Raoul's China Saloon (V5.0) Beta
The Bar Room => The BS-Wrestling Pit => Topic started by: Guangzhou Writer on July 03, 2013, 04:25:43 AM
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...because they're not Chinese men.
One summer camp a few years ago I was teaching a group of high school aged kids, 15 - 19 y.o. and I was having a great time with them. Took some of them hiking, did some sightseeing with a couple of them, etc.
Last few days of the camp coincided with my birthday and my boss wanted to take me and the other teachers to KTV, which would be nice for me and double as a teacher party, and that's cool. A couple of the kids in my fun class, the one's I'd taken hiking and whatnot, they wanted to come to my KTV party and after talking to my boss, she agreed that the whole class could come, and that was very generous of her.
I announced the KTV party to the whole class and said details about the exact time and directions would be coming when I found out. Later that day, started getting a bad vibe from some of the kids. Next day I told them the details because it was a day after the camp finished, but most of them would still be there for a kind of free, do as you like day. Seemed like only the two girls who'd initially wanted to go to the KTV party were interested in the details. "Fine with me," I thought. "Come if you like, or whatever," I figured.
Next day was the KTV party and I got a call from the youngest girl in the class. Very tough
to figure out what she was trying to tell me, not because of the language, but she was obviously confused about what she was saying. Something about the oldest student, a boy named Jerry (can't recall his actual English name), whose English was excellent, relaying a message to her.
Me: "Why don't you put Jerry on the phone?"
Girl student: "He can't."
Me: "Why not? Isn't he right there?"
Girl student: "Yes, but he says he can't."
Me: "Ok, whatever, what are you trying to tell me?"
Girl student: "Jerry wants to invite you to a KTV party with the class in Haizhu square today?"
Me: "Uhhhh, you know I'm already having a KTV party in Tian He. You and Shelly said you were coming."
Girl student: "I know, but we can't. Jerry says we're having a KTV for you in Haizhu."
Me: "Okay, if ya'll want to do that, I'll come. What time?"
Girl student: "Jerry wants to know what time your other party is scheduled for."
At this point, I know something isn't right. I already told them what time and if they were having a party they would have already set the time, likely for prior to 5 PM if I know my Chinese students who want to take teachers to KTV, because after 5 it's much more expensive.
Me: "Why does he want to know my time?"
I hear some Cantonese haggling through the phone. The girl's voice is distressed.
Girl student: "He wants to schedule his party for the same time as yours."
Now it's all coming together. Jerry is trying to sabotage my KTV party by saying he's having one for me that will never happen.
Me: "Christy, do you know what's going on here?"
Girl student: "No."
Me: "Okay, I do. Just tell Jerry my party is already scheduled and if he is going to have another then send me a message with the details and I'll see if I can make it. 'Bye."
After talking to a few of the girls in the class, all I could figure out was that some of the students were offended that I'd invited them to my KTV party *after* inviting only two of the girls first. And yes, Jerry the sublime jerkwad was trying to sabotage my party with his little tale about giving me another KTV party.
In all my previous years, I had never imagined that people could be so petty about soemthing so small. I confronted Jerry about it when he got back to school and it was a disgusting and repulsive display of passive aggressive mendaciousness. I was put off just standing near him. That he'd used the youngest and sweetest girl in the class to do his dirty work infuriated me, so I just walked away from him. I still remember his disgusting face of self-satisfying lies. He spoke in such a manner like one who is redressing wrongs with righteous indignation. It was shocking.
FAST FORWARD to the present.
A typical (insecure) Chinese male I work with wanted some help with something small, and I was glad to do it. He's a good guy and had helped me with some skits I'd presented. As is typical in my experience here, he felt he had to pay me back for this miniscule favor I'd done him, so I had to go along with him and a couple of his friends to the worst tourist attraction I've ever been to in China. There are worse things, I didn't complain, done and done.
Then he leaves the school where we work and I don't hear from him for about two months until he calls me up for some football. Other stuff had gone on in the meantime and I'd decided I didn't need a list of acquaintances who just kept in touch for favors, but didn't seem to do whatever it is that makes me feel happy from time to time. Told him, "Hey, haven't heard from you in a while, you've moved onto other things, so good luck to you, but not interested."
A month later he rings me again, wants to meet up. It's obvious he's trying to save face, so I'm like, "Okay, I'm taking some people hiking Saturday morning, why don't you join us?"
Late Friday evening he contacts me. He's got to go to traffic court Saturday morning, at exactly the same time as our hiking, and he wants me to change to Sunday. There are already 10 other people who've confirmed to go 9AM Saturday (7 showed up) and 10 PM Friday is too late to change. As far as I can tell, he's trying to sabotage the hiking and this will somehow restore his dignity, or whatever.
With a few exceptions, I simply can't relate to the mainland Chinese males born between 1944 and 1985. I avoid them like the plague and every time I don't, except maybe once in two years, I regret it.
What do they think of themselves, these disparaging remarks deleted?
(http://beijingcream.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/80-530x403.jpg)
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Hell of a story GW. Later I'll write something more intelligent, but for now all I can state is the obvious:
it's the way things have worked here for the last 100 centuries, and it'll take that much more to change
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Wow I really don't see much of a connection between these guys and your conclusion of
'With a few exceptions, I simply can't relate to the mainland Chinese males born between 1944 and 1985. I avoid them like the plague and every time I don't, except maybe once in two years, I regret it.
What do they think of themselves, these disparaging remarks deleted?'
... and especially not the laowai comics cartoon which speaks to a very different sort of creature again.
I mean, I myself have problems getting along with Chinese men, but the second example just seems like flaky.
The first: teenagers? meh?
If you are considering this as a piece of prose then you really need to flesh out the characters/scenes.
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I'm married to one of those disparaging remarks deleted As are a couple of members here.
You know, if I posted something similar about Chinese women I'd have half the members on this forum coming out of the woodwork to tell me how wrong I was, and probably throwing something in there about ugly fat horrible Western women jealous they can't get a foreign man.
You know what? On second thought. No. If you exchanged "Chinese men" for men of any other nationality and added on a bunch of negative stereotypical adjectives, you'd be eviscerated, and rightly so. Black men? Jewish men? Latino men? American men? It isn't ok to talk shit about Chinese men just because we're in China and you happen to be cynical about a certain kind of Chinese man you've come across.
We have Chinese members. Chinese-American members. Members with Chinese husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins and friends. If you want to talk about how you have problems making friends with Chinese men and why that might be, then fine. Want to call them names? Not on.
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TLD, I put this in the BS Wrestling Pit because I thought it was the place where it would be tolerated and least offensive.
For me, part of the purpose of the discussion forum is to talk things out. What I wrote about is something that has been difficult for me to deal with since I got here. I can not pretend not to have a subjective viewpoint and I admit that generalizing the way I did is likely to be offensive.
