By Michael Hurwitz | Date: October 18th, 2013 | Category: Chinese Culture
Chinese culture has been around for a long, long time, so it’s hardly surprising that there are some deeply-rooted cultural faux pas’ (faux pases? faux’s pas? Damn you, France!). Some are easy to avoid and others require a bit more effort, but all are worth paying attention to, so here are seven cultural no-no’s to steer clear of.
1. Leaving your chopsticks (kuàizi, 筷子) upright in your rice or noodle bowl while eating. Do not, under any circumstances, do this! In many parts of China, offerings of food are made to the dead with chopsticks presented in this way, and upright chopsticks in food generally connote death, so it’s a pretty serious taboo. This is observed even more fervently in Japan, interestingly enough.
Fun side note, the English term “chopsticks” is thought to be derived from Chinese in an interesting way: kuài (筷) is a homonym for kuài (快), meaning fast or quick. So we’d call them “fast sticks” were it not for the term “chop chop”, which is itself derived from the Chinese “急急”, pronounced in Cantonese as “gāpgāp” (jíjí in Mandarin), which Americans working with early Chinese immigrants misheard as “chop chop.” It’s thought that Americans misinterpreted 筷子 as 快子 and then appliedanother Chinese expression to give chopsticks their English name! Anyways, whatever you call them, don’t leave them upright in your food, or you’ll risk offending your hosts or friends.
2. Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen - The classic “Three T’s” of must-avoid conversation topics. These are very touchy subjects for most Mainlanders, though sensitivity varies. Obviously simply mentioning Taiwan or Tibet isn’t offensive (they’re sitting right there on the map, after all), but bringing them up as topics often leads to discussions that many find uncomfortable, and can bring opinions to the surface that might make you rethink relationships – even a free speech-lover like myself (my grandparents fled Nazi-occupied Austria, so I take my first amendment rights pretty seriously) has learned that it’s better to simply avoid these topics. In my personal experience, the taboo nature of these topics tends to vary quite substantially from year to year. When I first arrived in China, for instance, there was a lot of tension with Tibet, so the topic was rarely discussed, but these days it’s not considered such a big deal. It seems to depend on the headlines, essentially, but it might be best to play it safe by avoiding the 3 T’s wholesale.
3. Complimenting English/other language skills. This is a bit more applicable in a business context, but is valid everywhere really. People trained and educated abroad generally dislike being complimented on their English skills, as it implies that there is nothing else worth complimenting. It sounds a bit counterintuitive (after all, who doesn’t like some kind words now and then?), but it’s important to be subtle and conservative with your compliments in general. It’s part of the larger Chinese cultural preference for indirectness, in which words that may sounds kind can actually be interpreted as insulting (and vice versa!). I’ve had many bosses and co-workers compliment my English, for instance, which is a bit silly since it’s my native language, and it took me a long time to realize that the subtext was often that they thought my Chinese skills weren’t up to snuff.
4. Giving a clock as a gift. I know, I know, you had that enormous grandfather clock stuffed into your carry-on bag and you were all excited to give it as a gift to your boss/host family/cousin/calligraphy teacher. Unfortunately, this is a pretty serious faux pas for a number of interesting cultural and linguistic reasons. The giving of a clock carries the implication of time running out and thus death. More compellingly though, the Chinese term for clock is zhōng (钟, also used in a ton of other time-related contexts), which is a homonym for zhōng (终), meaning to end or finish, but often used as a sort of euphemism or shorthand for death.
Additionally, we’ve got the term sòngzhōng (送终), meaning to pay one’s respects to the dead OR to wish death or destruction upon someone. Fair enough, but as you probably imagined it’s a dead-on (ha!) homonym for sòng zhōng (送钟), which utilizes the more common definition of sòng and means, “to give a clock as a gift.” I think it’s really interesting when you have culture influencing language and language influencing culture/customs simultaneously. We really don’t have that in English very much, even though English also features tons of homonyms (I have a Chinese co-worker who is constantly bewildered by “share” and “Cher,” which is particularly odd since no one other than her has talked about Cher since approximately 1997…), so it’s definitely one of those uniquely Chinese quirky cultural-linguistic things that make the place and language so interesting.
5. Not deferring to people older or higher in rank than you. Obviously this is something you should generally avoid everywhere in the world, but hierarchies and rank are taken much more seriously in China than in the West, and many Westerners fail to pay attention to the importance of acknowledging superiority. This applies in both business and personal contexts, as it’s considered very rude to address people without using some sort of formal title.
