Sinocentrism - To what extent should it be challenged?

[lips]

1 hour ago, carlo said:

some Americans think of Paris as the capital of Italy

Both Paris and Moscow are in Idaho.

[Matthewkell]

10 hours ago, Daniel Tsui44 said:

On 3/22/2017 at 7:19 PM, somethingfunny said:

 

There is an old story in China named "盲人摸象". If you stick to that, I cannot help you.

I do hope one day that people from other country call Chinese as "外国人" since, at that time, the Chinese language should be widely used and better understood.

Examples helping to have a better understanding of "外国人":

“美国的外国人比中国多得多。”

“你是美国人吗？”

“我是中国人。”

“他是美国人吗？”

“他也是外国人。”

“出了国门，我们都成外国人了。”

 

The point is not the word 外国人 in itself but the tendency to use it in a homogenising way, as if "外国" is one country and culture. The “外国人都很开放” example is odd because, of course, there are many countries less 开放 than China. Muslim countries, North Korea, much of Africa, and much of the Indian subcontinent are considerably more conservative than China - if there was a global ranking of 开放, China would probably be somewhere close to the middle. There is a wide range of cultures in the world and they cannot be simply categorised as 外国.

There is a very common tendency for Chinese people to ask general questions like "What do 外国人 think of this?" "Do 外国人 also like to eat....?" "How do 外国人 decorate their homes?" These kinds of question I think reveal an assumption that 外国 is somehow a unified culture, and it really is quite sinocentric. As a thought experiment, imagine a Chinese person visiting the US and local Americans making comments like "I think foreigners like rice" and "Foreigners are all very conservative" or asking questions like "Do foreigners like football?" Would it not seem a little ethnocentric to you? 

[LiMo]

To complicate things a little further, just while we're on the topic, to what extent does 外国人 include non-whites? I've come to the conclusion that  外国人 frequently refers almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans, or just "white people" if we're being un-PC . My justifications for this are varied, firstly Chinese people won't often lump their near neighbours in with the  外国人 label even though they are all technically from a 外国. Secondly, searching for topics that refer to  外国人 almost exclusively produces pictures of white people. This makes sense to me because oftentimes they'll refer to black people as 黑人, or Arabs as 阿拉伯, Indians might be 印度人 or 阿三（a slur apparently）, but white people are almost always  外国人. I think part of this is for historical reasons, because in prior times the most visible, and politically relevant, foreigners in China were whites, so it was always understood that "foreigners/ 外国人" referred to whites and not some other kind of person such as the Japanese or Koreans who each have their own distinctive nicknames already. It's only quite recently that international tourism and globalisation has brought a wider variety of  外国人 to Chinese shores, thus complicating the once simple way of referring to non-Asians as "foreigners."

[NinKenDo]

I think that similar sentiments in the West were changed very slowly. Even now I know people, good people, but rural people, who literally do not understand the difference between Chinese people and Japanese people. To them it's all basically just "Asian", literally.

 

I think that as a non-Chinese, I feel no "duty" to correct ignorance. However I simply so not like being lumped into groups, let alone one so broad. So I do make a point of addressing these kinds of generalisations.

 

To be fair, many Chinese people lump themselves under one banner when actually there's quite a lot of variety, especially geographically. But this is more justified than their lumping of all foreigners given their shared literary canon and an overarching secondary language to unite them.

 

I feel less erked by the generalisations about Westerners, because that has a similar background to it. But that can also get pretty silly. French food is not the same as Italian food is not the same as English food, let alone their cultures. Hell Northern and Southern Italians can barely reconcile to each other.

[Guest realmayo]

37 minutes ago, Matthewkell said:

These kinds of question I think reveal an assumption that 外国 is somehow a unified culture

 

I think we'll have to agree to disagree over this interpretation. The sinocentric stuff, sure, that's there, and hardly surprising given the size of the place, the population, the difference of the culture, the confidence in the culture, and so on. But I've never had the impression that people assume all 外国 are united in anything other than not being 中国人. If you accept that some countries place a greater emphasis on belonging to a group, then you should understand that a key defining characteristic of someone who does not belong to that group is the very fact that they don't belong to that group.

 

A: 'What do 外国人 think of this?'

B: 'Well let me tell you, not all foreign countries are the same.'

A: (secretly: well duh of course ... ) 'Oh, very interesting.'

 

Also:

‘OMG what must people in other countries think about us now we've elected Trump...'

Does that sound weird or UScentric?

 

[NinKenDo]

That Trump thing isn't really U.S.centric in the same sense given that the entire world follows U.S. politics and even likes to pretend like they get to participate. There are literally Australian rallies against Trump.

[Lu]

1 minute ago, realmayo said:

A: 'What do 外国人 think of this?'

B: 'Well let me tell you, not all foreign countries are the same.'

A: (secretly: well duh of course ... ) 'Oh, very interesting.'

But what would the expected answer be, then? I understand that the asker might actually be well aware that 外國 is a varied place, but on behalf of what part of 外國 should you be speaking then? Because I have had such questions, and replied that not all foreign countries are the same (and I remember people going Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, that's true of course.)

[LiMo]

Perhaps there's also a bit being lost in translation. If someone asks in English, "What do foreigners think of Donald Trump?" It sounds ridiculous and kind of rude. You would instead say, "What do people in other countries think of Donald Trump?" A subtle but very powerful shift in tone there. In Chinese, at present, I don't think many people would bother asking in such a way and would just use 外国人 instead, which could be translated in both ways if you were so inclined.