I hope you will reconsider your editing of my post and allow the discussion to go on. It is better to have an outlet and figure out the problem than to be locked up with it alone.
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You can discuss the abstract of why it is hard for you to relate to Chinese men all you want but no, even in the BS pit, you are not allowed to just say whatever you want regardless of how offensive it might be. That last remark that I edited crossed the line GZ. Again, try rewriting that sentence and replacing Chinese with any other group, and replacing those adjectives with other adjectives stereotypical to that group. I won't even write out an example sentence because it would be frankly disgusting.
I mean no, you are not actually going to argue here that it is ok to call Chinese men impotent. That's not a legit discussion we're going to have.
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TLD posted while I was writing this, and I agree with her. However, here is my two cents worth as well.
The Wrestling Pit still doesn't exonerate putting everyone under the same blanket and then tarring and feathering them. llllllllll llllllllll Excessive use of negative adjectives isn't required.
Writing an article about an example of some of the Chinese men you have met was good. Without having the adjectives at the end of the article you would allow an unbiased discussion of this topic based upon their experiences. You could have used a comment such as: 'have you run into people like this before?'.
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Honestly, minus the constant spitting and peeing everywhere...the men are not much different from the women. Yes, I am generalizing quite broadly but almost every negative behavior I've seen from men here I've also seen from women. The men have nothing on the women for petty bullshit...in any country I have lived in. We put up with it though...since they are women and most of us like women.
Also, I think you are being a bit emo about both those instances. Why not simply tell Jerry you would not attend and leave it there. The girls can make their own decisions. Is it such a big deal if the girls didn't choose the way you wanted them to? You probably embarrassed yourself confronting him about it too, I hope it was done out of earshot of others. As to the other story, you could have continued telling that guy you didn't want to meet but you chose not to...then got emo because he flaked. I just don't get it. You said he was trying to sabotage your hiking trip? Are you for real? Why take this stuff so seriously?
I am sure there is a nicer way to say this but...man up buttercup.
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I am sure there is a nicer way to say this but...man up buttercup.
"Buttercup", really? I, honestly, don't think GZ was saying he couldn't take it but rather was annoyed by the pettiness. As one who has violated etiquette here myself, I assume the deleted expletive had no place on the list, but I would hate to see the topic GZ brings up prohibited. I think there's value in talking these things out.
I don't make disparaging comments about the Chinese at the workplace or with Chinese, (unless they initiate a complaint about their own countrymen), so I vent here. Sometimes too much, but that's to bring out the opinions of more experienced ex-pats. I got the feeling that was what GZ may have wanted.
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but I would hate to see the topic GZ brings up prohibited
@ A-Train The topic was not the problem, and topics like that are fine to discuss on the saloon. We just removed some derogatory adjectives which crossed the line.
... to bring out the opinions of more experienced ex-pats. I got the feeling that was what GZ may have wanted.
True bjbjbjbjbj
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If the intent was to ban this topic, I would have pulled the post altogether. Instead, I deleted a sentence that crossed the line into derogatory remarks about a group of people -- the Chinese.
We are in China and we do not have to like everything about this country or even about the people and the culture, but namecalling is not acceptable.
There was a thread not so long ago, here http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=7226.0 , that talked about some of the difficulties foreign men seem to have with Chinese men. Managed to do it without resorting to namecalling either.
GZ, to seriously respond to your topic, I don't know what kind of guys you've tried to get to know besides these two, but I tend to agree with Fozz's assessment. The first guy was a teenager -- they're not known for their kind and generous natures, and it sounds like there was a ton of miscommunication there anyhow. You, as the adult, should have just said, KTV part A is being thrown by Boss. You guys can either come, or not. Good day. Again, teenagers, and it sounds like the girls were just as in on the plan, whatever that was, as he was.
Second guy? Being flaky. Why on earth would he want to sabotage your hiking plans? Again, all you had to say was sorry, other people are going hiking with us and the date is set. Come or not.
To choose these two examples, out of all the the questionable behavior that you see sometimes in China, to support your thesis about Chinese men, well it strikes me that you haven't actually had a lot of direct experience with them. It sounds like you don't speak Chinese, so right there you're limiting yourself to contact with people who speak English well enough to communicate, so you could just as easily generalize about English speaking Chinese people as you could about Chinenese men.
Ask yourself why you're so tolerant of the women (who are surely not perfect either) and so critical of the guys. It is true that you will run into a certain kind of nationalist who is hostile towards foreigners, and those people tend to be men, but they're also not even a small majority of all Chinese people.
In the other thread I talked about hanging out with artists and musicians, and it is true that in general, those are the types of Chinese people whose company I enjoy more, but the rest of them aren't bad people. We have a physics teacher at my school who is roughly my dad's age and he is one of the kindest, funniest, smartest people I have ever met. Our downstairs neighbor is a very normal Chinese father with a kid and a wife and a mother in law, but he's always polite and ready with a good morning and a smile, very neighborly. If we want to go into deeper relationships, I have a Chinese "little brother,"(he's about 2 years younger than me) who is the government appointed boss of a road construction team, a big shot, but I knew him when he was just a minion himself, 10 years ago, and he laughs at himself all the time, has a wicked sense of humor, is down to earth, and would totally take a bullet for you.. He was just about the unlikeliest person to ever befriend a bunch of foreigners but his best friend among that little group of friends I had is a foreign guy. In fact, most of the close Chinese guy friends I have also have male foreign friends. You're hanging around the wrong kinds of people, or else you're assuming motives that simply aren't there and shooting people down before you even give them a chance.
There are of course cultural issues that we don't like about Chinese people. I don't like sa-jiao in the women. I'm not going to go calling them names though because they've been taught culturally that it is acceptable to sa-jiao and anyhow not all of them do it and plenty of them hate it as much as I do. I hate the drinking/smoking culture among the men, but that is really easy to avoid if you know how, and accept that people like the guy depicted in that comic are just assholes. There are foreign assholes and Chinese assholes, but no one group of people is comprised entirely of assholes either. That is simply impossible.
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Seems to me that the representatives of the male Chinese population that the OP has a problem with are the ones suffering from 'Little Emperor Syndrome". An accepted cultural term in China, from what I understand. This is not applicable to all Chinese men, only to some.
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Do remember that we're talking about a population of 1.5 billion. That's a very big group to try to use "all" when generalizing behavior and attitudes.
Honestly, minus the constant spitting and peeing everywhere...the men are not much different from the women.
I've seen them spitting everywhere, but haven't yet seen the women peeing everywhere. ahahahahah
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I'm married to one of those disparaging remarks deleted As are a couple of members here.
Hmmmm....
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I've seen them spitting everywhere, but haven't yet seen the women peeing everywhere. ahahahahah
You have not been to Henan.
