Fixing Cultural Misunderstandings

[ChouDoufu]

I'm sure anyone who has travelled through China or just talked to a lot of Chinese people have encountered situations where someone completely misunderstood your culture or society. Does anyone have any good stories?

One of my favorites was when I was talking to these two shopkeepers in Beijing (by Qianmen, I think.. ) and one had been reading about this Mormon guy who had been arrested for having 4 wives. I ended spending the better part of half an hour convincing them that the average american male did not have more than one wife and that this was an old religious practice for a specific religion that is not normally practiced...

[holyman]

I'm sure anyone who has travelled through China or just talked to a lot of Chinese people have encountered situations where someone completely misunderstood your culture or society. Does anyone have any good stories?

One of my favorites was when I was talking to these two shopkeepers in Beijing (by Qianmen' date=' I think.. ) and one had been reading about this Mormon guy who had been arrested for having 4 wives. I ended spending the better part of half an hour convincing them that the average american male did not have more than one wife and that this was an old religious practice for a specific religion that is not normally practiced...[/quote']

i have seen such stereotyping many times. they thought all korean food are spicey, all japanese eat raw food, and all westerners are loose in their sexual lives... good heavens...

[Guest Anonymous]

It's the same everywhere in the world. Most average Americans believe that (from my personal experience) communism was invented by the Chinese thousands of years ago, the "American-styled Chinese food" is true Chinese food, the Chinese language consists of only two sounds "ching" and "chong"... I could go on and on.

[roddy]

Average Americans of the World - what do you have to say to that?

Roddy

[Guest Anonymous]

Average Americans of the World - what do you have to say to that?

I must say I don't get it... :?:

[ChouDoufu]

Average Americans of the World - what do you have to say to that?

Roddy

I'm an American. Average American's aren't the brightest barrel in the bunch. I don't know about the communism being invented in China thing (actually, communism was first put into practice in America by Native American Tribes -it wasn't the market planning style communism though). But I think the Average American is much maligned. I think the average American is no smarter or dumber than the average person from any other country.

-----------

But trying to revive this topic: I was just trying to find out if other people had funny stories about cultural understandings. Obviously people stereotype, otherwise these stories wouldn't happen. So I ask again, anyone have any interesting stories about fixing cultural misunderstandings?

I'll give another one: I was travelling with a friend by train (hard seat all the way, baby!) on a marathon journey from Beijing to Lanzhou (30hrs). My friend is Dutch Chinese and so someone after asking where I was from asked where she was from "Helan" she said, "Henan?" they replied (i've noticed this a lot, some Chinese can't quite differentiate between l/n sounds and it makes it worse when they are expecting to hear a certain answer). "Bu Ouzhou de Helan" (Holland in Europe). "But your Chinese! How could you not be from China?" the guy asked, incredulous. She then had to explain her families movement from China to Malaysia to Holland. The guy ended up saying he never knew Chinese people were born outside of China.

another cute one . I was talking to this little boy on a train to Turpan and after talking about Harry Potter which my friend was reading in English, he asked some questions about America. "How long does it take to get there?" "It takes abuot 14 hours by plane" I said.

"That long?" He responded. "Why don't you go by train, then?" (Incidentally, I've experienced this in America, too.)

[roddy]

I once worked with a NZ born Chinese guy in Harbin. He spoke very little Chinese, much to the surprise of everyone he worked with. I once translated a conversation between him and a rather formidable lao taitai in the office. She started off by saying he should learn to speak Mandarin as he was Chinese.

No, I'm from NZ.

Where are your parents from?

NZ?

Where are you grandparents from?

Guangdong

You're Chinese, you should learn Chinese.

No, I'm from NZ.

Maybe you're from NZ, but you're Chinese. You should learn Chinese.

But I'm NOT Chinese. I'm from NZ.

This went on for ages, until she declared . . .

You are still a son of the Yellow River (or something similar)

and went off for her bus. . .

