Living in a different cultural context can really make mincemeat out of your sense of right and wrong. Here’s a little example from over the last few days.

One of our foreign friends here is from Taiwan, but went to an international high school and then completed undergrad and grad school in the U.S. She married an American, speaks Mandarin and English perfectly and functions naturally in both cultures. This makes her a fantastic “undercover foreigner” in the sense that she can hang out with Chinese people and they’ll treat her more or less as a cultural insider. She reports that the number one complaint her Mainland friends have against their foreign friends is that foreigners too often think Chinese people are lying to them, when they’re actually being extra considerate to the foreigners. Some of our recent (and recurring) experiences illustrate how cultural context can greatly influence which actions are right/moral/proper/considerate and which ones aren’t.

Desperate times call for desperate measures pushy mothers
It’s not uncommon for someone we barely know – say, the bike park attendant we chat with a few times a week on our way to the gym – to ask us for our phone number. Lots of people do this, and often it’s because they want to practice English or they want us to help their child practice English. People can actually be really pushy and manipulative about it – at least that’s how it feels to us as foreigners.

Mothers are easily the worst. They will talk you into a corner where you’re forced to choose between being rude to them or doing what they want. I’ve had mothers literally stop and chat/negotiate with me on the sidewalk for the better part of an hour, refusing to give me an “out,” trying to get me to agree to tutor their kid. Part of the problem is my cultural ineptness, part of it is that they’re just really pushy and desperate. Competition among today’s Mainland students is “cruel,” to quote Guāng Yuǎn (光远 – who just received acceptance letters from some American engineering PhD programs), and many mothers will exhaust every last trick in the book before they give up on the slim chance that the random foreigner they’ve just met will be their child’s advantage. I can’t say I blame them. (We haven’t received this treatment from any fathers yet.)

Saying “no” to these kinds of people can be pretty difficult – at least, difficult if you really want to be culturally appropriate, not cause offense, and in some cases, continue a relationship with the person (especially when they are people we see regularly). The typical polite Chinese response to this kind of situation looks like a straight up lie to Westerners. But in China, it’s hard sometimes for foreigners to know when a lie is a lie, and when a “lie” is actually the most considerate and appreciated response.

We know a lot of foreigners who feel that, unless you’re sheltering Jews from Nazis, you shouldn’t tell lies, period. I lean that way myself. But China throws this kind of ethic a curve ball. I’ll give you a current situation we’re in, and let you (try to) judge for yourself. If you haven’t encounter this kind of cross-cultural experience before, I think you’ll be surprised at how unstraightforward seemingly straightforward moral judgments can become in a different cultural context.

Our current somewhat ‘sticky’ situation
Four of us foreigners go to a local gym at least three days a week. We have to park at a guarded bike park spot and pay 5 máo ($0.07) to one of the three attendants, usually a young guy, an older man, and a mother of a teenager. We really enjoy chatting with them every time we go.

Last week the mother tried each of us one after the other to get an English tutor for her son. We all refused in turn (and unbeknownst to us at the time, we could have been much more culturally appropriate about it, though by our Western standards we weren’t rude in the slightest). Then last Saturday as I was leaving, the older man tried several times to get the younger guy to ask me for my phone number, deliberately putting me on the spot. The younger guy sensed that I didn’t want to give it to him and kept saying, “Don’t listen to him, forget it,” but it was a little awkward. I assume they’ll keep trying (today at lunch they tried to get James’ address), and here’s the question I discussed with my teacher this morning: How can I refuse in a way that works (meaning they ‘get the message’ and quit bugging us for our phone numbers and English) but allows me to keep up a relationship with them (we can still have fun chatting a few times each week)? We genuinely like these folks, but we aren’t going to spend our time teaching English.

My lesson in class this morning was about discussing “customs” and “habits,” and I wanted to know if I could just tell people, “I’m not accustomed to giving out my phone number to people I’m only recently acquainted with” (and put the blame on cultural differences, rather than anything personal with them). My teacher said I could say this, but it’s not the best response. Making up a transparent excuse is better. He suggested: “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.” In North America, that’s a lie – harmless maybe, and a poor one, but definitely a lie.

