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Some interesting
aspects of Chinese culture

By Eric Hufschmid
September 2008

From the perspective of an American and his colleague, both of whom have been living in China for many years.
 


What is this article?

During the 2008 Olympics, China was accused of allowing girls several years too young to compete as gymnasts. Many of us were surprised that China would cheat in a manner that was so obvious. How could their attitudes towards cheating be so different from ours?
China's written language hasn't changed much during the past few thousand years, perhaps because they isolated themselves from other societies.

Perhaps other aspects of their culture, such as the values they teach their children, haven't changed much, either.

I (Eric Hufschmid) brought this issue up with an American, Ian Clark, who has been living in China for several years. I sent Clark an email message with the following question:
In a message dated 8/14/2008 PainfulQuestions@aol.com writes:

Somebody in China says that the Chinese have an attitude that cheating is acceptable because it's so difficult to survive in that nation, or at least it used to be difficult. Have you seen this website?

teachabroadchina.com/cheating-in-china-its-an-epidemic/

teachabroadchina.com/chinese-gymnasts-ages-2008-olympics/

Two of Clark's responses are below. In Message #2, he included an email message from his colleague, a man who has been living in China for an even longer period of time. His colleague originally sent the message to a doctor in America concerning a medical education and communication scheme for the US. 

Clark and his colleague provide an interesting analysis of Chinese culture and attitudes.
 


Message #1 from Clark

In a message dated 8/14/2008 blacktuzi AT yahoo.com.cn writes:

I checked out those links and I think the author is basically right.

Cheating is a big problem all over the world, however. Are you aware of the book which exposes plagiarism in the US, which also exposes Martin Luther King, too?
There is so much evidence about King's cheating that no one has tried to deny it. They currently hope that no one finds out about it.

But to this day, the university system doesn't care about this man who copied all his papers since the age of 10, whose most famous speech is a direct copy of the Republican Black Archibald Carey in 1952 "I have a dream".

So the article seems to appeal to those trying to pin the problem on China. The cheating problem in China is worse in many respects, though that might not be of the nature the author expresses. 

I think the problem is that Chinese could be amoral individuals. That is, they may be worse than immoral people, who still know what morality is. I have said to Chinese things like, "to do X would be dishonest", then they blankly stare into space as if to ask, "what is 'honesty'?" 

If Chinese are typically amoral, than cheating would just be a minor facet of the larger problem. 

The hysteria that is promoted by Jews (neo-cons) against China contains much false information, but there are still some serious problems to worry about. 

They won't even stop for a red light. They act like tasmanian devils, wrecking everything in the path in public. They spit and pee in public, and with no shame of it. They smoke all over other people. The men even after growing up and getting out of college drink until they vomit, and they vomit in the streets. I walk in the streets and there many be four or five vomit spills in a single half-hour walk.

They smoke the most in the world per capita, and they drink the 4th most per capita. Though the lower countries (Russia, Germany and Australia) have people who hold much more liquor than these tiny, feminine Chinese men. This is why China is the hepatitis capital of the world, with the highest rate per capita. 

And China proper has a huge slave problem, perhaps equal to all other countries combined. The cities are filled with sex slaves from all over, and factories are also filled with children who were sold by their parents. (US parents are selfish and only care about their own kids. What's worse than that? Not even loving your own kids. Selling them! Talking to a kidnapper and saying, here, I'll sell him/her to you directly. Woah! That is messed up, and I never saw that in the states!)  [This video discusses kidnapping, and displays a character similar to Ted Gunderson in the US].

The doctors smoke over their patients in hospitals, and teachers smoke over students in schools.
 
"In 1990, 68% of male physicians were smokers and 65% of teachers."
[source]

I saw a wonderful synopsis of China's situation by a Chinese on my Youtube board:

1st rate facilities
3rd rate people.
What does this mean for the rest of the world? With the rise of China, there may be serious discounts on morality, cleanliness and quiet coming. By allowing Chinese to gain as much power as they have, we may be allowing our general state of morality and hygiene to fall to even lower levels.
A week later I received the following e-mail message from Clark in which he included an e-mail message that his colleague in China just sent to an American doctor:
Message #2 from Clark
In a message dated 8/20/2008 blacktuzi AT yahoo.com.cn writes:

Below is a message by a colleague of mine in China (who wishes to remain anonymous). He has been in China more than twice the time as myself, from way back when taxis had to be approved and sent by government officials. His living area used to be a long stretch of hovels, and is now a long stretch of tall buildings.

A doctor from the US (name omitted) contacted me about an idea to facilitate communication between doctors and Chinese immigrants and students in the USA to prevent unnecessary deaths. This my colleague's reply.
 
From: [email address omitted] 
Subject: Some thoughts on your suggested project 
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 
To: [doctor's email address omitted] 
Dear Dr. X, 

While I am most moved by your resolve to prevent unnecessary deaths by going public with a health awareness campaign, there are some very compelling reasons why such campaigns have not worked in China already, and I believe you have just seen one manifestation of that earlier similar campaigns have indeed failed. 