Roddy

[holyman]

lol most mainland chinese cant differentiate race and nationality... to them its the same. u are chinese race, u are chinese nationality...but the thing is, this isnt just among chinese. once i talked with a korean guy. he asked me my nationality so naturally i told him. then, same case, ask about my grandparents. i said they were from guangdong. he answered, then u are chinese(he meant nationality, we were speaking in mandarin, overseas chinese and chinese nationals is different term altogether). i said no, then he argued with me. luckily his girlfriend was from vietnam, and she took sides with me. there are a lot of chinese in vietnam too but they are vietnamese nationals. so that silenced him.

recently i bumped into an austrian. same case, but much worst. when i denied i am a chinese nationale, he said, you shouldnt be afraid to acknowledge your origins. oh my... that very moment i was pretty pissed. i am not born in china, and my origin simply wasnt there. maybe culturally/genetically i am linked to china to some extent, but i am a genuine foreigner, head to toe.

[TSkillet]

lol most mainland chinese cant differentiate race and nationality

can't . . . or won't. It's like I see a difference between huaren and zhongguoren - and they don't.

[Guest Anonymous]

I believe what makes the mainland Chinese so stubborn is that they feel you're denying your Chinese roots when you say (for example), "wo shi Meiguoren, bu shi Zhongguoren."

I learned that the best way to describe yourself would be saying something like "Wo shi Meiguo Huaqiao (or Huaren)." which translates to "I am a Chinese-American", which is true. I am Chinese culturally/genetically, but my passport says the United States of America, not the People's Republic of China. The mainland Chinese people I spoke to seem to be able to accept the concept of "Meiguo Huaren" much better than just "Meiguoren".

[PollyWaffle]

my friend is from north east china & has been over here 6 months... the first time i met her she told me that she was surprised how helpful my compatriots had been since she has lived here... she fully believed that to get any help from a westerner you had to pay us money before we would, for example, give directions, etc... LOL

polly

[tetsuo500]

This is more of a geographical misunderstanding.

After making the biggest mistake of telling myslef, "I guess I could go to English Corner just once, it can't be that bad" and promptly being swarmed by a horde of ravenous English learners, I was approached by one student in particular. After the mandatory "Where are you from?", "What's your major?" "What animals do you have in your country?" nailed into me one after the other, he asked again where I was from, so I gave him a more specific answer, "Tasmania - in Australia". He then asked about the icebergs in Tasmania. Thinking he could have been referring to snow, mountains, winter, cold -- anything... he made it quite clear he was talking about icebergs. I assured him there are no icebergs in Tasmania. I made sure he wasn't thinking of ANTARCTICA.... no..... he insisted there were icebergs in Tasmania. He had seen photos. After about 10 minutes of trying to convince him there are no icebergs in Tasmania I finally gave up and produced a wonderful story of my adventures in Tasmania floating around on icebergs wherever I went. I think he was satisfied.

After about an hour of chatting to random people I returned to my room, where I was stalked by a few students. One of whom continued stalking me for a few weeks. That was kind of weird, but funny. I love China!

[芳芳]

hihi! Funny story!

I have another example of misunderstanding.

I was with a french professor in Beijing, whos parents are from Vietnam. THen he could speak vietnamese, but no putondhua at all. I precise that I look as french as it can be (to my despair as I would have prefer those black silky asian hair....but let's stay in the subject).

We went to a restaurant, and the waitress asked to my friend what he wanted to order, I aswerd back to the question and began to order. You should have seen the look of the waitress! She was really convinced that we were laughing at her! And she kept on asking my friend and ignored me until she saw my friend couldn't say any word. And eah new waitress who came at our table had the same behavior, looking to my friend as if he should be ashamed not to speak chinese even if I told them he was not...

pretty funny...

[Guest Mat]

We have heard the Chinese story of the frog at the bottom of the well and the frog's outlook on the world. The paradox is that humans may really have this type of cyclopean vision:

'We propose that the human visual system contains Cyclopean long-distance comparators, (1) that compare the outputs of 2 narrow receptive fields some distance apart while being insensitive to stimuli located between those receptive fields, and (2) the outputs of which carry orthogonally labelled indicators of orientation difference, mean orientation, separation and mean location. In the evolutionary context, one role for the proposed mechanisms might be to encode information about the silhouettes of animals whose camouflage is broken by the binocular vision of predators.'