However in this case it’s supposed to be obvious. If I tell them my phone number is being changed, they will assume that’s not really the case and that I just don’t want to tell them my number; there’s no confusion about the meaning being communicated here. It also leaves no room for argument. This transparent “lie,” which literally says one thing but actually clearly ‘communicates’ something else, is the most considerate and appreciated way to refuse them. It saves their ‘face.’ They might not like that I refused, but they’ll see that I’m doing it in the nicest way possible, indicating that I do actually care a little. In fact, my teacher said, if I tell this ‘lie,’ “…they’ll think, ‘Wow, this foreigner really knows Chinese culture and how to be polite!’” So if I ‘lie’ to them, they might even be impressed!

This is the Chinese way, and it illustrates some of the slightly different roles that words can play in communication here (navigating ‘face,’ servicing relationships, etc.). Observe this parallel advice from two Chinese culture scholars* – first for foreigners interacting with Chinese:

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

And for Chinese interacting with foreigners:

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

So when is a ‘lie’ a lie?
So here’s the rub for Westerners who care about their personal integrity, want to be trustworthy, and therefore don’t want to lie to people: Must the real meaning of a statement be confined in the literal words used, or can the real meaning of a statement be honestly conveyed in nonverbals that seem to contradict the literal meaning?

We use words (and a lot of other things) to convey certain meanings. Good communication happens when the “intended meaning” (what the speaker means) and the “received meaning” (what the listener understands the speaker to mean) are more or less the same. What if everyone involved understands the words “my phone number is in the middle of getting switched at the moment” to actually mean “I don’t want to give you my phone number, but I really don’t want to create any bad feelings between us because I care enough about you and our relationship to protect your ‘face’ by not saying “no” and directly denying you”? The statement isn’t meant to be taken literally, and it won’t be, but plenty of meaning is still more or less accurately conveyed in the choice of words. There’s a Chinese phrase for this kind of communication, often translated, “the meaning behind the words” (言外之意).

I can already hear people objecting, for example, “But Jesus said, ‘Let your yes be yes and your no be no’!” OK, fine. But what does that actually mean? Does it mean (and here’s the version naturally assumed by Westerners): “When you speak the word ‘yes,’ your intended meaning must always literally be yes. When you’re speaking, literal meaning must always trump all other forms of communication.” Or does it mean (perhaps a more Chinese culture-friendly interpretation): “When you communicate or indicate ‘yes,’ then you must follow through with it. Don’t indicate ‘yes’ one moment and then go back on it later”? (Somebody needs to go have some fun with exegesis!)

If you stop to think about it, there a tons of common situations in English where we use words to mean what they don’t actually literally say, but to us it’s “obvious” in those situations what the intended meaning really is. Our delivery, the context, and our non-verbals all speak quite loudly and quite clearly, so clearly that we would never think of such instances as “lies.” Sarcasm is only one kind of example.

Jury hung on account of cultural favouritism
Although it may sound like I’m arguing that it’s all fine and good for people to “lie” so long as they’re “lying” to Chinese people, I’m actually not sure what I think about all this. Maybe the culture stress is predisposing me to be contrary with Chinese culture today (yesterday afternoon we had a “fun” experience with a particularly obnoxious local – but it wasn’t literally fun, actually… ha, so am I lying?). Although I’m slowly learning to appreciate the importance of ‘face,’ I can’t help but feel like, at the end of the day, the world would be a better place, and China in particular, if the ‘face’ game was drastically toned down and we shifted the scales in favour of more direct speech. There is no shortage of Chinese social scholars who agree that ‘face’ is actually a major weakness of Chinese culture, but this indirect form of communicating also rubs my Western cultural fur the wrong way in more than one area, so I don’t want to pretend this is some sort of dispassionate cultural analysis. I wonder how my opinion will change over the years as we slowly learn to live into Chinese culture more and more.