For managers or bosses, you’d put something like zǒng (总, chief, leader or head), lǎobǎn(老板, boss) or jīnglǐ (经理, manager) before their surname when addressing them. In personal situations, there’s a whole complicated system of nomenclature that varies from region to region and even family to family. It’s actually not that different from the US in a lot of ways - I call my Uncle Ronny “Uncle Ronny” but call his wife, my Aunt Linda, just “Linda” for some reason.
Anyway, it’s common to address older sisters or female cousins as jiějie (姐姐) and younger ones as mèimei(妹妹). Older males are gēgē(哥哥, which you may recognize as part of gēmener (哥们儿), the closest Chinese equivalent to “bro”), while younger males are usually dìdi(弟弟). Uncles or other older men (often friends of parents) are shūshu (叔叔), while such women are often called āyí (阿姨) as a term of address. 阿姨 is also the common term for a maid or cleaning lady - told you it’s complicated!
6. Giving (and receiving) things using only one hand. It may seem like a small thing, but making sure you give and receive things with two hands goes a long way toward demonstrating politeness as well as cultural sensitivity and awareness. Using both hands shows that you’re interested in the person you’re dealing with and that you’re committed or serious about what you’re discussing and doing. This comes up most often when exchanging business cards (míngpiàn, 名片), which, if your card is bilingual, should always be given with the Chinese side facing up, regardless of the recipient’s ability to read or understand English. You should be careful to read the card first before putting it in your pocket or wallet, or, if you’re sitting at a table, leave the card on the table until your meeting or conversation has ended.
You might also notice that the cashier at the grocery store often hands you your change with two hands, even though your hands are full of all your groceries, it is still important to accept your change with two hands in most situations.
Let’s face it - this is kind of true (I have two Albertan roommates, apologies abound), but is still taken to an extreme here in China. Canada is a popular study and work destination for Mainland Chinese, for example, and you’ll sometimes hear aspirants describe Canada’s clean air, good healthcare system and, yes, polite citizenry as the perfect cure for the China blues. My Chinese-Canadian roommate often gets asked why he came to China in the first place, since Canada is 挺好 (tǐng hǎo, “quite good”) anyway. Rob Ford is single-handedly undoing this stereotype though!
Russian women - pale and beautiful (hěn bái, hěn měi-很白 很美)
This one is extremely pervasive because there are is a large Russian population in China, particularly up north. Despite having a tremendous number of (hilarious and dubiously accurate) possible stereotypes of Russians to choose from, almost every Chinese will tell you “很白，很美“ (hěn bái, hěn měi) when you bring up the topic of Russian women.
I think the archetypical Russian big blue eyes and pale skin are such a polar opposite of the average Chinese appearance that they’re considered very desirable and beautiful - almost like the epitome of Western-ness, if that makes sense. Here’s the irony, though: I dated a Russian girl for a long time who grew up in Russia’s Far East, just 30km from the Chinese border, and though she is technically Asian and started learning Chinese in kindergarten, she was still always seen as about as “un-Chinese” as it gets. Basically, stereotypes are weird.
Jewish people - Jews have money (yóutàirén hěn yǒu qián-犹太人很有钱)
In my book this is like the king of all Chinese stereotypes, perhaps just because I (a Jew) hear it with unfailing consistency. Many Chinese feel there is a sort of kinship between the two cultures because of common values (e.g. an emphasis on education, close familial relations and, yes, conservative spending habits), and they admire the Jewish people greatly for their intelligence and financial acumen.
An old student of mine showed me all the self-help books in China dedicated to “thinking like a Jew” and “saving money in the Jewish way,” and there is a popular Weibo account called “犹太人智慧启示录” (yóu tài rén zhì huì qǐ shì lù, translated as “Revelations of Jewish People’s Wisdom”).
My favorite item, though, is that in some stores the Talmud, the ancient book of Jewish law, is sold as a business guide. That’d be like perusing Barnes & Noble and seeing the Analects of Confucius as a guide to making the perfect dumpling!
Though I’m hardly one to refute these beliefs openly, I do very frequently have to point out that not all Jews are smart and wealthy...though if anyone wanted to start perpetuating an “all Jews are handsome” stereotype I suppose I could get on board with that.