Come to Henan.
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I've seen them spitting everywhere, but haven't yet seen the women peeing everywhere. ahahahahah
You have not been to Henan.
Come to Henan.
I have too with pictures to prove it bibibibibi
As for what TLD said, since my Chinese sucks huge, I'm limited to the number of locals I deal with. But I've seen lots of behaviour that the OP talks about. If it doesn't directly effect me, I just shake my head and walk away (after I get a picture)
What used to shock me, now just amuses me
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I'm married to one of those disparaging remarks deleted As are a couple of members here.
Hmmmm....
Originally I repeated the remarks in my response. I changed my mind and edited my own post as well since those words did not need to be quoted all over the place. In any case, it is dealt with, so carry on the discussion of the topic and try to drop the rest. :)
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It's okay. I just thought it was big o' me afafafafaf... to point out the... ambiguity...
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It's very easy to end up hating stuff in China which isn't even specific to China, like people being petty
The first story in GZwriters post was about a teenager being a petty little prat, teenagers never cease to amaze with just how far they will go to get revenge or whatever with things like that
When I went to live with my wife in Holland after my first 18 months in China it was quite an eye opener because I saw a lot of the Dutch 20 year olds being loud and arrogant in pretty much exactly the same way that had had me going 'God I hate these young Chinese men' they even used to 'Ni Hao' the Chinese students (admittedly they only did it to good looking girls so not as pathetic as the Chinese 'Hello'ing everyone)
I think for most of us we will be dealing with well off and spoiled young people a lot of the time and it's not really a surprise that a large proportion of them turn out to be selfish and arrogant etc
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On its face, generalizations are limited in their value and meaning. Of course I didn't say all and didn't mean all. In fact, I specifically mentioned exceptions, albeit rare ones, IME.
The reason I used these two examples is the pettiness involved in trying to sabotage someone else's good time just to save face. It is unbelievably small. The suggestions given on how to specifically handle those situations are exactly what I described, or I wrote it poorly and what you said is what I meant.
Yes, I could be wrong about the second guy's motives. Why did he wait four days to text me? Could be flaky, could be trying to interfere and get plans changed he had no intention of going along with. Based on one pattern described with KTV and many other data points over the years, I think it was the second motive.
My lack of Chinese is a massive limiting factor in both those I can meet and the interactions I have with English speaking Chinese, and that's completely on me, not them. However, it doesn't change my past subjective experiences, although re-interpretation of past events is possible and useful, which is why I started this thread.
Just read Kitano's comment and that's very relevant. I had almost no interaction with teenagers for years before coming to China.
I appreciate everyone's comments. It puts things in perspective.
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The flakiness of many folks here does grate on my nerves sometimes. I think much of it is tied into that horseshit idea of 'face'. Many folks make or express desire to make plans but it often has zero meaning. Of course it happens in our home countries too but perhaps we are better at recognizing it when it happens there. It's easier for us to pick up on body language and tone of voice and other cues back home, here...not so much. When a girl or guy here tells me I am handsome....it does not have the same meaning as when a westerner does. It apparently is not an invitation for sex or a gay dude flirting. bibibibibi When invited to dinner or anything else...it's best to assume there is no actual plan unless they contact you again about it. If you call them and ask...it's bad form. Guys and girls alike do this. Yes, it's sometimes frustrating but expectations must be adjusted.
People make empty invitations and empty compliments all the time. I can't tell you how many times I've thought I had dinner plans only to find out later that the person is out of town/visiting family/working/out with colleagues/not feeling well/blahblahblah. Maybe it's me though.
The more I think about the first story, the more I feel your anger with Jerry was somewhat misplaced. The girls were wrong and so were you. Sure, Jerry was being a prick, but if the girls truly wanted to go to your party they would have. Also, because you said you would attend his party if you had time it gave Jerry more leverage in pressuring the girls not to attend the original party. You made it easy for him and gave him reasons to act like a prick. It all goes back to face. You made Jerry feel like he lost face by not inviting him when you originally invited the girls and he tried to get it back by getting you to attend his party hoping your interest in the girls would do the trick.
Was the whole thing petty? To us yes. Most of us do not give much of a shit about 'face' and/or do not even understand it. The whole concept makes me want to punch a kitten right in the face. I firmly believe it's one of the things that holds the Chinese people back.
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When a girl or guy here tells me I am handsome....it does not have the same meaning as when a westerner does. It apparently is not an invitation for sex or a gay dude flirting.
It took me years to recalibrate my reaction to hearing that stuff. I don't think anyone had said that to me since I was a teenager and my grandma had said it. Now I think it's innocent and charming and not some kind of invitation. I like how they are less sexualized here.
Was the whole thing petty? To us yes. Most of us do not give much of a shit about 'face' and/or do not even understand it. The whole concept makes me want to punch a kitten right in the face. I firmly believe it's one of the things that holds the Chinese people back.
Someone once said, "You can have face, or you can be happy. You can't have both."
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some of my extended chinese family seem nice, but my wife says they have ulterior motives, and knowing this, im better able to defend against it. if anyone, male or female, schedules something deliberately to derail your planned event, im glad this thread had made me wiser, as if it happened to me, my naivety may of otherwise caused me to 'fall for it'. as for racial stereotyping, thicker skin people!
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I know plenty of Chinese men who are kind, generous, funny, and creative -- and many of them are in that age range.
Perhaps part of the problem is your preconceived notions about, & hostility towards, this group of people?
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The flakiness of many folks here does grate on my nerves sometimes. I think much of it is tied into that horseshit idea of 'face'. Many folks make or express desire to make plans but it often has zero meaning. Of course it happens in our home countries too but perhaps we are better at recognizing it when it happens there. It's easier for us to pick up on body language and tone of voice and other cues back home, here...not so much. When a girl or guy here tells me I am handsome....it does not have the same meaning as when a westerner does. It apparently is not an invitation for sex or a gay dude flirting. bibibibibi When invited to dinner or anything else...it's best to assume there is no actual plan unless they contact you again about it. If you call them and ask...it's bad form. Guys and girls alike do this. Yes, it's sometimes frustrating but expectations must be adjusted.
People make empty invitations and empty compliments all the time. I can't tell you how many times I've thought I had dinner plans only to find out later that the person is out of town/visiting family/working/out with colleagues/not feeling well/blahblahblah. Maybe it's me though.
Absolutely isn't just you. This is a cultural thing and it has nothing to do with being male or female, the women do it as well. My (again, Chinese) husband bitches about this all the time. I don't know how many times he's re-told this story to illustrate a point he is making about Chinese society, but I'll re-tell it here again because it is an excellent example of the above.