P.S. - Speaking of our rubbing our cultural sensibilities the wrong way, we happened upon a thick crowd of people and bikes clogging up an intersection on our way back from the gym today. Someone was lying in the road – we assume he got hit, but it was hard to tell in the confusion which cars were involved and which were just trying to get around the crowd. A policeman was already there, and we didn’t stop to gawk. That’s another cultural observation for another time: how crowds will stand close and stare unapologetically at other people’s public suffering. At least the guy wasn’t in danger of getting hit again.

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

Okay…so this one’s not in the promised “Beauty” series…but is a short anecdote regarding recent experiences with beauty products. Tianjin’s winter weather is the kind that makes your skin feel extremely dry, to the point of cracking and peeling. So, around Christmas time, I was overjoyed to find some wonderful Olay brand lotion that did a great job helping me feel more human and less lizard-like. Fast-forward two weeks…in the middle of my month long bout with bronchitis and a bad cold, I suddenly develop bright red splotches behind both knees and in my elbows. These spots were itchy, hot to the touch, and extremely uncomfortable. Fearing that I was having an allergic reaction to the antibiotics I had started to take, I asked a nurse friend to take a look at the red spots. She felt like it was a topical kind of reaction, and together we decided that I either might be allergic to my new lotion, or maybe my body was just overwhelmed with having been sick for too long and more sensitive to the new lotion than normal. Her advice? Stop using the lotion.

So I stopped using it, and (after several layers of skin had peeled off) the area behind my knees and elbows slowly returned to normal. One month later, being fully recovered from my illness and once again suffering from extremely dry skin, the lotion began to beckon me to try it again. So I did. Three weeks later, everything seemed just fine and I was beginning to hope that the first reaction might have just been a fluke. Until one night, when my legs began itching so fiercely that I thought I might wear off my fingers trying to scratch through my jeans. Peeling off the jeans and my long johns, I discovered…angry red hot patches behind my knees, and a prickly red rash all up and down my legs. Wonderful.

Then, a stroke of genius/suspicion struck. A stroke of genius/suspicion that should have hit me way back in December when I bought the lotion, or at least when I had the first reaction. I grabbed the bottle, sat down at the computer and painstakingly looked up all of the characters on the bottle. Fortunately xuezhongwen.net (which saves our butts on a regular basis) has a little sketch pad where you can draw in characters that you don’t yet recognize. I used that function to find all the characters in the dictionary, then used the translator…

…and discovered that my “lotion” was not lotion after all. It was body wash…intended to be slathered on in the shower, foamed up, and then (probably most importantly) RINSED OFF. Not, mind you, rubbed INTO the skin twice a day for several weeks in a row. How could I make this mistake? Easily enough, when you’re functionally illiterate. This bottle was located in the lotion section of the body wash/lotion aisle. The English on the bottle said “Silk Moisturizing”…and the texture of this stuff is really thick, like a nice body cream. I didn’t know most of the characters on the bottle, so I just took location, texture, and the few English words to draw a conclusion as to what the product was.

Suddenly, it all made sense…and I dashed off to the shower to rinse away the soap residue that was making my legs so itchy. Five minutes later, the itchiness was greatly relieved but my ego was still feeling a little bruised over the whole thing. Of course I had reacted to this product…it was never intended to be left ON the surface of the skin for that long!

Which makes me wonder…will I still be allergic to this stuff if I’m using it properly? I’m not sure…once my legs have peeled and returned to normal again, I may be tempted to try it as a body wash and see how it works. Next time I buy something, I’ll certainly be paying closer attention to those characters on the bottles, and running them through the translator before I go deciding how to use a certain product.

******************************************

Also, we’ll be gone for two days/one night starting tomorrow…we’re going north of Beijing to hike one of the less restored (and apparently most beautiful) sections of the Great Wall. It’s supposed to be a pretty challenging hike, but we’re looking forward to it. This is a just a teaser to let you know that the next post will probably involve lots of beautiful pictures. Other upcoming posts will (most likely) continue the series on beauty.

