hammering into the roof directly above your bed at 6:30am), but even on the “bad” days, having a friendly community around is so worth it!

What do the Olympics mean to “their China”?

Joel 大江 — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:55:53 +0000

This is the nation where there are already thousands of infants named after the Olympics. Why does hosting the Olympics mean so much to Mainlanders? Two keys to unlocking the answers are reflected in this rather cool Olympic-themed ad (1 min.):

When it comes to understanding what hosting the 2008 Olympics means to Mainlanders, (1) nationalized “face,” and (2) Mainlanders’ thick, bright dividing line between “them” from “us” are two crucial pieces of a still bigger puzzle. This post is just my guesses/hunches/wonderings about nationalized “face” right now in China. Soon I’ll post some experiences, half-baked current understanding, and maybe a little venting about the Mainland’s “them” vs. “us” mentality.

Regaining Face at the National/Cultural/Racial Level
That video could have shown equality-enjoying multi-cultural masses working in harmony to help athletes achieve new heights – you know, Olympic ideals and all that. But it doesn’t, because for Mainlanders the Olympics aren’t so much about that. It’s more about Mainlanders as a national/cultural/racial entity getting face. The one possible role left open to us non-Chinese is that of competitors to be rallied against, foils against which bigger face can be realized. I guarantee you the 2010 Vancouver games (which have their own cultural identity issues) will not be showing an all-white version of this video. This kind of “face” makes no sense in Canadian culture, and it’s a cultural sin to publicly strengthen racial and cultural divisions like that.

Maybe you think that’s a little harsh, a little over-interpreted. I don’t think it is. Maybe it’s just my culture stress talking. Or maybe I’m just stating the obvious: that at a very deep level, hosting the Olympics is a huge step toward China recovering the “face” lost to the West at a national/cultural/racial level during the modern era, and that since recovering this face requires a demonstrated superiority over the West, it necessitates the strengthening of an already-thick dividing line between “insiders” (Mainlanders) and “outsiders” (foreigners). For the Mainland, non-Chinese are the national/cultural/racial identity-galvanizing Other.

Nationalized “Face” is Crucial and Powerful
It might be hard to accept that something as ambiguous and foreign as “face” could be this important. If the West has never really needed it and it’s so hard to explain, does it really matter? Yes. I’m not making (most of) this up. Why is China putting men in space and hosting Olympic games when millions live in poverty and the environment is hemorrhaging? From 林语堂 (Lín Yǔtáng)’s My Country, My People:

Abstract and intangible, [face] is yet the most delicate standard by which Chinese social intercourse is regulated.
[...]
Face cannot be translated or defined. It is like honor and is not honor. It cannot be purchased with money, and gives a man or woman a material pride. It is hollow and is what men fight for and many women die for. It is invisible and yet by definition exists by being shown to the public. It exists in the ether and yet can be heard, and sounds eminently respectable and solid. It is amenable, not to reason but to social convention. It protracts lawsuits, breaks up family fortunes, causes murders and suicides, and yet it often makes a man out of a renegade who has been insulted by his fellow townsmen, and it is prized above all earthly possessions. It is more powerful than fate or favor, and more respected than the constitution. It often decides a military victory or defeat, and can demolish a whole government ministry. It is that hollow thing which men in China live by. (195-196)

There is a fascinating, first-person account of China’s last 30 years of change here, which gives us glimpses of the intersection between the Olympics, nationalized face, and today’s China:

… he insisted, saying he just wanted to be there—”one of only a few million Chinese to see the moment.” He was eager for China to get back the land taken from the spineless Manchu dynasty more than half a century before Mao took power. “As a kid, I had the history of the Opium Wars drummed into me,” he said. “It was the biggest humiliation in history. We hated the British for that.” And for what came after. He recalled seeing burly cops—turbaned Sikhs from British India—beating Chinese beggars and prostitutes in Shanghai’s International Concession in the 1930s.