My husband comes from a town (used to be a village, they got upgraded, woot) outside of Kunming. When we go down to visit his family we have to take a bus to the county seat and then another bus to the village. A couple of years ago we were on our way back to Kunming from the village and were on a small bus just arriving in the county seat when my husband discovers that his high school math teacher was on the same bus! Imagine the coincidence! So they do the Chinese thing and shoot the shit for a bit, and the math teacher tries to convince us to get off the bus, right then and there, and go to his house.
Now this is where you have to understand the culture because a foreigner might have gone along with it that but in reality, this guy had no intention of actually having us get off the bus in this county town on our way back to Kunming, with all of our stuff, 2 kids, etc. and go to his house for dinner. And my husband knew that. So he did the polite refusal thing. "Oh no no no, we're busy." And the guy insisted "oh come on, come have dinner." Back and forth until he finally gave up.
If you didn't understand Chinese culture and the fact that this whole interaction was basically scripted, you might be thinking, gosh the guy really wants us to have dinner with him, maybe we better go. But the truth of the matter is, if we had gotten off the bus and gone to his house, guy would have had no idea what to do. We would have broken the script entirely.
So when we finally did get off the bus (to get on our next bus, back to Kunming) my husband was visibly irritated. I asked him what was wrong. He said, "I hate how fake people are here. Teacher knew we wouldn't come to dinner, so why did he even have to put on the pretense of inviting us?" And to this day, if you want to get him, my husband, on a rant about Chinese society, just bring up this topic and he'll go off.
But these are very very well ingrained cultural norms. It isn't that Chinese men are lying assholes, it is that the culture allows for a certain degree of mutually agreed upon pretense, and that can make it hard for outsiders, particularly outsiders from a country like the USA, where people tend to be straight shooters (about certain things), to navigate.
GZ your original mistake with Jerry, and I agree Jerry was being petty (but again, teenager), was somehow giving the impression to the rest of the class that you were playing favorities. The fact that the chosen kids were female students probably pushed some buttons (and that's not your fault, but this culture is touchy about foreign man/Chinese female interactions, particularly when the women in question are young students). It sounds like there was, again, a load of miscommunication all around. I don't socialize with my students precisely because I want to avoid situations like that but I understand this was a school sanctioned party and it's not like you were having them over to your house.
I think the second guy was following the script. You were supposed to say "sorry, no I can't change it to Sunday, there's no way." The guy was then supposed to make some sort of suggestion about possibly doing something else, you were supposed to refuse, end result is eventually that nothing changes. No where along the line were you actually supposed to change your plans, but the guy had to look like he was making an effort. I honestly cannot see what he would stand to gain from sabotaging your hiking trip and I think you took the whole thing a bit too personally. He was trying to blow you off, the Chinese way.
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Nice story TLD, can't wait to meet your husband. uuuuuuuuuu
Reminds me of Homer Simpson when he askes, "How are you?"
When the recipient responds with, "I'm ..."
He retorts, "I didn't want your life story!" and then some comment on how flaky or phony people are
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I know plenty of Chinese men who are kind, generous, funny, and creative -- and many of them are in that age range.
Perhaps part of the problem is your preconceived notions about, & hostility towards, this group of people?
I don't doubt that there are Chinese males like that, but I never meet them. The males that I have any level of contact with are some or all of the following
a) young. I'm not sure I like under-30 males of any nationality that aren't European, or perhaps Canadian.
b) want something from me. Not that I object to this necessarily. It would just be nice if they had something / anything I wanted from them
c) obsessed by basketball. I like sports. There aren't many sports that I'm not interested in, but basketball is one of them. In fact liking basketball just highlights their lack of interest in the really important things in life, like Football (both kinds).
d) Politically ignorant. It really doesn't matter whether they're uber-nationalists or pro-reformers. The one thing that they all have in common is that they've copied their opinions, usually poorly from somewhere or someone else.
e) Have a lousy attitude towards women.
Chinese men I don't meet
a) men my age, because they're busy with careers and family. Fair enough. I bet I'd like lots of Chinese men my age. Probably not most, but some.
b) Intelligent. I work at a bottom level Uni. I'd dare to say that most of the male students at my Uni are not the cream of the crop intellectually.
c) ones that could be useful to me. If I had the chance to be friends with high ranking party officials, Police, men who work in publishing or senior managers in universities, I would jump at the chance. I would gladly help them out, provide English classes for their kids, give them face and learn the intricacies of Chinese social behaviour. Import / export clerks; not so much.
d) Chinese men with the same interests as me. Where I live, I can't do many of the things I'd like to do socially and culturally, so I stand no chance of meeting anyone that I have these things in common with.
So, of course I appreciate that there are many Chinese men whose company I would enjoy, but in my first 4 years in the country, the first few hundred or thousand Chinese men I've had a conversation with, there's not one I'd have even the slightest interest in being friends with. (Maybe one. I talked to a Chinese student on a bus once for five minutes, and he seemed quite cool. far too cool to be interested in befriending a laowai anyway). To an extent that may be bad luck.
I wouldn't say I've absolutely given up, but taking an interest in Chinese males is kind of like scratching off the things on fapiaos. One day you may get a pleasant surprise, but it would be foolish to have any expectations.
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I know plenty of Chinese men who are kind, generous, funny, and creative -- and many of them are in that age range.
Chinese males who grew up in the mainland PRC? Generous, funny, and creative? Sounds like the perfect man :)
Groundhog Day clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYLxqgUiZug
Perhaps part of the problem is your preconceived notions about, & hostility towards, this group of people?
One of the foundational reasons why I came to China was that I know a PRC mainland man living in the USA whom I respect deeply. I spent some time around him and his circle before coming here, and although I didn't have much of any expectation about what I would find, I was definitely prejudiced in a positive way.
For the first two years I was here, I tried very hard to make friends with Chinese males around my age, and 98.6% of the time they were also trying, but it seemed to always devolve into a scenario where either I don't know the script or I can't follow the script, sort of like TLD was describing.
Other times, it was just very obvious abuse toward me from the word go, although it's usually happening in some cultural context, like the abusive gan-bei nonsense. "I'm your friend, now consume this toxic substance. And more! I don't care if it makes you sick. We're friends. See?"
Sometimes the abuse is a bit tweaked 'cause I'm laowai, but usually it's just my perception that they are extremely abusive to each other by default, so why shouldn't they be to me? On the other side of the coin, sincere and practically heroic efforts by locals at hospitality are also quite obvious and numerous.
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The other thing, the effect of which I can't detect because I never knew China before, is war, revolution, and cultural revolution. I have wondered sometimes if what we see of Chinese "culture" these days isn't at best some bitter remnant. At worst it's a heavily coopted scene set by fearful and rootless people.
ababababab
And I personally don't particularly like any of the people I meet.