Yesterday James and I biked through the Tianjin foreign concession areas (see photos here). I was hunting for the site of the Tianjin Church Incident. This church, along with its orphanage, was burned down – twice – in anti-foreign uprisings. Priests, nuns, and local believers were killed. China calls the first time the Tianjin Church Incident (天津教案); the West calls it the Tianjin Massacre.

I thought the Tianjin Incident might be remembered as a tragedy, but it’s actually celebrated as a point of national pride and resistance against foreign aggressors in China’s official historical narrative. Both the Tianjin Museum and the Ministry of Culture website quoted here present it that way.
According to ChinaCulture.org:

Considered as a haven for orphans and young children, the church, in fact, caused great harm to Chinese children. In June 1870, angry residents of Tianjin City swarmed to the church to find out why the church abused scores of children, sometimes beating them to death. As a result, the French consul shot Tianjin County Magistrate Liu Jie, injuring his retinue. The people of Tianjin, in turn, beat up the consul and his secretary and burned down the church, including other French, English and American churches, and the French consul’s office. The incident is known today as the Tianjin Church Incident.

In 1893, imperialists used the indemnity to rebuild Wanghailou Church and other churches. During the Boxer Uprising in 1900, the church was once again destroyed. The existing church was rebuilt for the third time in 1904. [Full text]

That’s not the version you’re likely to get in a Western text-book.

Here’s what were told in a history lecture by a guy with a degree: Anti-foreign sentiment was generally high across the country. Even though many missionaries personally sacrificed greatly for the benefit of the Chinese people – like the nuns taking in diseased and abandoned children – they still benefited from and were protected by the imperialistic foreign governments that had violently humiliated China through war and forced, lopsided trade ‘agreements.’

Locals began to notice that many of the children taken in by the nuns died. Aside from the regular high mortality rate, an epidemic made it even worse. The nuns apparently also gave a small bit of money to people who would rescue abandoned children and bring them to the orphanage. Rumours started spreading that the nuns were actually buying and eating Chinese children. I imagine that a rumour-mongered misunderstanding regarding the Lord’s Supper (a.k.a. the Eucharist a.k.a. Communion) probably played into this. The order of events is not exactly clear, but apparently local Chinese authorities sent someone to the church to investigate the rumours. An agitated crowd followed him. French authorities sent an apparently belligerent consul to discuss the situation with local Chinese officials, and this also drew a crowd. The French consul became angry and fired his gun twice, the second time mortally wounding a Chinese servant. The crowd saw this and beat the consul and his advisor to death before storming the church and orphanage, killing over 20 priests and nuns, over 30 local Chinese Christians, and burning several other churches. The French government extracted punishing reparations.

You can read a translation of the report from the Chinese official sent to investigate the affair here. The church is a bike ride away from our neighbourhood.

My dad told me once how he went to dinner at a family’s home in Vancouver who were recent immigrants from Africa or Albania (I forget). For dessert, they served up dishes of frozen juice mix – the kind that comes frozen in the cardboard can that you’re supposed to mix with water – like it was ice cream. I can’t remember if my dad said anything or not. He may have just eaten it like everything was normal.

Just this week a fellow language student couple told me how they did the same thing when they had some of the teachers over for dinner recently. For dessert, they served a plate of uncooked 汤圆 (“soup spheres,” also called 元宵), not knowing that you’re supposed to boil them. They’re little sweet dumplings made out of glutinous rice flour, which, when they’re cooked, are gooey white doughy balls with sweet stuff inside, usually red bean paste. Uncooked usually means frozen. One of the teachers got a big surprise when she bit down, but then she told them and they cooked them and a good time was had by all.

We were planning to eat some tonight, which is what made me think to write about it, and I was going to show you a picture of what they look like cooked, except I cooked them wrong, the insides all fell out, and we ended up with a rice-flavoured blob of slime.