If you were perusing the headlines early last summer, you most likely saw something about the Gaokao (gāokǎo, 高考), China’s national college entrance examination and the closest Chinese equivalent to the American SAT (or ACT for our Midwestern readers!). It’s the all-important, multi-day examination administered every June to the nation’s high schoolers (usually just seniors, though at present there are no age limits in place) that is essentially the sole determining factor in the university admissions process. It’s strenuous, exacting and exceptionally difficult, and the result determines much of the course of a Chinese person’s life. But is the gaokao damaging to students overall wellness? And, above all, is it ultimately a good idea?
What is the Gaokao?
First, let’s get all linguistic about it. The full name of the examination is (deep breath) “Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó pǔtōng gāoděng xuéxiào zhāoshēng quánguó tǒngyī kǎoshì” (中华人民共和国普通高等学校招生全国统一考试). Literally it’s “The People’s Republic of China Common College and University National Unified Enrollment Examination.” So, you can see why everyone just calls it the Gaokao! Gaokao literally means “high test,” though here “gāo” refers to “gāoděng xuéxiào” (高等学校) (colleges and universities) and also indirectly refers to the “gāozhōng” (高中), or high school, students that take the test.
When I said the Gaokao is like China’s SAT, I meant that it’s like the SAT on highly-illegal, Barry Bondsian steroids. Each year millions of students block out two days to sit through the famously arduous exam – over 9 million ambitious youngsters took it this year, according to the Global Post, fewer than the 10.5 million who did so in 2008 but still far more than the 1.7 million US students who took the SAT this spring, according the the College Board. It’s hardly just a two day endeavor, however: most students begin Gaokao preparations years before the test, and the 8-12 months leading up to exam day is often the most intensive and rigorous period these students will ever experience. Why is it so hard?
Universal Suffering
Well, it all starts with the university system. Universities in China are, in a way, the opposite of universities in the United States and Canada: they’re very difficult to get into but often not all that difficult to graduate from once you’ve been admitted. With a gigantic population and rising incomes, competition for limited higher education spots is remarkably fierce, but within the universities themselves, corruption, shortsighted management and plain old apathy often lead to light work and class loads. I spent a year in a Chinese language program at a university here in Shanghai, and saw first-hand how many of the local students took it relatively easy, sometimes spending whole days in their dorm rooms playing video games or on the campus basketball courts rather than in class (in their defense, I may or may not have done that once in a while as an undergrad as well!).
For a lot of students, their majors and careers are essentially already determined before they set foot on a university campus, leading to fairly breezy academic lives. According to OECD survey data, the university student drop-out rate in the US, for instance, is 54%, while 32% of students in the UK end up dropping out and just 11% of Japanese students drop out, one of the world’s lowest rates. In China, however, estimates from the Ministry of Education suggest that anywhere from 3% to just .75% of students drop out of school. This is really a combination of strict oversight on the part of university administrators to ensure high graduation rates and lax enforcement on classwork quality and attendance, but the fact remains that “after the years of toil and stress needed to pass the gaokao, some [students] feel inclined to relax after they’ve conquered what they see as their life’s biggest hurdle. This is an attitude teachers tend to accommodate.”
Nothing Else Matters
Obviously this varies from school to school and student to student, and China certainly has many exceptional-quality globally-acclaimed institutions (Tsinghua in Beijing and Fudan here in Shanghai, to name a few) that push their students to succeed at the highest level, but the fact remains that, “in China, there is a time-honored career domino effect: good Gaokao score, top university spot, communist Party membership, job in the government bureaucracy.” These days you can replace the last two parts with “job at state-owned enterprise or foreign MNC (Multi-National Corporation),” but the principle is the same: acing the Gaokao, in many ways, sets you up for life!
The test itself actually varies from province to province; though a standardized nationwide Gaokao was in place until 2001, reports emerged of lower-scoring students from Beijing being given preference over higher-scoring students from rural areas, prompting a policy change. Math, Chinese and English (occasionally another foreign language, but English for about 90% of students) are mandatory for all provinces, but beyond that, the test can vary, sometimes widely. Additional subjects include sciences like Physics, Chemistry and Biology as well as History, Geography, and Political Science. Students interested in certain academic and career tracks can customize their Gaokao to a certain degree, but in most provinces they are only permitted to choose one subject outside of the three mandatory areas. This results in extremely intense studying focused on these core subjects, often at the expense of broader educational enrichment.