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Mr. Benn:
I think many men of a certain age (& many younger!) have a lousy attitude towards women. Including Brits. Like these ones here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2013/jun/20/why-i-started-a-feminist-society
I am moderately surprised you haven't met football-obsessed fans in China, though. Many of my relatives, at the very least, seem to have English or Spanish & national club allegiances.
It does seem like part of the problem is your environment. & I'm clearly not saying that you should go out of your way to meet Chinese men. Just that there are plenty of awesome ones out there, & the problem might not be one-sided.
gzwriter:
Many of them are good cooks too! :D
Sorry to hear alcohol makes you sick. Pressure to drink is a really unfortunate part of many different cultures, of which Chinese is one of them. Viewing it as a form of abuse doesn't seem particularly useful, though.
As I said above, I don't think the entire problem is on their side.
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You mean they have all these traditions, stories, ancient buildings, habits that they cannot really explain, most of them don't c are about and they don't really try to understand their own culture as they are too preoccupied with the next gadget, money, prestige...well...that just sounds familiar, does it not? Like...oh...I don't know...the rest of the world?
Guangzhouwriter, sometimes it is worthwhile understanding a system instead of getting all in a tiff about it. For instance, when someone one asks you to drink/smoke/go to pink houses/partake in a pibe of opium/ eat a raw ferret or any thing you might not want to do, there are ways around it, ways that can ensure you do not have to drink paint thinner and the chap asking you will not be mei lian zhan ren, which means, I think, No-Face Person. The phrase you need to learn is Sui Bian. Say that next time, it works as a charm. Also, on a side note, I recommend you invest in a book called "The Chinese Have A Word For It" by Boye Lafayette De Mente, which should be the name of a villain in some cheesy show but isn't.
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Mr. Benn:
I think many men of a certain age (& many younger!) have a lousy attitude towards women. Including Brits. Like these ones here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2013/jun/20/why-i-started-a-feminist-society
I am moderately surprised you haven't met football-obsessed fans in China, though. Many of my relatives, at the very least, seem to have English or Spanish & national club allegiances.
It does seem like part of the problem is your environment. & I'm clearly not saying that you should go out of your way to meet Chinese men. Just that there are plenty of awesome ones out there, & the problem might not be one-sided.
I don't really regard it as a problem. Unfortunate maybe. I'm atypical anyway. Firstly I'm a misanthrope, and hate the human race as a whole. Second, I'd guess that throughout my entire life, half if not most of my friends have been girls / women.
I didn't mean my post to be a piece of standard anti-Chinese men prejudice. I accept that they make good friends for each other. I appreciate that many Chinese women feel like their men treat them very well (though obviously the ones that don't tend to be the ones that I most often talk to). They don't want to be friends with me, and the ones that do, there's probably a reason. There's a huge cultural gap between Chinese culture and mine, and I'm not a cultural relativist. I don't think Chinese culture is equal but different from mine. I think some cultures are superior; such as mine. So why do I stay in china; lots of reasons, but making friends with Chinese men is unlikely to ever be one of them. I'm not nasty to them, and I don't want to impugn their manhood. Clearly some of them are great blokes. I just haven't met them yet.
I understand that you think I've met some great blokes, and just not realised. That may be true. Some Chinese men have been quite kind to me when I needed help, but being vulnerable and in need of help is not when I want to make friends. I'm far more comfortable making friends under the shelter of my perceived superiority to everyone.
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*cough*
Is this thing on?
Okay... cultural relativism. -Or- how we are all the same, really.
We are not all the same really. Being all the same really is a European conceit derived from marching together across other people's countries. Sometimes it is a North American conceit derived from marching together across other people's cultures.
After all, if we are all the same really, then there isn't anything Chinese culture, let alone Chinese men, can reasonably introduce us to that we wouldn't already discover in our own homes.
You have to let the aliens be alien, people.
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Sounds like TLD's hubby's village is different than mine. People here REALLY want to hijack you for dinner. The last time I though one was kidding, I ended up on the back of a motorcycle and quickly found myself at a lovely little Gutter Oil Cafe somewhere a couple km from where I live (and more than enough turns that I was 100% lost).
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Thanks for the suggestions, Eric. I'll try and get that book. I have tried every phrase in English and Chinese imaginable and it only intensifies their efforts.
Not kidding here, but I draw the line at being told to drink 30 times and refusing and explaining more than 30 times. After that, I either leave or I fight, and the second one hasn't happened yet, but it's been close a few times. Ok, to be serious I never lost my self-control, but getting steamed? yes.
I don't see any other way of interpreting a situation where you are trying to force someone to drink alcohol that you know is bad for them. I have had several male students and bosses who suffered serious health problems from the ritual-abuse gan-bei, in fact they had to take extended vacations at my school just to escape the abusive, forced drinking. There is no other accurate interpretation, but certainly there are plenty of cultural indoctrination methods to help one rationalize it into some kind of social obligation and/or business requirement.
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gzwriter:
Sorry to hear alcohol makes you sick.
Thanks. It's not a big deal, I don't get sick exactly, not allergic or anything, but I gradually realized my body couldn't handle it very well.
While beer and wine have some positive and negative health effects in moderation, high alcohol content drinks like baijiu and distilled spirits are almost completely deleterious to physical health, especially in the long term. It just takes people different lengths of time to realize what happened. You can trade this off against the relaxation effects and sometimes it's better to be drunk than not, but alcohol is in*toxic*ating. There's really no two ways about it.
If you like to drink, stay with wine and beer and get the highest quality you can afford. There are all kinds of nasty things in mass produced beer in China and the USA and if you haven't heard about the stuff they put in fake wine in China, then...
http://web.archive.org/web/20120303141845/http://www.echinacities.com/china-media/more-than-just-sulphates-china-s-counterfeit-wine-pandemic.html
More Than Just Sulphates: China’s Counterfeit Wine Pandemic
Dec 04, 2011By eChinacities.com
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Life Times, a Beijing newspaper on November 25th. It details the flourishing counterfeit wine market in China, the likely health problems that result from consuming these so-called "chemical wines", as well as a few tips on how to ensure that the wine you purchase is genuine and safe.
Whether a bottle is ordered for the dinner table, given as a gift or consumed at a nightclub, wine is no longer the "luxury item" that it was once considered a few decades ago. Many Chinese are now championing wine as "the healthy alternative" to baijiu, and data shows that in 2010, Chinese consumed 1.5 billion bottles of wine. What’s troubling is that these bottles of "liquid gold" have become trapped in a downward spiral of counterfeiting and fraud. On November 2nd, the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Commerce and Industry reported that in the third quarter of 2011, spot checks in Guangdong’s inner-provincial alcohol market found that only 53.3% of the wine bought and sold passed inspection.
