Chinese girls vs. Taiwanese girls

[Guest realmayo]

That's all science is about -- see something obvious

Of course science can often involve speculative and imaginative leaps to a very unlikely position -- which then, as you say, gets subjected to scrutiny.

[gerri]

Mission accomplished.

[Shi Tong]

If we have a very basic idea about corn we can easily detect what kind of farm it is.

So, you look at a field of corn and say "corn" and you look at a country as complex and varied as China, you look at all the women there and make a judgment as basic as you would with a corn field?

This is a very bad analogy which under scritiny is just a joke and makes an embarrasment of yourself, so instead of using this again, think of something more accurate for your argument.

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?

anonymoose, of course not, but a little reasoning is called for, and a slight generalisation can be applied to anything.

I wouldn't go to my local large town on a Friday/ Saturday night because "generally" there are drunken people there who "generally" get into fights. Does this mean I "generally" say English men like to get drunk and fight on a Friday/ Sat night?

Though I agree with you wholeheartedly that generalisations are bad, we have to use a little reasoning when encountered with a social phonomenon, if we didn't, we wouldn't have sociology, and we would get in trouble with people, assuming that everyone is good/ bad/ neautral.

Take this as an example: When in Taiwan, learning Mandarin, I bumped into the only other English student there. When I met him, I knew him for what he was within about 1 minute. I gave him plenty of opportunity to prove me otherwise, but then he tried to (pretty much) rape a Taiwanese girl because he was what he was.

I didn't want to generalise about him, and I did give him a chance (I certainly said it was nice to meet him and chatted for some time), but unfortunately I have that social experience to know what I'm faced with when I see it sometimes. I may have been wrong, which is fine.

The art is to use your brain but not to assume too much.

as characteristic of China without first speaking to say 90% of 1.4 billion people is silly.

This argument doesn't need to be as polor as we're making it.

Speaking to 90% of a population to know "something" about them is, of course, impossible, and making generalisations like "In China they eat a lot of rice and noodles", is actually pretty natural. The idiotic thing is to assume that this means all Chinese eat rice and noodles and that they dont know what bread looks or tastes like.

The danger comes in though, where you're assuming something about someone's personlity. I have numerous Taiwanese (girl)friends who are my wife's friends and I could list the wild differences between them, because they're too individual to put tags on, and that's the point- you cant say a generliasation about a person.

How would you feel if there was a thread comparing English with American men? What would you complain about? "English men are all larger louts who like football and fighting"? "Americans are loud"? Would this not annoy you? Maybe there is a slight trend for some English guys to go to a town centre and drink too much and watch football and have a fight, but if that's 5% of men, then how does that represent an accurate picture?

renzhe, I agree.

[tooironic]

Good to see some reasoning and logic being injected back into the argument. Jiayou, Shi Tong.

[rezaf]

This is a very bad analogy which under scritiny is just a joke and makes an embarrasment of yourself, so instead of using this again, think of something more accurate for your argument.

It's an example which actually can be show something deeper depending on the intellectual ability of the reader. Examples might be simple in appearance but they lead to something deeper in order to understand a complicated(in appearance) situation. Usually when people turn to personal attacks instead of analysing the similarity and the difference between an example and what it is referring to, it shows lack of intellectual ability.

[renzhe]

My intellectual level prohibits equating Chinese women to a clip of corn.

[Guest realmayo]

I actually appreciate the corn analogy.

But I also like the way it brings this thread firmly back on topic:

Corn = 玉米 (trad & simplified characters), China = 中國 (trad), 中国 (simplified).

Thus, Chinese girls vs. Taiwanese girls: Chinese girls win because they are more like corn.

[Shi Tong]

My intellectual level prohibits equating Chinese women to a clip of corn.

Brilliant.

rezaf.

If you really want to head down the route of seeing how your analogy works, lets go ahead and prove that it's nonsense.

1) If I show you a picture of a table, you will say it's a table. You can assume this based on a few obvious things.

It's likely to have 4 legs, it has a surface as a top and you can put things on it. This is what a table is. Assuming that it's a table is fine.

This is the same kind of analogy which you are subscribing to: Show a picture of corn field, it's a corn field. That's fine, and it works to say to people "you can generally believe your eyes".

2) If I show you a picture of a woman, you will say it's a woman. You can assume this based on a few obvious things.

She is likely to look like a woman, this will include a massive array of different physical appearances, but you are likely to be able to tell.