Just a simple anecdote of how easy it is to ‘not get it’ when you live elsewhere. Makes me have a lot more sympathy for the real immigrants back in Vancouver!

We were in a local history museum when ‘Shine Far’ looked right at me and said, “I hate the Japanese.” It still surprises me how matter-of-fact and unapologetic some of our Chinese acquaintances are about their feelings toward the “little Japanese devils” (小日本鬼子). Some of teachers at our school have requested in the past to not teach the few Japanese students at the school, two of whom are an older couple we’re acquainted with.

In philosophy and ethics classes I heard the joke more than once that everything eventually has to do with the Nazis. In my education, the Nazis were the proof and symbol of evil in the world, and were always finding their way into thought experiments, ethical dilemmas, debates regarding human nature, and arguments over the existence and nature of God. There was also this unspoken rule I grew up with – that perhaps the most un-politically correct thing you can do is treat the Nazi Holocaust as anything but the greatest evil ever committed by humanity, and you sure shouldn’t cheapen it by comparing it to other events.

The Rape of Nanking is the representative historical event for all of Japan’s atrocities in China during WWII. The book by the same the name calls it “the Forgotten Holocaust of WWII,” and then proceeds to make the case for not just holding the brutality of “the Rape” as generally comparable to the Holocaust, but even surpassing it in certain aspects:

“Nothing the Nazis under Hitler would do to disgrace their own victories could rival the atrocities of Japanese soldiers under Gen. Iwane Matsui” (historian Robert Leckie) (p. 7).

…the Japanese treatment of their POW’s surpassed in brutality even that of the Nazi’s. … the Rape of Nanking was not the kind of isolated incident common to all wars. It was deliberate. It was policy. It was known in Tokyo. For that matter, it was front page news in the world press (p. 173).

The events related in the book are beyond brutal; part of you dies inside just from reading it. I don’t know how anyone could make a movie that would be possible to watch. But there is quite a “Schindler’s List”-type story here. In the midst of brutality for which language cannot possibly convey any adequate expression, the oddest assortment of Westerners – Nazis and missionaries – combined forces to form a safety zone within the city and save hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives. These heroes risked their own lives multiple times during the Rape, and suffered physically and psychologically for the rest of their lives; one eventually committed suicide. Ironically, these Westerners originally chose to stay rather than evacuate, thinking that the greatest danger to the civilian population would be the retreating Chinese soldiers, and that the Japanese were more or less trustworthy (as occupying armies go) and would restore order and basic infrastructure once they’d captured the city. Instead, the Japanese military intentionally sunk the warship that was carrying the foreigners who had chosen to evacuate, and then went on to rival and perhaps even surpass the Nazis.

Japan as a nation still refuses to acknowledge what happened* [see comment #4].

Sixty years later the Japanese as a nation are still trying to bury the victims of Nanking — not under the soil, as in 1937, but into historical oblivion. In a disgraceful compounding of the offense, the story of the Nanking massacre is barely known in the West because so few people have tried to document and narrate it systematically to the public (pp. 219-220).

It’s not in their textbooks* [see comment #4]. Germany had to face the music, but some of Japan’s commanding officers went on to lead decorated lives of honour and privilege. Academics in Japan still vigorously deny the charges.

…Germans have incorporated into their postwar political identity the concession that the wartime government itself, not just individual Nazis, was guilty of war crimes. The Japanese government, however, has never forced itself or Japanese society to do the same. As a result … many in Japan continue to treat the war crimes as the isolated acts of individual soldiers or even as events that simply did not occur (p. 200).

Compounding the situation is China’s current administration, which has always spun the war with Japan, and Chinese public sentiment, in beneficial ways, stoking hatred of a common, nationalism-galvanizing enemy when it’s convenient to do so. Museums, like the one we visited with ‘Shine Far,’ play an important role in this:

The first rooms of the spacious museum depict China as a victim of Japanese aggression, but as the visitor moves towards the exit, he is treated to an interpretation of China as almost the lone victor on World War II in Asia.

The two factors widely credited with ending the war get only cursory treatment.