('Long-Distance Interactions in Cyclopean Vision,' Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, B. Bil. Sci. (Jan. 2001):213)

So, the frog denigration, supposed to de-personalize, is actually spoken by someone with Cyclopean vision! Hilarious paradox. May we live in interesting times.

R,

M.

[channamasala]

A joke had been circulating among the waiguoren teachers at my school relating to the, err, amusing nature of my love life (a love life that got put on hold for a year while I was there). One of them thought it would be funny to tell our students that I had fifty boyfriends...at the same time. That's not the amusing part, the amusing part is the fact that not only did the students BELEIVE HER, they weren't in the least surprised and admitted to my coworker that they thought American girls usually had more than that. Not only that, they then candidly told her that they had thought she was "abnormal" for awhile now because she didn't have any. They deduced from this that American men like "fat" (I am not fat, but I suppose by Chinese female standards I am) women because she is tall and skinny. Some girls admitted that they hoped to study in the USA and planned to do exercises to make themselves taller, because they believed American boys would only date girls over a certain height, and thought this was verified by me (I am sorta tall) and my fifty boyfriends.

[cometrue]

haha! fifty, hey, take it easy!

i believe that's caused by hollywood movies... and sure, they are a little bit closed...all misunderstanding were caused by miscommunications

[JohnDoe2]

Hmmmm.... this has me wondering what sort of reading they'll make of me. I'm 48, white and married (though my wife will not be joining me unless I decide to setup camp over a year).

What will I have to do to convince folks that i don't engage in licentious behavior whatsoever? Will I be 'suspect' because I'll arrive unaccompanied?

I'm not terribly worried about it, but I certainly don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable in my presence because of misperceptions of Americans in general.

From years of teaching I've already learned never to be alone with a student in a closed room (male or female) and to report any sort of untoward student behavior or interest to the department head to keep myself covered. This is pretty much the standard procedure for teachers wherever I've taught in America.

I hope that conducting myself properly at all times, developing a trusting relationship with my colleagues, and maintaining a working distance from my students will suffice in China.

Am i wrong here, or will I need to be as concerned about charges of sexual harassment in China as teachers in America are? I've never had any such problems, but in the U.S. there's always a professor being grilled for things which never happened just because somebody didn't get the grade she expected.

[channamasala]

Yeah, it's really hard, what with keeping up those fifty boyfriends at all...

If you're a white older male traveling alone you may be the target of some female Chinese attention - if it's not solicited by you (doesn't sound like it would be) or if you aren't friends with the girl in friendship's own right (that is, if you just met her in a bar or something), and especially if she's young, pretty (I am so gonna get flamed for this!! Me and my "prejudiced" views or something!) and maybe a little too flirtatious, you can assume it is probably gold-and-green (as in card) digging. Be wary, but you should be fine.

The best way to get around cultural misunderstandings is to be open and friendly about discussing them. My students learned a lot about America from me and my coworkers, like how the American President is not President for life if he's elected for a third term, our army does not have robotic dogs programmed to sniff out Arabs (they really thought this, I KID YOU NOT), George W. Bush is not the adopted son of Ronald Reagan, American girls do not have hundreds of boyfriends at one time, we don't all own guns, eat McDonald's, sleep around, gamble (I laughed when a Chinese man accused Americans of gambling too much) and you won't be killed immediately if you even set foot in New York.

Generally, you'll probably look to them exactly like one of the other tons of older white men who come to China. There's a good side to it - the hospitality you'll receive. The bad side, if you are married (I assume that does matter to you, for some it doesn't), is that you may get some unwanted attention.

According to my friend Ranjit, Indians in China have it worse, excluding Hong Kong of course. He's been asked things like "So you're an Indian. Tell me, why do Indians like singing and dancing around trees? How do your people know how to dance together in the street and where does the music come from?"

The person asking it knew nothing about India other than what he'd seen in Indian Bollywood movies! (You know, the ones where they sing and dance in unison).

[Quest]

channamasala, do the kids or the adults think like that?

[smithsgj]

FIFTY! You're gonna need a tall building for that particular elevator!