Students tend to have mixed opinions on the Gaokao. While many regard it as a fair and even way to up one’s standing in life, others are not so confident. A Beijing student named Shirley Qian described how she feels "very bored, extremely exhausted, and stressed out. I hate the gaokao. If you don't take the gaokao, you can become a taxi driver.” An increasing number of students are skipping the Gaokao altogether and choosing to attend school overseas, as well - the number of people taking the test has, in fact, dropped each year since 2008, according to research by FastCompany.com.
While the SAT is (in theory , at least) geared toward testing students on their critical reasoning and problem solving skills, the Gaokao is much more a test of memorization and raw knowledge regurgitation, though of late there have been efforts to expand the breadth of skills and knowledge tested in certain provinces. As a result,students tend to orient their preparation around the test itself rather than sharpening their general skills – again, we're talking years or even a decade of preparation, so that's a pretty substantial amount of time to spend focusing on a few core areas, especially for young students. But it's necessary, because for all intents and purposes, the Gaokao is really the only thing that matters when it comes to university admissions criteria. In the US you might get credit for having played on sports teams (no time for teams for most Chinese students – too busy studying for the Gaokao!) or doing community service (not much infrastructure in place for that in China at present, though that is beginning to change for the better), but few Chinese students have those options. So why is it like this? How did we get here?
How We Got Here - Imperial China
Way back in the Imperial China days (if only more of my stories started this way!), there were issues with bureaucratic power being concentrated too strongly within a handful of aristocratic families. Combined with corruption and efficiency problems in government, this prompted the initiation of the kējǔ (科舉) , a (at times) universal civil service examination. The idea behind the kējǔ was to ensure that only the most intelligent and morally upright citizens were granted coveted civil serviceand bureaucratic positions in order to improve overall governance. Dating back to the 6th century's little-known Sui Dynasty (and arguably before), the kējǔ system had a gradual but profound effect on Chinese education and society. While it did see China through some of its highest cultural points, most scholars agree that standardized civil service exams also had some serious damaging effects. In his book Demystifying the Chinese Economy, World Bank economist Justin Lin details the impact of widespread application of the kējǔ:
“The civil service examination system, based on Confucian classics, repressed Chinese intellectuals’ incentives to learn mathematics and how to conduct controlled experiments, so a scientific and industrial revolution could not take place spontaneously in China. Within decades after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, China was no longer a leader in technological and economic development – but was instead left behind. After the Opium War in 1840 China suffered repeated humiliations by western powers, and its national sovereignty faced lethal challenges.”
A Fair and Equal Government through testing?
Many of the problems that plagued the kējǔ persist in its descendant, the Gaokao. For instance, one of the primary goals of the Gaokao is to level the academic (and thus professional) playing field; in a country with enormous levels of income inequality, a standardized test should in theory be able to help qualified but underprivileged students gain admission to the nation's top schools, regardless of their location or income level. It is the ultimate enabler of social mobility.
In practice, however, the Gaokao is not as meritocratic as its organizers would claim. Much as wealthier students in the US can afford expensive preparation classes and tutors, well-off Chinese students often hire personal tutors or enroll in prep classes that their rural peers simply cannot afford. I have a few American friends here in Shanghai, in fact, that teach SAT prep and occasionally moonlight as tutors for the English portion of the Gaokao for some pretty astounding hourly rates. As Tealeaf Nation reports, two-week long Gaokao cram courses cost around RMB5,000 (US$820), which is about half of what an average Beijinger makes in a month but is nearly a full year's income for a rural farmer. With income disparities like this, the egalitarian dream of the Gaokao is beginning to fade, though there are still strict regulations in place to prevent cheating and favoritism (including blind grading).
Location Plays an Enormous Role in Success
Urban Chinese (with their often higher income levels) have vastly better odds at gaining admission to top schools. Research suggests, for instance, that Beijingers are 30 times more likely to be admitted to the city's prestigious Tsinghua University than residents of the coastal Shandong Province. This is the equivalent of “a Bostonian [being] 30 times more likely to get into Harvard than a kid from Vermont.”
So it the Gaokao really a great equalizer?
The answer, as you've seen, is complicated, but the fact remains that for a society with the size and income level of modern China, there are few better solutions to delegate precious spots within the higher education system. Non-Gaokao options, including studying overseas and attending vocational training schools, are gradually gaining wider acceptance, but acing the Gaokao remains the best and simplest path to a better life for a vast majority of Chinese. As one Weibo (China's enormously popular Twitter-esque microblog) famously put it, “Don’t wildly wish for this social system will be changed one day; no one else is your savior in this world but yourself. Study hard. Though the Gaokao is not the only way out, it is the safest and fastest way out of poverty.”
