What would you do if you saw someone beating their wife?

[wenjing*girl]

I'm from the states, living here in China now. I think that the reaction to this is very different between the two cultures.

Sometimes at night I can hear the sounds of fighting (between a man and woman). I will go to the window to see what's going on, feeling concerned, you know. All the people walking up and down the street are jsut passing by as if they hear nothing.

Once I saw a man in the street beating his pregnant wife. All the people in the street were just passing by like there was nothing going on. They didn't even look at the scene. (however when a guy is down the road doing a demo of lets say.... shampoo, there are 80 people crowded around staring at some guy getting his hair washed)

I was talking to a friend about this and she said that back in her hometown (village) things go on like that all the time. I asked, "Don't the village leaders do anything about it?" "No, because then that guy will go and do something bad to them." The best way to handle it is as if there was nothing there?

Why do Chinese people react like this?

[badboy]

In a situation where the guy was beating his wife in the street, ironically people are more likely to help if there's only a few people around or none at all, than if there are lots of people.

Maybe the village leaders don't do anything about this, because they are beating their wives too?

[gato]

They haven't gotten past the "A Man's Home Is His Castle" mentality, yet.

“不管闲事” (mind my/your own business) becomes insularity and a lack of a social conscience in practice.

[gougou]

What do you think would be the appropriate thing to do as a foreigner witnessing such a scene?

Do you think it is right to interfere, thereby enforcing your system of values, or do you think it wiser to pass by, just as the locals do, and thereby ignoring a fundamental part of your own system of values?

Curious...

[bhchao]

Well this kind of situation happened in other countries too. In 1964, Kitty Genovese was walking home in the Queens borough of NYC when she was attacked and stabbed by an assailant. Despite her screams and pleas for help, and the fact that people opened their windows to look, not one person helped her. The lack of action by the neighbors shocked the nation.

[bhchao]

Regardless of ethnicity, I think people are less likely to take action when the two parties involved in an abuse situation know each other. The people who witness it may get horrified, but do nothing. Now what if it was attempted murder? Would the people in the village react differently and take action, or would they stand idly by just like the Kitty Genovese case?

Many years ago, my sister witnessed in San Diego a man beating his wife in the car at a theme park. The man then got out, paid for the entrance tickets and acted like Mr. Nice Guy towards everyone at the booth, got back in the car, and started beating his wife again. My sister and everyone who saw it was so shocked, but no one did anything.

I do not think this is an ethnicity issue. It has more to do with human perception of what kind of situation warrants taking action.

Frankly I don't understand why men who beat their wives bothered to marry her in the first place.

[bhchao]

Sorry for the three replies in a row, but another reason for the villagers' inaction may have to do with the traditional Confucian culture of male dominance and female submissiveness. Given this Confucian legacy, the villagers may have viewed the man's behavior as a norm.

[HashiriKata]

What would you do if you saw someone [in China'] beating their wife?

Write to Bush immediately and ask him to bomb these "evil people" out of existence!

(Hints: For best result, please do not ask him whether he's stopped beating his wife.)

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traditional Confucian culture of male dominance and female submissiveness. Given this Confucian legacy, the villagers may have viewed the man's behavior as a norm.

Do you think American society is a traditional Confucian society? Do you think these kinds of violence and apathy don't happen and don't exist in America ???

[wenjing*girl]

In 1964, Kitty Genovese was walking home in the Queens borough of NYC when she was attacked and stabbed by an assailant.

That exact story was on my mind when I put my first post here.

The lack of action by the neighbors shocked the nation.

The point that I was trying to make was: In America the story there is that no one took action. In China, people reacting in the same way is not news worthy. Why?

Write to Bush immediately and ask him to bomb these "evil people" out of existence!

I can hardly see where Bush has anything to do with what goes on in China.

[website]

In my experience in China, I have seen:

1. Two guys pull an unwilling woman onto a train who did not want to go while other passengers ignored them

2. A man hit a ticket lady at the train station without being stopped

3. Three incidents of passive, unhelpful gawkers who watched me as I tried to tackle pickpockets

I never saw anything like that happen in America. China is different.

[Ian_Lee]

Bhchao:

I have a totally different experience in US.

Once I agrued with my wife in a slightly high pitched tone in our home. Merely 15 minutes afterwards, a police car stopped in front of my house. A cop knocked on my door and asked what happened. And he insisted to enter my house to see if my wife and kids were okay.

Now even when I chat with my wife inside our house, I have to lower down my voice so that my neighbors will not misunderstand.

[website]

I had the same problem in the US with my ex-wife, my neighbors called the police on us for arguing and I called the police on them for loud music.