[NinKenDo]

Yeah, there's a bit of a problem there because even if somebody goes "duh" internally, doesn't mean they weren't still making a dumb or ignorant assumption in their speech.

 

"Duh" can also be a way of brushing aside real differences you know, but aren't willing to acknowledge.

 

"Well DUH, not ALL black people are the same." doesn't exactly ring of "I am not about to make gross generalisations about black people."

 

@LiMo, actually that's a fair point. I wouldn't take offense at that necessarily.

 

Maybe rather than taking explicit exception at the use of waiguoren, an appropriate response is simply to say "well in [insert your country here] many people [do/think/feel X] [...]", etc.

 

This makes it clear you're only speaking for a subset, calls to attention that waiguoren are not homogenous, and doesn't kick up a fuss about a common turn of phrase.

[Guest realmayo]

8 minutes ago, LiMo said:

In Chinese, at present, I don't think many people would bother asking in such a way and would just use 外国人 instead, which could be translated in both ways if you were so inclined.

But it's not relevant how it's translated: the important thing is what the Chinese person who is saying it means.

[LiMo]

That's very true. I suppose I would still suspect that their meaning wasn't very nuanced unless I had outside evidence.

[Guest realmayo]

Personally I think this is one of those start-big-and-go-small things that you see in China, for instance postal addresses. Maybe we're more comfortable saying what's special about us individually and then moving to talk in generalisations. Perhaps the opposite is true in China.

 

15 minutes ago, Lu said:

I understand that the asker might actually be well aware that 外國 is a varied place, but on behalf of what part of 外國 should you be speaking then?

 

If the answer pertains to the general mass of non-Chinese, then speak on their behalf. If you think that in this particular case you can only really generalise about people in the West, then speak on their behalf. If you're not sure about other westerners, then your own country. I don't think it's a really big deal. Some things apply more broadly, some don't.

 

- Foreigners find tones hard don't you?

- Yes, I'm really jealous of the Vietnamese and Thais whose own languages are tonal too.

 

Also let's not overestimate the differences between different, say, European countries. In general relaxed conversation how often do they really matter to a Henan taxi driver? And anyway, from a Chinese perspective, most countries in the world have a smaller population than, say, Hubei, and there are plenty of difference between Hubei and Shanghai or Guangdong or whatever.
 

 

[Guest realmayo]

26 minutes ago, NinKenDo said:

calls to attention that waiguoren are not homogenous

 

I'm still puzzled about this assumption that the average Chinese person thinks someone from Burkino Faso is going to have basically the same life experiences as someone from Italy.

[LiMo]

10 minutes ago, realmayo said:

I'm still puzzled about this assumption that the average Chinese person thinks someone from Burkino Faso is going to have basically the same life experiences as someone from Italy.

 

I think my observation is relevant here. I would say that the scale of their generalisation is smaller than we are assuming.  外国人 means "white person from a developed country."

[Guest realmayo]

Okay in that case a lot of the time it is perfectly appropriate to generalise and I think it's only the current 'politically-correct' -style ideology in the west which makes us often feel awkward doing so.

[LiMo]

Do you really think it's a good idea to generalise about all of Europe, North America, Australia, and I suppose white Hispanics in the way we've been talking about?

 

"White people from developed countries don't like rice."

 

"White people from developed countries are liberal."

[Publius]

23 minutes ago, realmayo said:

I'm still puzzled about this assumption that the average Chinese person thinks someone from Burkino Faso is going to have basically the same life experiences as someone from Italy.

An average Chinese person would ask, Is Burkina Faso a Pacific Island? Believe me, their ignorance of world geography is only paralleled by Americans.

[Publius]

And I think LiMo's observation is a good one. Similar situations in Japan. They seldom call a Chinese or a Korean gaijin 外人. That designation is reserved for Europeans and Americans. And Chinese loanwords are never considered 外来語.

[Lu]

17 minutes ago, realmayo said:

Okay in that case a lot of the time it is perfectly appropriate to generalise and I think it's only the current 'politically-correct' -style ideology in the west which makes us often feel awkward doing so.

I just don't feel comfortable speaking for Italians or Romanians or Australians or whatnot. I don't know if that's a result of my political correctness or an unrelated trait, but I've never even met a Romanian, I don't know how they think or what they like to eat. I can barely speak on behalf of the general Dutch public.

 

Your proposed reply to 你们外国人-questions makes sense. Still, I think an intelligent Chinese who has had their 眼界 开'd should be aware of there being more countries.

[Guest realmayo]

1 hour ago, LiMo said:

"White people from developed countries don't like rice."

 

Come on, this is getting silly. Who can you say likes rice then? Do Chinese? Not all of them. Vietnamese people eat fish sauce. Nope, not all of them. Dongbei people are very friendly? Really? Lu says she's 開放 but is she 開放 every day? In every area of behaviour?

 

Surely: if you generalise, people know that you're generalising and therefore know that there are exceptions, probably lots.

 

But: if you expect that when chatting to a taxi driver, if you do not speaking with absolute precision on these matters you'll leave him with a deep-seated misunderstanding that, although Chinese people have lots of differences between them, westerners on the other hand are all carbon-copies of one another ... well then sure, perhaps you'd better be careful about making such generalisations. Maybe I've just been lucky and always met smarter taxi drivers than everyone else.