By Julie Tha Gyaw | Date: September 15th, 2014 | Category: Chinese Culture
Think back with me, if you will, to middle school. If your experience during those awkward days was anything like mine, then you might remember watching your classmates as they formed various cliques.
Soon most people were instantly identifiable as being one of the “loners” or the “cheerleaders” or the “skaters” and took on the whole persona associated with such a label. They dressed, acted, and even walked according to their label.
I suppose this kind of thing serves a certain psychological purpose. It feels good to be part of a group, and it also feels good to organize the world into little compartments.
So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that we continue to do the same thing in adulthood.
The names of the groups change, but the concept is more or less the same. Foodies. Backpackers. Right/left-wingers. Old hippies. Hipsters. An image immediately comes to mind, right?
By the same token, I also shouldn’t be surprised that these types of categories exist in China too. There’s even a word, or actually a suffix, that’s used a lot these days to create categories like that. That word is “zú (族)".
I first learned about this kind of use of “zú” several years ago when I was at a restaurant in Shanghai with a Taiwanese friend.
We were looking around and noticing that all six of the people seated at the table next to us were looking down at their phones. They may as well have been eating alone. If any one of them had looked up at that moment, all she would’ve seen was the top of her friends’ heads.
My friend laughed and said, “In Taiwan, we call these people ‘dī tóu zú (低头族)'.”
I’ve always remembered that phrase, because it is the perfect description for people who are looking down at their phones all the time. “Dī tóu” means “lowered head” and “zú” means “group of people.”
This word “zú (族)" is actually the same word that is used in Chinese to refer to ethnic groups, which are called “mín zú” (民族), or simply, “people groups.”
For example, the majority of people in China belong to the “hàn zú (汉族)", which, by the way, is the same “hàn” that’s in “hàn yǔ (汉语)", which is one way to say “Chinese language.” There are dozens of other minority ethnic groups in China, such as the “húi zú (回族)" and the “zhuàng zú (壮族)".
That’s the original usage of “zú.” But the kids these days are putting it to use in a lot of pretty creative ways.
Basically, at this point, “zú” functions more or less like the suffixes “ers” and “ies” do in English words like “groupies” and “hackers.“
It’s an easy and fun way to slap a label onto some type of behavior that’s becoming a trend. And before you know it, it becomes a real thing. Just say the words, and an image of the people associated with that “zú” comes to mind.
The following is the first half of my list of favorite “zú”, grouped into categories for you, because, well, it’s all about groups and categories in these posts.
Technology-related “zú”
Dī tóu zú 低头族 – literal translation: “low headers”
Okay, you already know this one, but I’m mentioning it again because I love it. And it’s extremely useful, because people in China are obsessed with mobile phones. That seems to be true for all of East Asia, actually.
I have been on jam-packed subway cars in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai where every single person was looking down at their phone.
It's gotten so bad, in fact, that in Hong Kong there are announcements in the subway stations warning people, "Don’t keep your eyes only on your mobile phone!” In Chinese, that's, "Qǐng bú yào zhǐ kàn shǒu jī! (请不要只看手机!)".
And it seems like many of my Chinese friends change their phones every six months or so. They are always upgrading to the latest and greatest. Simply put, they love their phones!
How to recognize them: Head down, eyes on phone, oblivious to the world around them.
Which reminds me, in Hong Kong, there are some amusing and telling public announcements in the subway stations that say in English, “Don’t keep your eyes only on your mobile phone!” In Chinese, they say, “Qǐng bú yào zhǐ kàn shǒu jī!” (请不要只看手机！/請不要只看手機！)
Mǔ zhǐ zú 拇指族 – literal translation: “thumbies” or “thumbers”
This one is very similar to “low headers.” The word “mǔ zhǐ,” or often “dà mǔ zhǐ” (大拇指), means “thumb.”
“Thumbies” are people who use their thumbs all day every day as they play, scroll, and text away on their phones and devices.
And they do so at their own risk! Not only for the type of accident that the “Qǐng bú yào zhǐ kàn shǒu jī!” announcement warns against, but also for this type of injury.
A phone addict in China that I know who sought treatment for his aching thumbs was hoping that a quick session or two of acupuncture or massage would take care of the problem.
Unfortunately, his doctor claims that the only way to cure the problem is to put down the phone. Easier said than done for these "thumbies"!