This analogy works on the idea that "look at a picture of a woman, assume it is" and is the same analogy as "you can generally believe your eyes".

3) If I show you a picture of a Chinese woman and then a Taiwanese woman, this is a totally different kettle of fish.

a) you will probably struggle to tell the difference, and you could easily mix one with the other, since they're likely to look statisically speaking like Han Chinese people.

B) you can apply certain preconceived "rules" to your reasoning, but it's very easy to find exceptions to these rules, since when speaking about something as diverse and unique as a woman they vary too much to bother comparing.

Now, lets just analyse that out; if you cant tell the difference between pictures of one and the other, how can you imagine that you can tell the difference when you're in a relationship with "one of them", and then.. say if you do because they tell you so, how can you then generalise that out to the whole population?

Sorry, but your argument is fundamentally flawed, because you're telling people that looking at a field of corn is the same as being able to make assumptions about people's personalities and just does not work.

Answer me this, and by no means do I mean to offend, but, I think you said you were Iranian. And let me just make sure you dont misunderstand: I dont even believe the following sentence because it's so rediculous.

How would you feel if I told you that I thought you were probably a camel rider?

This is me using a preconceived rediculous notion of the "middle east" which tars the whole of that region with the same brush. "It's all desert, there are camels, people ride them, etc, etc."

realmayo.. that joke was corny.

[Guest realmayo]

I thought Rezaf was simply saying that there are times when it's safe to make generalisations (that looks like a field of corn, I reckon I can safely say it's a field of corn) and times when it's not safe. It seems perfectly reasonable to me. In fact Shi Tong, it seems you agree with him, because you list examples where it's safe to make generalisations, and where it's not.

[gerri]

Seems to me the problem is that the corn field says it's an analogy, but it's really just to illustrate generalizations (and that they are - or at least can be - helpful).

So, the "analogy" of it is that when you have some experiences - "you don't have to look at the whole corn field, just a few stalks" - you can tell it's a corn field, and when you have the experience of some people being in a certain way, you can also draw generalizations from it.

The problem, as pointed out by shi tong (and others), is that the analogy breaks down as such: people are quite a bit more diverse, our expectations might easily be too simple, our experiences too skewed, so you can't generalize that easily.

Or, I guess we all tend to do, which is how threads like that are born.

And then, we tend to hold on to our preconceived notions with teeth and claws, even (or even more so) in the face of contrary opinions... but unless we decide on how much we need to do, how much data we need to gather, we keep discussing the merit of images, metaphors, analogies rather than the actual issue. And whether the issue here is people and general trends in their behavior or the danger of generalizing or just our perception/opinion/experiences is not at all clear.

Sorting these things out would actually be what the scientific method is about ;)

[Shi Tong]

people are quite a bit more diverse,

Exactly.

Generalisations about certain things are acceptable, where they're not in others.

Imagine if this thread was called "white girls vs black girls" or "white people vs black people", and then substitute all of the instances of Taiwanese and Chinese with these words and play them back. I think you'll be surprised because I think this thread is at best misguided and at worst racist.

[tooironic]

I'm confused. Chinese and Taiwanese = different races?

[rezaf]

Shi tong and Renzhe, you claim that I equated Chinese women to corns. Please read my posts and quote me if there is anything about Chinese women or Taiwanese women. If you can't find anything please accept that you don't have enough ability in deductive reasoning.

How would you feel if I told you that I thought you were probably a camel rider?

This is not a good example for this situation because I stated that my generalisation is based on living in China and communicating with many Chinese people. I lived in Iran for 22 years and I never saw a camel ( We have some in the south but I have never been there) so it means that you have never been to Iran and if you spend a few days travelling in Iran you will have the right to make a generalisation about it (which is most Iranians haven't even seen a real camel in their lives). BTW why do you think that people should be embarrassed about riding camels?

[yang1504]

How would you feel if I told you that I thought you were probably a camel rider?

That's the same as saying all Aussies have crocodiles in thier backyards, carry around foot long blades like on Crocodile Dundee and ride kangaroos to work. Just plain ignorance.

Question, if you didn't learn Chinese, would you know the demonym for Thailand is Thai, not Taiwanese? The reason I ask is I once overheard a white lady saying she loved Taiwanese people after she learnt the bus driver she was talking to was from Thailand. I felt embarrassed for her.