China’s "chemical wine" market
Earlier this year, CCTV's Focus Talk did an exposé on a counterfeit wine manufacturer located outside Changli County, Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province. This manufacturer mixed alcohol additives, fragrances and pigments together and sold it as "wine" – some of these counterfeit wines didn’t even contain grapes! Once various domestic and imported wine labels were pasted on these bottles, the fake wine looked no different from genuine wine. The Changli County facility specialised in printing counterfeit wine labels for Great Wall and Changyu wines, and the company's business manager said that the demand for their fake wine exceeded their production capabilities. This "chemical wine" exposé shocked many of China's new wine enthusiasts.
On November 16th, the Trade and Industry Bureau in Henan Province confiscated more than 670 cases of counterfeit Changyu wine, valued at more than 40,000 RMB. The counterfeit wines in question were: "Changyu Fine Red Wine" (张裕精品干红葡萄酒), Changyu Cabernet Sauvignon (张裕赤霞珠干红葡萄酒) and Changyu Cabernet (张裕解百纳干红葡萄酒), and were marked as being produced in Yantai (烟台).
High-end imported wines are being counterfeited as well. As one industry insider put it: "nine out of ten bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild are fake". This is not surprising when looking at the sales data for a five-star hotel in Dongguan, which sells 40,000 bottles of Lafite each year. The annual global production output of Lafite is less than 200,000 bottles, and of those, less than 50,000 enter the Chinese market.
Uncovering the secrets of wine counterfeiting
Mr Shi, another industry insider, explained that there are many different ways to counterfeit wine in China, and that regardless of imported and domestic, or high and low quality, all wines can be counterfeited.
There are two ways to counterfeit imported wine. First, high-end wine counterfeiting where new wine is poured into old bottles. The ’82 Lafite is particularly prone to this trick. In the Chinese market, an ‘82 "Lafite generally goes for 100,000 RMB per bottle. Counterfeiters will purchase an old ’82 bottle for 3-4 thousand RMB, and then fill it with a similar tasting, but much less expensive wine (costing at most 20,000 RMB), and then sell it for 400% profit. Because counterfeiters use real bottles, it’s very difficult to spot a fake. Another way to counterfeit Lafite is to sell brands that sound similar to the "Lafite" name, such as "Legende Lafite" and "Roche Lafite". Low-end imported wine (un-bottled) is also susceptible to counterfeiting. Mr Shi said that imported wines that only cost 10-20 RMB are inflated to 100+ RMB when they sell in China. Many traders will import cheap wine and bottle it here, or they will simply fabricate an "import" winery and sell their own "wine" at imported prices to the consumers.
There are two ways to counterfeit domestic wine, the first of which is to counterfeit blended wine. In July 2004, China required wines to be made from 100% grape juice. President of the Chinese Wine Marketing Society, Zhao Yi, said that blended wine is commonly made from saccharin, alcohol, flavouring, water, and may not contain grapes at all. Associate Professor He Jiguo of China Agricultural University said, "To keep it cheap, some counterfeiters use industrial grade alcohol (methanol) instead of beverage grade alcohol (ethanol) in blended wines. Methanol is half the price of ethanol, but it’s a toxic substance, and an excessive consumption of it may kill you." There are also some counterfeit wines that brew watermelon rinds and blend them together with grape juice to make wine – at a cost less than 3-4 RMB per bottle. The second way to counterfeit domestic wine is to use a name or label similar to Great Wall or Changyu.
Consumption of counterfeit wines can cause cancer
"Many people know that drinking an appropriate amount of wine is good for your health", He Jiguo said, but if you’re drinking counterfeits, wine is actually very hazardous. As low and mid range wines (a few hundred RMB or less) have become China’s best sellers, counterfeiters have redoubled their efforts on this price range. Many counterfeit wines use artificial colouring, which contains azobenzene, a substance known to be carcinogenic. Although consumers may not see any immediate adverse reaction to azobenzene, it gradually accumulates in the body, causing long-term toxicological effects. Also, because the production process is not standardised, hazardous microbial contamination can easily make its way into counterfeit wines. An excessive amount of biogenic amines or ochratoxin in wine can cause headaches, arrhythmia and even cancer.
Yao Shangyong (Masters in European Wine studies) suggests paying attention to the following items when purchasing wine:
1) Carefully read the wine label and the back contents label. "For imported wines, there will be a Chinese label pasted over the back label, which includes the wine's name, year, grape type, alcohol content, importer and other information." If the bottle doesn't have a Chinese label on the back, then it’s probably fake. Consumers can also identify the bottle's origin from the first digits of the barcode; 690-693 is China, 30-37 is France, 00-09 is the United States and Canada, 600-601 is South Africa.
2) Pay attention to where you buy the wine. The assortment of wines in upscale restaurants, large shopping malls, supermarkets and specialty wine shops are generally the safest. Small restaurants and wine shops will likely have a mix of real and fake wines. Counterfeit wines, especially the blended counterfeits are mostly sold at nightclubs: "In your average nightclub, more than 90% of the bottles are fake", Yao Shangyong said.
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GZWriter, may I ask one question? Have you ever tried the turn-the-glass-upside-down trick? I was once told that that was, in Chinese culture, the sign for "No thanks, I'm not drinking". Granted, I have next to no social life, particularly not in bars with drunken locals, I found that particularly activity lost its allure pretty quickly. Anyway, when I did used to frequent bars or restaurants I would, when the gan bei'ing began, simply up-end my glass, drink my Coke and simply shake my head in bemused rejection when told to consume paint thinner.
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Some people are definitely obnoxiously pushy about drinking and smoking here, but there are ways to get out of it. You do have to be careful with the phrasing, and insistent.
The best way to refuse is to say 我不会喝酒 "wo bu hui he jiu," literally, "I can't drink," as in you are physically unable. You can say you have a “guomin” 过敏, even if you don't. Chinese people talk health stuff pretty seriously so if you insinuate that there is a medical reason why you can't drink, I have found that 9 times out of 10 they will back off.
This breaks down if they've seen you drink before, or if you've started drinking with them already and want to stop. Decide ahead of time if you're into getting trashed or not. If you don't want to get wasted, don't start drinking with them in the first place because it is much harder to stop once you've already started. Once you just refuse, turn your cup over like ETR says, be firm with your no, and they will get over it and stop bothering you. It is just the initial refusal you have to get past. I'm a woman so they go easy on me but I have lots of male friends who are drinkers and also non-drinkers and I've seen this in action plenty of times.
If you're drinking because you're taking part in some sort of business transaction BS involving face and guanxi, then I can't help you. The above works probably 90% of the time provided you're hanging out with normal people.
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Eric and TLD, thanks for the tips and thanks for posting the Hanzi and the pinyin.
I only rarely drank a beer or half a beer maybe once a month before coming to China, but soon after arriving I quit drinking entirely in hopes that I could escape the gan-bei insanity. I have tried all the things you mentioned, maybe not both phrases in the same sitting, but they never worked for me. I've seen that stuff work for other people.