Papa came to Hong Kong to watch the handover ceremonies in the company of old friends. I remember Prince Charles delivering a stiff-lipped farewell speech while a summer downpour dripped from his cheeks and chin. One flaglowering event featured a team of three motley Brits, mismatched in height and gait, and each in a different outfit. One wore a kilt. They made a sad contrast to China’s towering honor guards, perfectly synchronized in their movements and wearing impeccably tailored uniforms. A PLA soldier unfurled a gigantic Chinese national flag with a single fluid motion and a snap so loud and clear you could practically feel it. A burst of pride and vindication swept through millions of Chinese—my father included.

How powerful and crucial is nationalized face? It’s the key to public confidence:

China’s leaders needed the Games the same way they needed Hong Kong. They had to keep earning the public’s confidence—what used to be called the Mandate of Heaven—with ever bigger and better achievements: joining the World Trade Organization, putting their own man in space, building the world’s biggest dam, the highest railway, even the tallest Ferris wheel. At some level all Chinese are driven by the dream of reclaiming their ancient imperial glory.

“Our China” and “Your America”
Mainlanders generally perceive a greater relationship between the status of the nation and its people than Westerners typically do. (This becomes rather ironic if we contrast the role played by the American people with that of the Mainland Chinese public in each nation’s respective political system.) “Our China” and “Your America” are standard ways of talking about countries here; personal and national identities are more intertwined. You can see Mainlanders use these phrases in some of the comments under the article quoted above.

We don’t care much about “face” in the West, not as much or in the same way as Mainland Chinese do, and over here it’s bred on a national level. Mainlanders are highly motivated (and able-to-be-motivated) to regain the national face they lost to the West in the modern era. The national disgrace of the Opium Wars in the mid-1800′s and the perceived continued belligerence of the USA burns hotter and closer to the surface of public consciousness than any of the more recent self-inflicted tragedies from the last half of the 20th century.

And unlike North America’s nations of immigrants, or increasingly culturally and ethnically diverse Western Europe, the line between “insider” (Mainland Chinese people and national interests) and “outsider” (foreigners, foreign nations and interests) is much clearer and thicker. The more powerful China becomes – the more “face” China perceives itself to have – the more the West will need to understand it.

Drinking, driving, and kèqi dancing

Joel 大江 — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:39:02 +0000

Saturday was a great first for us. We spent the entire day with non-English speakers, and had no one like a teacher or a more advanced language student with us to bail us out. Since the people we were with didn’t have any English they were willing to use, we had to rely on what little Mandarin we have to communicate. It also meant that we couldn’t watch more experienced foreigners for social and cultural cues. We had to rely on our own knowledge and instincts to navigate the daunting world of politeness and face with people we’d only just met, but who had no English skills, and with whom we were sharing a huge meal and spending the entire day. A fun little adventure that produced some interesting cultural anecdotes.

(Browse the photo gallery here.)

The Deal: Teach English for 90 minutes, get a day on the tax payers’ dime
In return for speaking English to a room crammed wall-to-wall with forty 13-16 year-olds for ninety minutes, this middle school in Jì Xiàn (蓟县 – Ji County, north of Tianjin city, here’s a cool map) drove us out from Tianjin (almost two hours), treated us to a huge lunch, and spent all afternoon taking us around sites of interest before driving us back home. There are numerous centuries-old temples nearby, plus the Great Wall, which we’d already camped on. We got in the taxi at 7:30am and got home just after 7pm. Outside of that ninety minutes of “teaching,” there was no English. It was a really tiring day but fantastic language practice.

Celebrity teachers
We walked into the classroom at 10am and the students immediately started talking excitedly to each other and pointing. Aside from tourists at the tourist sites, they don’t see that many foreigners in town. Plus, I’m sure that every time I go to places like Jì Xiàn I’m perpetuating the stereotype that foreigners all have big noses. We were their third or fourth time for foreigners with this particular Saturday deal. We divided them between us into two groups and tried to do some interactive circle-game stuff. It was fun, and pretty low pressure for us. We tried to get them talking about Fuwas and every related thing we could think of (colours, sports, animals), make group stories, sing songs, that kind of thing. The really bizarre thing was after we’d taken the big group picture at the end, when the female students lined up to get Jessica and I to autograph their notebooks. Felt kind of weird, but, whatever.

We headed for lunch with our language engines geared up and our culture radars turned on; we had to navigate the ‘rules,’ which are only slightly less foggy than when we first arrived, on our own. It was good language and culture practice, and provided some great anecdotes.