Believe me, the sort of campaign you just oulined are conceived and carried out by the dozen every day within China itself, mostly by elements within the ruling party that share your frustration. Yet, these awareness campaigns mostly fail to achieve anything tangible.

China is a country where you encounter people who tell you they just start smoking because of the bird flu and they wish to strengthen their lungs. You will find no one using their seat belts. 
 
You will find no pedestrians and not a single motorbike (far less a bike) voluntarily honouring a red light, even when crossing traffic heavier than you thought imaginable.

Compared to the rest of the world, China has the most traffic accidents, construction accidents, home accidents, and a disproportionately high incidence of easliy preventable diseases, many of which are no longer seen anywhere else.

Hepatitis is a good example. At least the type of hepatitis which is communicated through food may be contained if one maintains good hand hygiene and use separate plates. Yet such elementary hygenic practices are rare, almost unseen.

This does not mean that the knowledge about how to prevent this type of hepatitis in unknown, on the contrary, almost everyone will reveal knowledge about this when asked. The problem is that this knowledge is not acted upon. ["60% of Chinese have had hepatitis B": source]

The long story first:

China is a culture which in spite of its 5000 plus year long written history has not yet completed the transition to what we normally call a written culture. It has what linguists call a "high oral residue".

This does not point directly to a high level of illiteracy, even though one occasionally finds illiterates, especially women, especially elderly women, and in particularly in the countryside. I believe I know about five illiterate women, just among the people that I know very well and interact with almost daily.

At this point I recommend the following references:

Walter J. Ong: _Orality and Literacy_, Routledge, 1982, 2006 reprint

There is an excellent presentation on how a transition from an oral to a written culture impacts human thought patterns in the following book, using ancient Greece as an example:

Eric A. Havelock: _The Muse Learns to Write_, Yale University Press, 1986

The following two works will further give you a glimpse into the details of how European thought (and thus also American culture) developed as printing and indexing further influenced us, remember this can de seen as an inventory of all that did NOT happen in China:

Marshall McLuhan: _The Gutenberg Galaxy_, University of Toronto Press, 1962, 2002 reprint

Walter J. Ong: _Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue_, The University of Chicago Press, 1958, 2004 reprint

The Chinese case is dealt with in length here:

David Ze (Simon Fraser University): _Walter Ong's Paradigm and Chinese Literacy_, Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 20, No 4 (1995):
cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/894/800

The short version of the story is that the Chinese do not use language as a major means of communication. Language here in a very broad sense, embracing oral language and written language, signs, written warnings, traffic lights, instruction manuals, or other people sitting down in front of you and trying to tell you or warn you about something.

Typically mainstream culture Chinese have not what you and I would call a proclivity for abstract thought. While highly educated Chinese do, and while Chinese that have spent some time abroad do, this is not something which is fostered from within Chinese culture.

Typically mainstream culture Chinese will not infer a principle from having heard or read that something happened to someone else. Typically mainstream culture Chinese will be less likely to learn from the experience of others and instead be limited to learn from their own experience.

How do the Chinese typically communicate?

By action. They have to see that something is happening, either positive or negative. Where I live, if I want the janitor to repair a door, I cannot merely go the his office and tell him to repair a door. I have to tell him many times, perhaps more than ten. It will take months. I have to escalate visible anger. I have bang my fist in his desk, I have to threaten his superior with lawyers. I have to withhold fees. Then the door will eventually be repaired.

For the same reason you cannot necessarily take for granted the contents of what a mainstream culture Chinese tells you, as language is not used for communication. If you for instance wish to enquire about if a Chinese is religious or not, merely asking does not provide an answer. You have to observe if he goes to mosque or church. If you want to hire someone that never smokes, you can not merely ask the candidate, as he will answer what he believes you would like to hear. You have to observe if he normally smokes.

I believe you now understand why the awareness campaign you outlined will not work.

What will work, however, is to radically change the way primary and secondary education in China is conducted. At the moment, students learn virtually all academic subjects by rote memorization. Also foreign languages. All exams at all levels are without exception multiple choice.

THIS IS WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED and this change can only happen here in China.

Without this foundation being there, meaning a modern, post- enlightenment style of thought and education permeating society, you cannot hope to deal with matters as health awareness.

At the moment there are 200 million child workers in the coastal regions of China, coming from the poor interior. China has a desperately poor population in the interior amounting to almost 800 or 900 million people. Poor not necessarily only in a fiscal sense, but in the cultural sense which I have outlined above.

I am engaged in work in trying to provide education and health care to some of these. I invite you and encourage you to come here and work here. We desperately need teachers and medical professionals to go to the interior and we also need funds. (Though I gather we need teachers more than funds.)

In the long run, this is what will ameliorate conditions.

With kind regards,

[name omitted]
[city omitted] China