Chinese girls vs. Taiwanese girls

[gerri]

considering some of the things I've seen, this thread is still something of a testimony to the caliber of people visiting chinese-forums.com ... but yeah, funny indeed.

Seriously, though: Who wants to pitch in and describe examples/experiences for Chinese/East Asians being more materialistic than other societies?

Paper money burnt for the dead, maybe?

And then, while we are at it, let's try to discuss what we find better: Going crazy over wanting to be rich, or going crazy over who's got the proper god?

[chrix]

you know there's a third way

[roddy]

considering some of the things I've seen, this thread is still something of a testimony to the caliber of people visiting chinese-forums.com ... but yeah, funny indeed.

It also lowers the caliber - as a result of this topic we rank highly for such valuable Google search phrases as 'are Taiwanese girls easy'. Guesses as to which actual posters we acquired due to that are welcome.

[Hofmann]

Scholarly references? Why?

To keep people from carelessly making stuff up. This topic requires it.

No sampling everything: If you take a random subset of a bigger group, your subset should be representative of the group. Reliability increases with sample size and group size.

[chrix]

Agree, otherwise we end up with a bunch of old China hands who overgeneralise their personal experiences.

[Guest realmayo]

By insisting on scholarly references you close down discussion. That may not be a bad idea at all if you were just talking about the original question on the thread! But I don't agree about killing discussion about China in general. Would something like this be forbidden:

Lots of Chinese people like to generalise about people from Shanghai.

[chrix]

Well, if it's about anecdotes I'd be the last one to close down a discussion. But if the generalisations run wild, it might not be a bad idea to ask for some data to back them up...

[roddy]

ask for some data to back them up...

Then you have all the posters who think that asking their wife produces data.

We all generalize to some extent, you just need to keep tabs on how much and why. A topic like this is always going to produce nonsense, which is why I don't object when it gets taken way off-topic like this.

[chrix]

Oh you know I have asked for evidence other than from the wife in the past

[gerri]

First reaction: ... and in the present?

Second reaction: If I considered more data than my (soon-to-be) wife necessary, I think she'd hit me. So much for "Chinese wives get abused so often" (I remember there was a thread about that, too).

I'm just glad this thread isn't deteriorating into the "mine is bigger than theirs" that happened to the thread about condoms, or some anecdotal stories about crazy girls (although, there *was* that "she was insane in bed"...)

The social scientist in me is also awakened, again, wondering how exactly you *would* go about measuring that (materialism), let alone its good or ill effects.

[renzhe]

The social scientist in me is also awakened, again, wondering how exactly you *would* go about measuring that (materialism), let alone its good or ill effects.

Well, by asking your wife, of course

[chrix]

I'm no social scientist, but I hear they do surveys and stuff

Seriously, I think there have been studies done on attitudes in relationships and so on, but maybe not in China...

[chrix]

First reaction: ... and in the present?

Oh, what I meant is that in the past on this forum, I've asked people who kept referencing their s.o. as a source to verify whatever claim they've had made with other people.

[Lu]

Huh, that's not done anymore? I seem to recall a new poster who keeps referencing his wife. Not that Chinese wives are not a good first source for language-related questions, most of them probably speak better Chinese than most of us here.

I think there have been studies done on attitudes in relationships and so on, but maybe not in China...

They've been done in China too, I think Liu Dalin did one.

[gerri]

[Edit: Wanted to say something about the s.o., but I'll rather not.]

What I meant by "wondering" how to go about it:

how exactly do you measure materialism?

I mean, it's "obviously" strong in China when you consider the attitude that a man needs to have house and car before he can even consider marriage.

One would have to know how many couples get married without house and car, however.

And then, to compare that to other places, where people are supposedly less materialistic.

On to check whether attitudes or reality are really the same, too: I'd hypothesize that "Westerners" (itself a very ill-defined group) would not admit to materialist considerations quite as readily as Chinese, but the concerns would probably not be so dissimilar in practice...

Hmm, Roddy: do you think we are spoiling this thread enough yet, for all those who come looking to find whether they should head to China or Taiwan for those easy girls?

[Shi Tong]

Surely this is pretty clear:

1) Generalisations are made by people to a certain degree, they use their judgement of the situation to give an assessment.

2) Though generalisations are not necessarily a terribly bad thing, people are required to use their minds in order not to come out with stuff that is such an overgeneralisation that it ends up being steriotypical or racist.

For example, if I said that I would ask my wife for advice on Chinese, I would have thought she's correct (from my experience) a lot of the time, and I would guess that would be about 98-99%.

That means that when I reply that my wife told me xyz about something, I would be able to reply to a thread. I would then put in some information to the reader about this to inform them:

My wife told me xyz is correct. Remember this is Taiwanese Mandarin (which has a slightly different standard) and she still might be wrong (she's not a zhongwen laoshi).

You can also generalise a little by saying people tend to in China tell you that your Chinese is excellent when you may only speak a little, and that they generally like foreigners.

But you cant say things like "Chinese girls are self centred, etc, etc, etc" because you cannot possibly have been in a relationship with 90% of Chinese girls to know this fact. Use your own knowledge (my Chinese gf was self centred), to give an opinion on what you actually know, but not "I had one gf like this, therefore a lot of them are probably like this".

Is this so much to ask?!

[rezaf]

We are all independet individuals but as you might have noticed we keep our tendencies in a limited range to form a society and thus to have an IDENTITY. That's why general tendencies in cultures are easy to detect. It's just like looking at that picture of that corn farm. If we have a very basic idea about corn we can easily detect what kind of farm it is. (Of course we can always play crazy mind games and say for example that's an ant farm and the corns are just happened to be there which we know is nonesence)

The core of identity is our needs which can be categorised into the need for spirituality, the need for art, the need for money, the need for having a partner, etc...I think these needs are very similar in different societies but with different degrees for each one.

[anonymoose]

You can also generalise a little by saying people tend to in China tell you that your Chinese is excellent when you may only speak a little, and that they generally like foreigners.

But you cant say things like "Chinese girls are self centred, etc, etc, etc" because you cannot possibly have been in a relationship with 90% of Chinese girls to know this fact.

So have 90% of people in China told you that your Chinese is excellent? I doubt even Da Shan has reached this accolade yet.

Have 90% of Chinese people asserted that they like foreigners?

[Guest realmayo]

The fact is, if people didn't generalise, we'd still be living in caves, or whatever. & the implication that you can't point out what strikes you as characteristic of China without first speaking to say 90% of 1.4 billion people is silly. Plus, recourse to academic publications is not helpful to people who have no way to judge the credibility of the academic in question.

[renzhe]

Humans tend to be really good at inductive reasoning. This has evolutionary advantages, and is also responsible for much of the creativity that drove the arts and sciences in the past.

But anyone who has studied science, statistics or probabilities for any amount of time will be accutely aware that we tend to overgeneralise wildly when faced with non-trivial problems. This also has evolutionary benefits (touch fire - ouch, touch fire - ouch, don't touch fire again), but is not beneficial when dealing with complex cultural phenomena and fishy imprecise categories such as "materialistic" or "likes foreigners".

If we hadn't accepted the limits of our own inductive reasoning, we would still be stuck in a pre-industrial age. The scientific method is based on killing off wild generalisations. That's all science is about -- see something obvious, then kill it off with deductive logic. Until you're left with something you can't kill off because it's too sound.

Unfortunately, some people are too attached to their wild generalisations and will refuse to drop them even when faced with clear evidence to the contrary. Such people make lousy scientists.