The Soviet invasion of Japanese-occupied Northeast Asia in the summer of 1945 is mentioned in passing, and America’s nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki not at all.

… It’s more promoting the internal unity under the guidance of the party. [Full text]

The older Japanese couple who were in our language school last semester made it a point to host special meals with their Chinese colleagues and closer acquaintances, during which they would personally apologize on behalf of their country for what happened. They still live in China and still do this, though they’ve now moved to a city in the south. Some of our school’s teachers originally requested to not be assigned to them when they first enrolled, solely because they were Japanese. Their request was not granted – in fact, our school’s American administrator confessed to me that his teachers’ requests may have influenced his decision to assign those teachers to the Japanese couple – but after a few weeks the teachers actually thanked him for doing it. One of these teachers recently returned from a trip she’d made just to visit them, and came back talking about how great she thinks they are.

China marked the 70th anniversary of the Rape of Nanking last Thursday.

I’m participating in the Bright Future Project at a local university again this semester. It’s always a good way to practice listening, and I get to pick up some really interesting vocabulary. This week’s topic was “True Love” and we did one of my favorite small group activity/discussions with the students. After being divided into a few same-sex groups, we ask them first to write a list of what they are looking for in a boyfriend/girlfriend. Then, after several minutes of letting them create their wish-lists, we ask them to write a list of what they think the opposite gender is looking for in a boyfriend/girlfriend. The answers are always interesting – and their reactions at finding out what the opposite gender thinks/desires are also fun to watch. This is one of those discussions that I can’t wait to hear over and over again as my Chinese continues to progress. Meanwhile, I’ll just give you a few bits and pieces from it that I did understand.

Surprisingly enough, most of the girls did not want a very handsome boyfriend. They stated pretty clearly that they felt like having a “too handsome boyfriend” was definitely unsafe (meaning, presumably, that he’d be a target for other women to hit on and therefore more likely to cheat). Also, I was even more surprised that the girls in this class didn’t say that their boyfriend should have a lot of money. Previous ladies in other classes have seemed to think that this was a pretty important quality.

The guys said that the girl should have long hair, big eyes, a good body, and “give him face.” I talked to one guy about the eyes, and he said “The eyes are the window of the heart/soul.” I was excited to discover both that I understood him, and that English and Chinese apparently share this saying. The guys also said that she should be “一般聪明” which means “smart enough” or “ordinarily smart.” There’s a definite thread in Chinese culture that says that smart, clever, and independent women are threatening or something to be feared, so the guys tend not to want a girlfriend that might be smarter than themselves.

Obviously, both groups mentioned a lot of other characteristics as well…it definitely wasn’t limited to the ones that I’ve written about here. Unfortunately, many of those desirable characteristics tend to be very poetic or abstract, which also makes them well above the reach of my current listening comprehension skills. Just think of it this way, if my eyes are the windows for you to see into the heart/soul of this discussion, then I’m the small-eyed undesirable girl for the time being. But it’s better than not having eyes at all, eh?

If you’re a Westerner with Chinese friends, or a Chinese person with Western friends, you probably ought to read this. It’s from the end of Communicating Effectively with the Chinese, which is co-authored by a Chinese and a Western scholar and easily the single best-all-around book I’ve read on the subject so far. They should force-feed it to all China-bound Westerners, in my opinion.

Anyway, first the advice for North Americans who wish to get along better with their Chinese friends. Many Chinese would no doubt be astounded that we actually have to be told this kind of stuff (p. 85):

1. Focus on how something is said – relational and mutual-face meanings often outweigh literal, content meanings.
2. Learn to read paralinguistic cues, such as facial expressions, body movements, gestures, and pauses.
3. Develop a belief that words can be inadequate and insufficient.
4. Understand that Chinese selves are often embedded in plural pronouns, and learn to differentiate personal opinions from those of the group.
5. Be aware that impersonal language can be used with outsiders and that insiders and outsiders are treated differently.
6. Accept that Chinese value indirect talk and that requests are often implied.
7. Recognize that definitive responses are rarely given in Chinese culture and that the word yes may have multiple meanings.
8. Understand that modesty is a Chinese virtue and that understating and discrediting oneself is expected.
9. Be aware that personal questions considered as private in the United States are asked frequently and that guān xīn talk is a sign of care and interest.
10. Accept that Chinese tend to keep opinions to themselves and are uncomfortable in engaging in social talk with strangers.