[Shi Tong]

I'll quote myself before I answer this:

Answer me this, and by no means do I mean to offend, but, I think you said you were Iranian. And let me just make sure you dont misunderstand: I dont even believe the following sentence because it's so rediculous.

That's the same as saying all Aussies have crocodiles in thier backyards, carry around foot long blades like on Crocodile Dundee and ride kangaroos to work. Just plain ignorance.

My point exactly.

I'm confused. Chinese and Taiwanese = different races?

(generally) White people/ foreigners talking about Chinese and Taiwanese by generalising about them in such a way is racist, yes.

This is not a good example for this situation because I stated that my generalisation is based on living in China and communicating with many Chinese people. I lived in Iran for 22 years and I never saw a camel ( We have some in the south but I have never been there) so it means that you have never been to Iran and if you spend a few days travelling in Iran you will have the right to make a generalisation about it (which is most Iranians haven't even seen a real camel in their lives).

I fail to see how you having spent some time in China gives you a god given right to assume, generlise and talk about Chinese and Taiwanese women in a way which is beyond generalisation to the point of over generalisation.

My point has been lost here. I'm not saying that you cant say anything to generalise about anything (saying that people who are between 0 and 12 years of age are children is an example of a generlisation which works), I'm saying that you cant use a description as specific as "selfish", or "materialistic" to describe a whole race of women from a country as large as China.

If you said "there is a tendancy towards selfishness amoung some of "them" in my experience" then, though I may argue with you, I'd say that it's inevitable that some people are selfish, and therefore you must be right, but you can apply this rule to ANYONE, not just Chinese or Taiwanese.

BTW why do you think that people should be embarrassed about riding camels?

I dont. That's something you've assumed. My point was that people shouldn't generlise about something they dont know enough about like "Iranians ride camels", or "British men wear bowler hats", or "Chinese women are materialistic".

Question, if you didn't learn Chinese, would you know the demonym for Thailand is Thai, not Taiwanese? The reason I ask is I once overheard a white lady saying she loved Taiwanese people after she learnt the bus driver she was talking to was from Thailand. I felt embarrassed for her.

Well, I do, I dont know about everyone, but what does this have to do with the subject?

[yang1504]

Ignorance, Taiwanese, white people, the ignorant white lady who didn't know Taiwanese come from Taiwan, hence my question.

[Shi Tong]

Question, if you didn't learn Chinese, would you know the demonym for Thailand is Thai, not Taiwanese? The reason I ask is I once overheard a white lady saying she loved Taiwanese people after she learnt the bus driver she was talking to was from Thailand. I felt embarrassed for her.

Yes, I did know and I do know now.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but Ignorance is different from racism.

[anonymoose]

With everyone focusing on which generalisations are acceptable to make and which aren't, one point that seems to have escaped the argument is that this is a public forum, open to anyone who wishes to participate in informal discussions. This is not an academic arena, and one cannot expect everyone to back up everything they say with a source, statistics or academic reference. By it's nature, virtually every post contains generalisations of one kind or another, based on personal experience (for example, it is expensive to live in Shanghai, the air is polluted in Shijiazhuang, southern people speak non-standard Mandarin, it takes two years of full-time study to become fluent in Mandarin, and so on). This fact should be clear to anyone participating on such a forum, and thus anyone who interprets a statement such as "English people eat fish and chips" to be a definitive assertion that 100% of English people, without exception, eat fish and chips, is as much responsible for the misunderstanding as the person who wrote the comment in the first place. To most people, it would be very clear that the author was making a general comment in view of their own experience, and not making and authoritative statement of fact.

Let's face it. The crux of this discussion isn't about generalisations at all. We all make them, and we all know that we all make them. The issue here is about what is acceptable to say in a public forum, particularly when some comments could be offensive (regardless of whether they are justified or not), and especially when we know there are a lot of participants on this forum from the groups of people who are being talked about. My suggestion is, if you want to make negative generalisations about one nationality or race of people, then fine, but choose a time and place for it (in private if necessary) that won't cause offence to the people in question.

[Shi Tong]

Well said anonymoose.

[renzhe]

If you can't find anything please accept that you don't have enough ability in deductive reasoning.

You are talking about inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning.

And anonymoose is basically right. But I still maintain that really outrageous statements that encourage discrimination should be subject to more scrutiny than statements such as "I like all green teas". You can't make inflammatory statements and then wiggle your way out of it by talking about fields of corn.