Loading up a Taxi? Do the kè qi (客气) dance
You might not think cramming five people into a little car takes culture skills, but it does. We had two older female teachers with us, plus the driver. The principal was in a separate carload. One of the teachers told me to get in the front seat, since I’m so tall. I almost automatically went for it; I towered over the teachers and the back seats are so small that it’s a chore just to get my size 13 shoes in and out. But then I realized I was instead supposed to resist her repeated insistence enough so that she could sit in the front seat while still maintaining the appearance of hospitality, generosity, politeness, unselfishness, consideration, etc., etc.

This type of game – resisting offers and having to know when you should finally accept and when you shouldn’t – happens all the time, with almost everything. It’s still not natural for us. You could say we do this a bit in the North America – “Why don’t you stay for dinner?” “Oh, I don’t want to bother you and I’ve got some stuff I gotta do…” “Really, it’s no problem….” We have our own little social rituals where we implicitly feel out whether or not we’re imposing on one another (and we’re affirming one another’s self-determination and individuality in the process). But in the West we resolve these exchanges much quicker and with much less force. In China, people often insist with force far beyond what would be necessary to convince someone in North America that your invitation is actually genuine, yet they are still sometimes seeing it as mere politeness and expect that you will know not to accept. It’s our tendency as Westerners to accept too quickly, or, feeling unsure about the person’s true intentions, to refuse too much and cause offense.

But I played this one right, I think: after arguing back and forth a few times, I moved toward the back seat and started to get in, at which point she felt free to move toward the front seat since I was “forcing” her to take it by getting in the back first.

How to: Sit down at the dinner table
We arrived at a huge, ridiculously fancy restaurant and entered a private dining room lined with statues and display cases of expensive looking trinkets. The table was big and round, as usual, and where each person sits matters. The chair most facing the door is the most honoured seat. The chairs with their backs to the door are the lowliest seats. Everyone should know their proper place, but guests should still make a show of humbleness by moving toward a seat that is below their proper seat. A good host will give his guests face by telling them to sit in a better seat. We didn’t know how low to go, so we moved toward the seats closest to the door, and the principal, who had the biggest face at the table (figuratively speaking), and to whom everyone deferred during the polite dinner conversation, made a small show of getting us to sit near him on the other side of the table.

I felt bad for Mr. Hǎo, our taxi driver, who sat opposite of us. He was basically only there as hired help and was almost ignored the whole time. No one made any toasts to him (people toast for seemingly every conceivable opportunity, as it’s the excuse to drink), and he couldn’t have any alcohol anyway since he was driving (we suspect he may have been under orders from our school not to drink, since it’s apparently not uncommon for cab drivers to drink and keep on working). I only made one toast to everyone at the end, since we haven’t had any instruction on how that’s done yet, but I made a point to include him.

How to: Drink, toast, and be kè qi without getting totally hammered
The principal, who was the big man in the room, turned to me before the food started coming and asked what kind of alcohol he should order: beer, wine, or bái jiǔ (白酒), which is kind of like whiskey. I hadn’t ever been the guy who gets asked this before. We’ve heard plenty of stories about Chinese drinking culture, and I’ve had one or two experiences with it myself, but this was the first time in a more formal setting. My goal was to be as polite and appropriate as possible without drinking too much. I answered by saying that we usually only drink alcohol on special occasions like Christmas or our anniversary, and he replied that this was a special occasion so what kind of alcohol should we drink?, so I told him beer, knowing that I could get through more glasses of that than any of the other choices, and that we’d probably have to get through a few glasses.

The glasses are small, but it’s expected that when toasting you’ll do some gān bēi (干杯), which literally means “dry glass” and is equivalent to “bottoms up!” and “cheers!” while synonymous with “make a toast.” In this situation it means when someone toasts you and you drink, the polite thing to do before sitting down is to hold your glass up toward them so they can see that the bottom is empty. That’s gān bēi, and it’s easy to do with beer and the little Chinese cups that are like over-sized shot glasses. But with bái jiǔ it’s a whole different story. Plus, they either fill up or top off all the drinks after each toast so you’re always tipping a full glass.