The only thing that ever worked was asking a Chinese friend to explain before the dinner began that I don't drink under any circumstances. Maybe he told them I was a monk? That worked perfectly. If only I could shrink him and keep him in my backpack.
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... Maybe he told them I was a monk? That worked perfectly. ...
Well, of course it did ;) bfbfbfbfbf
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LOL
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When people won't take NO on giving me a cigarette, I mimic taking a puff and puking. aaaaaaaaaa That usually gets the point across. ahahahahah
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I would think they'd love to see laowai do the big spit.
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When can we get back to the original title of the thread, "Why I love Chinese women..."?
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Because they're skinny and mean and totter about on high heels?
That "straight line" aesthetic this culture has going is weird. Straight hair, straight arms, straight hips. That thin-fat thing, where everyone is skinny, but soft and essentially shapeless, but so skinny it looks like a straight line body... eat a sandwich or something, get some stamina.
/issues
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apart from the chinese women who dress like skanks (yes we all love those), i like the unsexualised nature if the rest, someone else mentioned this somewhere, that they dont take things in the 'dirty' way and they are nice and old fashioned 'normal'. i saw some milk or drink ads at bus stops, the hottest woman staring at me (the viewer) with lips slightly puckered into we-all-know-what! i mentioned this to my wife and she said 'no, its not sex advertising, its just cute, chinese like cute'. so im adjusting my conceptions to adjust, but i still see the sex. arggghh! i must be a perv! anyway, thats why i like chinese women, the ability to dress 'pleasant' and be nice without sexing it up. but i also enjoy the sexed up ones as well, but they do try too hard, and it shows...
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Meanwhile here in Hunan every girl and her mother are wearing hotpants and high heels. That'll be because it's practical, I suppose, it being so hot and all.
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Meanwhile here in Hunan every girl and her mother are wearing hotpants and high heels. That'll be because it's practical, I suppose, it being so hot and all.
You make that sound like a bad thing. mmmmmmmmmm
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It's a lie that Chinese women are in charge of their own sexuality. That "innocence" is better thought of as willing ignorance of their relative lack of power. They live a prettified objectification that has in place of the supposed sophistication of the geisha, the grasping money grubbing of the town-bound farmer's wife. They aren't free. Which is a good enough reason to "love" them, I suppose. It's what they're owed.
/issuesredux
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I think Calach has fallen for the trap. They look all cute and innocent, but the reality is that they use all sorts of means to really run things in what appears on the surface to be a male dominated society.
Who kowtows to the Empress? - Everyone, but the Emperor doesn't do it in public.
Who kowtows to the Empress Dowager? - Everyone, including the Emperor.
I'd say more, but my wife demands that I step away from the computer and kowtow to her. ahahahahah
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...hotpants and high heels...sexuality...objectification...
I was going to post this in the Men's room, but it seems so relevant here:
Snapshots: Who's the most beautiful Sichuan girl in Summer? (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/photo/2013-07/02/c_132498785.htm)
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Well hey, if they rule a household, that's equality right there, especially if they don't end up dead.
There's a lot of things women in China can do. Stepping too far outside gender roles doesn't seem like one. Being able to escape retaliation for stepping outside gender roles doesn't seem much like one either.
I just find weird. And off-putting.
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I was thinking about that the other day, when you watch the way the young lads let their 'girlfriends' treat them and how the guys have all of this pressure to keep the girl and their parents happy and the boys parents have to pay for everything etc and felt sorry for the chinese men
But then once they get to about 35 the men are allowed to punch their wives and go to hookers so it all evens out
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I actually had a discussion about this whole spousal battery issue the other day with my gf following some news segment about some husband being an abusive jackass. Much to my surprise, she was firmly under the impression that spousal battery is done because the man, once having tied the knot, is allowed to have loose fists. It took some argumentation, an hours worth of Internet searching and collection of evidence to make her understand that the law, both written and moral, does not allow spousal battery.
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... the law, both written and moral, does not allow spousal battery.
Why do you say that moral "law" forbids this? If it's acceptable within the culture, then by definition, it's not immoral, no?
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I should have been clearer, I meant moral law outside of China. She was under the impression that the rest of the world had the same attitude towards spousal battery.
However, I do not believe that the whole Chinese society condones spousal battery, not even by a long shot, therefore I would still argue that it is immoral.
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A lot of things in China seem like western countries in the 70s
Things like hitting women, racism, drunk driving... everyone know that they are wrong and illegal, but they are seen as kind of unavoidable laws of nature
Thats' just the impression I get, I've never lived in the 70s or been Chinese
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July 5th, 2013. A historic day. This is the day that EL found himself mostly in agreement with one of Kitano's posts. ahahahahah
Yes, some of those attitudes seem to come from the 50's-70's in the US. However, the 70's is also when changes that had been slowly building up for some time finally began to seriously push forward towards a state of improved social equality and a society that didn't have to keep doing the same bad things over and over again because "that's how it's always been, so that's how it always will be".
Like industrialization and GDP growth, I think we're about to witness some other changes in China that will come at a pace that outstrips anything ever seen in history.
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July 5th, 2013. A historic day. This is the day that EL found himself mostly in agreement with one of Kitano's posts. ahahahahah
Yes, some of those attitudes seem to come from the 50's-70's in the US. However, the 70's is also when changes that had been slowly building up for some time finally began to seriously push forward towards a state of improved social equality and a society that didn't have to keep doing the same bad things over and over again because "that's how it's always been, so that's how it always will be".
Like industrialization and GDP growth, I think we're about to witness some other changes in China that will come at a pace that outstrips anything ever seen in history.
Law of averages etc :D
I think the thing with these attitudes is that they simply can't be speeded up so much like development of the economy etc because they are generational. The equality movements in the west have been heard in the mainstream since the 60s and seemed to have won by the 90s but there is still a lot of racism and so on because what you learn from school/TV etc doesn't override what you learn from your friends/family/neighbours etc
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I have seen spousal battery in China more than I care for. I've spoken to women who say that it's somewhat normal along with cheating. Some said their husbands have hit them and it's no big deal. Does this make it right? No. But for whatever reason the women here allow it, it'll take a long time before it changes.
However, I have seen many Chinese men be responsible enough to drink very little or nothing at all because they are driving. So it can be done.
In the west, we have "public service announcements" or other ways to raise these issues. It would be nice if China implemented stronger messeges, I'm sure they have some.