And now the advice for the Chinese, who want to get along with their Western friends. You might be surprised that the authors felt Chinese actually need to be told some of this stuff (p. 86):

1. Focus on what is said; try not to read too much into the words or be oversensitive to nonverbal nuances.
2. Learn to accept what is said.
3. Develop a belief that verbal messages and feedback are powerful and effective.
4. Understand that self-affirmation and individuality are important to North Americans and that self-oriented messages are used to separate oneself from others.
5. Be aware that everyone should be treated equally and that polite speech applies to family members, intimate friends, and strangers.
6. Accept that North Americans value direct talk and that requests are often stated explicitly.
7. Recognize that being assertive is valued in the U.S. culture and that “no” is an accepted assertive response.
8. Understanding that modesty is equated with low self-confidence and that enhancing and crediting oneself is expected.
9. Learn not to ask personal questions, because they can be offensive and insulting; understand that guān xīn talk may be construed as meddling and intrusive.
10. Accept that North Americans like to express their opinions openly and are talkative in the social interactions.

Imagine that you’re having dinner with eight people you’ve only just met and one of them suddenly points out the zit on your forehead and says, “You have a big zit! You should stop eating spicy food.” Or imagine that when you go to get your flat bike tire repaired, one of the guys hanging out with the bike repair man says, “You’re too fat! That’s why your tire is flat. You shouldn’t ride a bike.” Or instead of imagining, you could just come to China!

This ought to be one of the first things they tell China-bound foreigners after the flight attendants have reviewed the safety instructions:

Be aware that personal questions considered as private in the United States are asked frequently and that guān xīn talk is a sign of care and interest.

It’s sort of a friendly joke shared among foreigners here. If you regularly spend time with locals, you will regularly be on the receiving end of 关心 talk, which is intended to express care, concern, or interest on the part of the speaker; it’s a relational gesture. However, many Chinese typically express care, concern, and interest by asking about or publically commenting on things that North Americans consider private, personal, and none-of-your-business: your appearance, age, marital status, weight (especially if you are exceptionally larger than the average Chinese, and many if not most Western women fit this category), number of children, salary, where you live, how much your rent is, how much your school fees are, what you should do about any apparent health concerns… these things are all in the public domain.

But it doesn’t stop there. 关心 talk also includes freely offered advice and criticism (劝解): usually what you or your child should eat, wear, or do to be healthier. It’s predictable, and was recently proven so by an American-educated-and-married Taiwanese woman we know here. She was out for a walk with a newly-arrived American English teacher, pushing her toddler in a stroller. She knew her son would fall asleep sitting in the stroller, and that locals consider this bad for the baby. She told her friend to watch, and sure enough, strangers came up and told her how to better take care of her baby.

(I also wonder if the questions, particularly the financial questions, are a means of “sizing you up,” so people can know where they stand in relation to you on the status-scale, which defines virtually all relationships in this Confucian-heritage culture.)

Gao and Ting-Toomey, who’ve co-authored my favourite all-around book about Chinese communication for Westerners, which ought to be mandatory reading for all Westerners in China, say this about 关心 talk (81-82):

…guān xīn (关心； “to show concern”) talk is a communicative genre that occupies a prominent position in Chinese relational communication. Guān xīn entails asking questions about a person’s well-being and other personal matters… “To show concern” also evokes the use of cautionary remarks, such as, “You should not drink too much because it is not good for your health” or “You should put on some warm clothes because it is cold outside”… Quàn jiě (劝解； “to caution and to advise”) is widely employed to show concern for others in Chinese culture…

Now of course, to Westerners all this public meddling in our private affairs is astonishingly offensive:

North Americans, however, do not appreciate others asking questions about their financial situation, age, family status, or appearance… To many North Americans, the discourse of guān xīn can be misconstrued as disturbingly patronizing, condescending, and offensive.

