"Losing face", and how to deal with arguments in China?

[aimei]

Is it culturally a normal thing for Chinese people to make false accusations -- especially against a lao wai, knowing that no one will believe the lao wai when he/she tries to defend him/herself -- in order to "save face"?

Yes. Unfortunately Chinese will always blame a laowai if it saves them some face, knowing that other Chinese will always take their word over the foreigner's.

[caffeineaddict]

Yes. Unfortunately Chinese will always blame a laowai if it saves them some face, knowing that other Chinese will always take their word over the foreigner's.

Oh please . That's some pretty offensive generalizations right there.

To the OP: I'm sorry to hear about your trouble. I know what it's like to be stuck in a foreign country with no housing! Hope it's been worked out?

[muyongshi]

Yes. Unfortunately Chinese will always blame a laowai if it saves them some face, knowing that other Chinese will always take their word over the foreigner's.

While I don't think caffenieaddict put it very well, I think it depends very much on the situation and the topic at hand. If it's just about politics, the outside world, or whatever it's more likely that they will believe you. If it's about their own culture {for the sake of face even if you are right} they might not agree with you. If it is a he stole this or is cheating me type of situation, I think you might get 50/50 of the crowd and the police could really go either way.

[caffeineaddict]

I should have put it better, you're right. Sorry, dissertation stress. But I stand by my general point that any statement that begins with "Chinese people will always" is lazy at best.

[SirDude]

So how did this end? Did the Chinese lady staying in NewYork clear the American's name or did the free-loader sister get to stay in the China apartment be herself and the Amercian find their own apartment?

This sounds pretty normal for people no matter what country you're from!

[Dvdcnz]

Very interesting post, I can relate to previous experience.

When I was living at a host family in china, the organisation that sent me, was not very pleased by my motivation for studying and not accepting their rules (no dating, had to be home at 22.00 every single day, no alcohol etc etc..) to put it like this, i broke the "contract"

One day my parents back in Denmark received this complaint on email, that I have got a warning from my school that i will get expelled? that I have said bad things about my host mother? and that i was about to be sent home if i did not improve my behaviour.

My parents were ofcourse worried, and asked me if this was true? I never heard any of this, i asked the host family what all this was about, they did not know about this. Fair enough, they might not want to tell me. I asked the school about a so called warning that i never got, the school didnt know anything about it. There were some other accusations, that i dont remember but, none of it were true.

In short, the exchange student organisation sent a mail lying about me, to "motivate" me to improve my performance.

After reading this post, I cannot stop thinking if this indeed is a cultural thing, that the end justifies the means..?

[xiaocai]

So, after reading this post, should I ask that, is it culturally a normal thing for western people to make false (and could be offensive) generalisation based on their limited experience -- especially against Chinese, knowing that no one will believe the Chinese when he/she tries to defend him/herself -- without any obvious motivation (probably just for fun)?

[jbradfor]

Yes it is!

I think it's pretty universal for all cultures to make false and offensive generalizations about other cultures, based on limited experience.

What is different here is that we are talking about a specific case that the OP needed help with. I think that's a fair topic.