As for some things kitano said, sorry, the equality movements started long before even in the mainstream. The 60's saw it hit the streets with force
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in my chinese extended family, my 'uncles' certainly drink and smoke, but none hit their wives (as the family units here are closer than alot in the uk, i believe them.) one auntie did get hit, the husband died a while ago, their daughter, suprise suprise, is determined to never have kids. so the abuse is there, but no more than anyother country imo. ve asked my wife many times, she says its just like anywhere, you could be unlucky, some will leave, some will stay.
im a child of such a situation in the uk so im keen to make sure everyone i meet knows its never ok. never 'shut up and put up'
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Have no idea if it's more prevalent in China either. But, one thing I've noticed is that the few times a man strikes a woman in public, bystanders look the other way. If that happened here, the guy would be immediately seized upon. Not necessarily beat up, but that's a distinct possibility.
Hope I never witness this sort of event. I'd surely regret getting involved, but hate myself for not doing anything. I have a friend who intervened successfully, but he looks Asian and there was not a huge crowd yet. Otherwise....??
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People don't intervene for fear of retribution not because they condone it in any way. It's not the immediate scene that they are worried about all the time either. The hitter's family and friends will all gather and go after the person that intervened at a later time if necessary. The family will,deal,with the hitter as they say fit (sometimes nothing or blame the girl) but first you circle the wagons and protect your own. No matter the sins, he's family
Getting 'involved' here is a dicey situation for most expats, our gangs are not big enough.
Fear of retribution is the case for most situations where people don't get involved in what they know is wrong. Theif on a bus etc.
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A-Train, my observations here are that most people seem to suffer from the Bystander Effect. I am not and never have been, one of them. I have to live with myself and I too would hate myself for doing nothing. When I look back over my life at the number of times that I have been the ONLY person to try to help someone in danger or in need of help, I understand why I don't really like humans. I guess I'm lucky to have grown up with six brothers and I learned to fight. It also helps to be an old lady as most folk don't expect an old fart to retaliate. ahahahahah When I observe the behaviour of some women, I can understand why someone would want to punch them out, but that doesn't make it right. To be honest, when some of the Asian women sit behind me in the Casino and cackle at the top of their voices in their own language, I'd love to flip a few under the ear, particularly when I've asked them nicely, to keep it down.
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Yeah, I'm sure that the Bystander Effect is a part of it as is fear of retribution, but both of those traits exist here as well to some degree. I can't help but think there is also something else going on. When I've talked about situations similar to this with my g/f she always says I'd just be "making trouble".
So, I can't help but think of the Chinese desire for harmony, (in a perverse way), comes into play. I also wonder about the group/individual tendencies. You'd have to have a fairly strong ego, (in the best sense of the word), to step into a fray like that and that's not an overwhelming trait in the Chinese I've met.
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my chinese wife also confirms what you have said about public violence. she also said, particularly with men on men, they may look agressive, shout at eachother, get in eachothers face, but its more a 'his bark is worse than his bite', i.e they will rarely actually come to fisty cuffs. this is because their sense of anger is always mediated by their fear of authority. they know they will 'go away' for a while if they fight. unlike the uk, where they hardly argue before glassing eachother!
interesting then, men on men rarely fight, but men on women, in public, is somehow a lesser evil? just another aspect to add to the 'cultural differences' lesson.....
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I don't think that it's particularly Chinese it's just that it's still much more acceptable here, it's worse in Korea where it's pretty much standard to see some guy smack his girlfriend when they're out drinking but maybe a better example because China and Korea are closely related look at all of the stuff that you hear about in India and around there where the culture is totally different but that bit is the same.
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...they will rarely actually come to fisty cuffs. this is because their sense of anger is always mediated by their fear of authority....
The stereotype seems to be that Southern Chinese clack at each other very easily but rarely come to blows but, Northern Chinese are more apt to take a poke at each other. Not sure how true this is.
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...they will rarely actually come to fisty cuffs. this is because their sense of anger is always mediated by their fear of authority....
The stereotype seems to be that Southern Chinese clack at each other very easily but rarely come to blows but, Northern Chinese are more apt to take a poke at each other. Not sure how true this is.
Kind of true in my experience. In Beijing I've seen loads of fistfights. Even on the bus -- twice! On the subway too. I've seen way more people actually come to blows over really minor incidents than I ever did in Kunming. Down there people would yell and curse at each other, but eventually back off. Here they have really much shorter fuses.
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well, our experience is tianjin only, not much street violence here, i am no authority outside tj!
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To your fear of authority point EG, I actually don't think that is really true. I feel like Chinese people are taught to obey authority, and they mostly do, but they certainly don't fear it or fear the law the way we do back home. There are way too many instances in most people's day to day lives where people have a blatant disregard for authority and get away with it that I think most people just do whatever they feel like doing regardless of the consequences. Of course, the reason they do this is because the consequences are largely nonexistant.
It is sort of a strange dichotomy, because most of the time what Chinese people seem to feel like doing is fitting in, going along with the crowd, and that can look like obedience to us, but if you look at say, the way people drive, or the way people cut corners with food safety, cheating on tests, or the massive official corruption, it is clear that most people do not really have enough fear of the law or the people enforcing the law for it to be a deterrant.
EG, once you've been here awhile longer you'll see some fights. They happen fairly regularly and the consequences are rarely significant for either party. The law is actually pretty loathe to get involved in "personal matters" and will try and mediate an agreement between both parties (usually someone paying the other person's medical bills) but you'd rarely see someone actually prosecuted for fighting. I've never seen someone "go away" for fighting, ever, and I've seen some doozies of fights.
I actually think that on a day to day level, most Chinese people fear their government much much less than most Westerners fear their own governments. I'm not talking dissidents of course, but your average citizens. The whole "healthy distrust of the government" mindset is just not really a part of their cultural education.
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TLD, i bow to your experience and wisdom! :respect:
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It is sort of a strange dichotomy, because most of the time what Chinese people seem to feel like doing is fitting in, going along with the crowd, and that can look like obedience to us, but if you look at say, the way people drive, or the way people cut corners with food safety, cheating on tests, or the massive official corruption, it is clear that most people do not really have enough fear of the law or the people enforcing the law for it to be a deterrant.
I actually think that on a day to day level, most Chinese people fear their government much much less than most Westerners fear their own governments.
Yeah, I completely agree with this. The Chinese seem to be much more obedient to social expectations in lieu of laws while it is the opposite in the WEST, (gross generalization, I know but more than a little truth to it). A term that Dr. Hofstede uses is "Power Distance". Asian countries are far more deferential to authority but if the legal system is not considered a very powerful institution, then it's not given much obedience. While family members, bosses and even teachers are considered credible authorities.
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China is very different to Japan and Korea with regards to this though
Again I'm not so sure that it's an 'Asian' thing, I think that a lot of the casual ignoring the laws in China is just because they have such awful law enforcement, southern European countries have similar mentalities towards the law as Chinese as in there isn't that faith in 'Rule of Law' etc that British, Americans, Germans etc have