The trick is not just drinking your limit and then calling it quits, because pretty much the only time people drink is when someone’s getting toasted. The trick – for people who care about not drinking too much – is spacing out your alcohol tolerance over however many toasts you’ll have to participate in, so that you can give each person their due without drinking more than you should.

The boss’ first toast was to us, the guests, and he said, “Gān bēi!”, so I gave him that one, but indicated that I only gān bēi once. They tried a few more times, but didn’t push too hard and seemed to be OK with me not draining my glass every time. Then half-way through the meal they ordered bái jiǔ anyway and tried to get us to drink that. At first I said no, but then they said just a little, and I was surprised when they really only did give me just a half-glass.

One interesting toasting detail: when you clink glasses, the relative position of the rims indicates who is higher than whom. Between people of generally equal status there can be a little struggle as both try to be lower than the other; sometimes you end up clinking just above the table.

The boss apologized to me twice – once near the end of the meal and once when we were leaving to return to Tianjin. All I could catch was that he was afraid he’d created offense somehow, or something like that. The more he drank the faster he talked, and we don’t catch everything they’re saying anyway, so I couldn’t catch it all. But that lets me know that I can still do better when it comes to refusing too much alcohol, as we must of confused him at least a little (our lack of Mandarin doesn’t help either!). Still, it seems like if we’re going to share banquets with people and refuse to get even a little drunk, we’ll have to make a break with people’s expectations at some point and risk a little offense or misunderstanding. We’re trained to respect and accommodate culture, and although we can see how the drinking functions on different levels, in the end it still seems like culture and kè qi are just excuses for a bunch of guys wanting to flaunt their status, curry favour, and, of course, drink a lot. Or maybe the culture and kè qi expectations surrounding drinking developed for the purpose of accommodating peoples’ vices. Either way, we choose misunderstanding over getting drunk.

A local friend we described this to after we returned to Tianjin said it sounds like the school’s administration is living it up on tax dollars (apparently this is not uncommon). Plus, they may be either fulfilling a requirement to have foreign English teachers, or generating more prestige (and, therefore, higher school fees) for the school by bringing foreigners in every weekend. We’d been offered this interpretation of the situation before we went, and lunch was the event that most seemed to confirm it. Aside from the drinking, there was way more food than the nine of us needed; I don’t think we more than half finished any one dish.

Driving – Glad we’re not
After sitting in the passenger seat of a taxi for about 4 hours in one day, I am really glad that we hardly spend any time in cars in China. We talked with the driver, Mr. Hǎo, most of the way there and all the way back. He really got talking on the way home, and by this time he was really getting into the game where you have to describe all the words you want to use but that we haven’t learned yet. One day I’ve got to write up one of these conversations, because I bet they’d sound hilarious in English.

Even though the city traffic seems to make more and more sense the longer we’re here, I sure wouldn’t trust myself to drive in it. Mr. Hǎo was a great taxi driver: he loved to talk and was willing to put up with our poor Mandarin for hours, he refused a lot of free alcohol on the day he was driving (they don’t all do that), and he wasn’t near as adventurous as other cab drivers we’ve had. But knowing that even the best drivers are willing to let go of the steering wheel at 120km/hour to dig their tea bottle out of their backpack or illustrate the finer points of pigeon selection with hand gestures makes me glad that most of the time we stick to our bikes.

Touristy stuff
The town is small, but they have a developed tourism centre. We went to some temples, some of which were really interesting. Plus, they let us gong the bells and beat the drums. We never got to do that in Taibei, but that may be because the temple bells and drums we saw in Taiwan are still regularly used for their originally intended purposes.

This afternoon reminded us how easy it is to accidentally imply things in Chinese culture. If you’re a guest and you show interest in something, your hosts may assume you want them to buy it for you. Being a good host is very important, and apparently anticipating your guests’ wishes and buying them things can be part of the deal. This happened to us once before already, and happened twice in Jì Xiàn. We asked about this one locally made drink they had at lunch and ended up going home with two cans, and when we were looking at prayer hanging-cards in the Guanyin temple and they started to go buy us some.

It was a long day – our brains were fried by the end – but well worth it.