Most of us don’t really know why we find it so offensive, other than that we intuitively consider these things to be “none of their business!” and we feel like they’re invading our privacy. The social scholars say we find it offensive because it impinges on our general sense of autonomy and individual self-determination – non-negotiable, culturally sacred values for North Americans.

“Bad days” aside, most foreigners we know just politely and happily endure such conversations, and if it was particularly noteworthy, laugh it off afterward with friends. I’ve personally started taking a more pro-active approach and having fun with it (how Western of me! ;) ), now that I know what’s in the realm of likely conversation. As soon as they bring up something “personal,” I engage it like it’s totally an interesting thing to talk about; none of that sheepish please-let’s-change-the-subject squirming from this 大鼻子外国人! Except that I deliberately avoid giving certain bits of financial information with some people.

Some of our own experiences with 关心 talk have made it to the blog before (but I’m too lazy to go look up all the links). Most recently a friend of ours “got the treatment” from the old boys club at the bicycle repair corner in our neighbourhood.

It’s not unusual for bicycles to disappear around here. Especially if they’re parked in the “free parking” areas at any of the local supermarkets. Most of the foreigners we know have lost multiple bikes during their stay in Tianjin…it seems like every week at least one person that we know loses one. So far, we haven’t lost any bikes…but ours are older and mine has a really pretty paint job from it’s previous owner to make it a little more noticeable (and harder to resell, I’m sure).

This past Saturday, one of our friends lost her fifth bicycle. This one was parked and locked up next to her husband’s bicycle, right next to their own apartment building. Sunday morning they discovered that his bike was still there, while hers was gone…locks and all. That afternoon, we went to their house for some dessert and coffee, and as we were locking up our bikes I realized that one of my locks had been stolen! We had parked them just outside our building for an hour or so earlier, and I’d left one of my locks in the bike basket (because we had used Joel’s locks to chain our bikes together). There were no keys in the lock, but this is the kind of lock/chain combo that could still be used as long as the original padlock could be removed and a new one put on.

I was a bit frustrated, but mostly at myself for leaving the lock where it could so easily be stolen. Our neighbourhood just feels so safe that I’ve become a little relaxed about things like that. I think I was also frustrated because I felt that our neighbourhood had just proven itself to be not quite as safe as I had thought.

Later that night, as Joel and I returned home, I made a few cynical and suspicious comments about the missing lock. Something to the effect of “I’m going to be watching these bikes (belonging to our neighbours) parked right here by the stairwell to see which one turns up with my lock on it.” I also said, as we entered the first floor and started the long climb up to our sixth-floor apartment, “Hmmph. I wonder which one of these apartments has my lock in it?” I did realize that the loss of the lock was my own fault, but I was having a really hard time feeling charitable toward my neighbors.

Till yesterday afternoon. Joel came home from studying Chinese with my missing lock in his hand. Our first floor neighbours had seen it in my bicycle basket and were worried that someone might steal it (it is a really good lock). So they took it and put it in their apartment for safekeeping. When they saw Joel coming home they ran inside, brought out the lock, and explained it all. I was so thankful that they were looking out for us and felt really bad for my snide and suspicious remarks the previous evening. What had looked like petty theft was actually a matter of our neighbours taking care of us and helping us to continue to feel safe and welcome in the neighbourhood. When you’re a stranger in a strange land that kind of consideration feels really nice.

To be fair, it doesn’t always turn out this way…after all, plenty of bicycles are still missing! And even though I recognize that, I’m very thankful for the way it turned out this time. I learned a bit about my neighbors, and continue to love the area in which we live. However, I also learned a bit of a lesson…that even though we feel safe here, it’s just not smart to become careless about leaving things around.

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!