In China, a lot of basic things like starting a church, protesting, striking, organizing a political party, or criticizing the government are illegal, but it oddly seems like domestic violence is pretty much tolerated. The Chinese value system tends to sound backwards to Western foreigners.

[wushijiao]

Yeah, my brother and I were at the top of a mountain in Yunnan near Lijiang waiting for one of the chairlifts down the mountain. There must have been a few hundred people waiting in line. Next to the line, was a woman beating her kid pretty hard with a stick. I would say the beating was past the "embarass the kid" to get better behavior point, and actually fairly abusive. However, I think gougou best summed it up by writing:

Do you think it is right to interfere, thereby enforcing your system of values, or do you think it wiser to pass by, just as the locals do, and thereby ignoring a fundamental part of your own system of values?

In this case, we did nothing, partly because I felt it would have been culturally arrogant to not only the woman, but also to the other Chinese people in line. I'm not sure if we did the right thing by doing nothing. In a bigger sense, what degree are conflicts cultural (and thus private and restricted to those within a group), and what degree are conflicts universal? I don't know.

Do you think American society is a traditional Confucian society? Do you think these kinds of violence and apathy don't happen and don't exist in America ???

Of course abuse and violence happen in America. It has been my experience though, that people who have been victims of this abuse or people who actively try to prevent it are not willing to take a cultural realivist point of view. For example, my ex-girlfriend (American) was raped and abused as a child. I used to travel with her throughout Latin America, and if she saw a person beating a child or animal she would very fiercely confront the person. The cultural issues, in her view, where much less important than the pain of the person getting beaten.

[markalexander100]

Interestingly, the Kitty Genovese case is something of a media myth (alway those bloody media types):

None of the witnesses observed the attacks in their entirety. Because of the layout of the complex and the fact that each attack took place in a different location as Genovese attempted to flee her attacker, it would have been physically impossible for a witness to have seen the entire attack. Most only heard portions of the incident without realizing its seriousness, a few saw only small portions of the initial assault, and no witnesses directly saw the final rape and attack in an exterior hallway which resulted in Genovese's death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese

[gougou]

In America the story there is that no one took action. In China, people reacting in the same way is not news worthy. Why?

I think this has to do with the value of an indiviual's life (or health, or pride...) in those two different cultures.

The United States belong to the most individualist countries in the world, where the individual's well-being is the most important factor (one of them, at least.)

China, on the other hand, is a communitarian culture where the individual's well-being is not deemed that important. Even nowadays, the death of one person is much less noteworthy in China than in the US (even though this is probably not only due to cultural reasons, but also to a certain amount of political censorship.)

[Green Pea]

Sometimes these situations have nothing to do with culture or values or anything like that. A group of people can watch this type of behaviour or an emergency and believe that the situation is so bad that someone must be doing something, like calling the police. No one does anything because they all think someone else is doing something, so no one intervenes.

[gato]

China, on the other hand, is a communitarian culture where the individual's well-being is not deemed that important.

Even more specifically, Chinese/Confucian culture is a family-centered culture (I'm deliberately using Chinese and Confucian interchangeably to emphasize the point). It's as if each family is a member of the United Nations of families, and its most cherished value is the sovereignty of families. That could go some way to explain what you see there. Wasn't there a debate between Confucians and Mohists about Christian-like universal love some two thousand years ago and the Mohists lost?

I think it's a source of the selfishness one sees in Chinese society. The Communists tried to change that but may have made things worse to some extent with all their political movements which undermined people's trust in others.

Still, in small communities where people know each other, people will intervene when see some unjust thing happening in someone else's house, even in China. But you probably won't see people in strangers' affairs. It's too unpredictable what the stranger would do. You'll see the same in New York City. People don't want to get involved in other people's business.

[Ken]

I believe that every state in the US has laws against spousal abuse. Police officers hate being called into domestic violence situations because they are the least predictable and most dangerous.

As I recall Kitty Genovese was stabbed 17 times. At that time the US culture required "good" citizens to become involved. The way the TV news handled the story at the time may have been inaccurate, but it shocked the nation because of the apathy which was portrayed.

There are also laws against abusing children. Unfortunately, the line is often drawn incorrectly with both over-reaction and too-little reaction by authorities. However, they do, at least, try to protect children.

I do not know if I could ignore the kinds of abuse mentioned in this thread--even though I might get my butt beat up or subjected to litigation.

As Edmund Burke said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Somehow, we need to find ways to make this a better world in which to live.

[markalexander100]

The way the TV news handled the story at the time may have been inaccurate

Even worse: it was the New York Times. The Bystander effect is real, but Kitty's not a great example.

[hifrank001]

the news said a chinese young man was arrested and charged with "sexual harassment" because he pushed a western man in a swimming pool when the latter was annoying another two chinese girls.

it is shock to me.