How to recognize them: Head down, eyes on phone or other device, fingers and thumbs furiously at work on the screen or buttons.
If you do a search on Baidu images for “拇指族,” you’ll find plenty of examples of what “thumbers” look like.
Lifestyle-related “zú”
Dīng kè zú 丁克族 – literal translation: “DINK-ers”
This is a transliteration of the acronym “DINK,” which stands for “dual-income, no kids.” It describes the lifestyle of married couples that choose to have no kids but have two good salaries, so they have a lot of disposable income and time and can afford to live it up.
This has really struck a chord with people in China. I think more Chinese people are familiar with the term “dīng kè zú” than Americans are familiar with what “DINK” means.
My theory on why it’s a bigger deal in China than it may be elsewhere is because the choice to not have children is hard for many Chinese people to swallow.
Young adults are expected to get married and have a child in China as a way to show respect for their parents and other elders. In a Confucian society, denying your parents a grandchild is seen as a selfish thing to do.
For generations and generations, Chinese people followed this idea to the point where major over-population occurred.
So it signifies a huge cultural shift that some people are choosing to ignore society’s expectations and not even have one child, even if they have the means to do so.
How to recognize them: They are the relaxed couple you see eating out at fancy restaurants, driving nice cars, living in an upscale apartment building, working out at the nice gym, and traveling to exotic places.
They believe deep down that when you judge them for not having kids, you are secretly jealous of them.
Kěn lǎo zú 啃老族 – literal translation: “gnaw-on the old-ies”
That’s the best I can come up with for a literal translation. A better word might be “slackers.”
This refers to people who depend on (or, better yet, “leech off of”) their parents well past the age when they ought to be supporting them.
Rather than being a good, filial kid by getting a job, earning money and supporting their parents, they instead stay for free in their parents’ home, eat their parents’ food, and generally take it easy while their ageing parents work hard or scrape by on a small pension or savings.
The description of “gnawing away on the old” is so gross and graphic because these slackers really are looked down upon in a Confucian society, where the older generation is to be taken care of by their adult children.
How to recognize them: They sleep in every day, eat their mama’s comfort food, and spend time online or playing with their expensive DLSR camera.
If it seems like they have a lot of free time on their hands, it’s because they do.
Yuè guāng zú 月光族 – literal translation: “month all goners”
Again, not a great literal translation. Let me explain.
“Month” (yuè) here refers to the monthly paycheck, which is all spent up (guāng) by the end of the month. So essentially, “yuè guāng zú” are big spenders.
Living this way is also looked down upon in China, where people traditionally save most of what they make and live well within their means whenever possible.
This lifestyle of chasing trends and buying whatever makes them happy is mostly associated with younger people in China, usually those who were born in the 1990s, who are called the “post-90” (jǐu líng hòu 九零后/九零後) generation, and it’s almost physically painful for older generations, who’ve scrimped and saved their whole lives, to witness.
It’s an illustration of the enormous generation gaps that exist in China. I’ve heard people say that the generation gap between a young adult American and his grandfather is similar to the generation gap between two Chinese people born just 20 years apart, and this would be one example of how that might be true.
How to recognize them: If the amount of disposable income they seem to have is disproportionate to their salary, they are always wearing or carrying something new and trendy, and constantly have packages arriving for them from various online shops, then they might just be a yuè guāng zú member!
So there you have the first part of my list of various types of “zú.”
Next time I’ll follow up with some more favorites, including job-related, marriage-related and interest-related “zú.” We’re just getting started! So stay tuned for more fun with labels and generalizations.
In the meantime, I have a question for you: Could this be a universal concept? Are there similar suffixes in other languages you know that function more or less like the “ers” and “ies” in English and the “zú” in Chinese?
If so, please let us know in the comments section below!
7. Boasting or bragging about yourself/accepting compliments. While all cultures value modesty and humility, interpersonal relations in China take it to a whole other level. It’s considered quite rude, for instance, to simply accept a compliment (though this taboo is actually beginning to wane among younger generations of Chinese). Instead, it’s common to say something like nàli, nàli (那里那里, “no, no”) or bù huì ba (不会吧 “that’s not true”) or a simple shì mǎ (是吗? “is it?”).
In that same vein, it’s very much frowned upon to openly brag or boast about yourself directly; you’ll almost never hear a Chinese person describing their own abilities or successes. It’s much more common to show off indirectly, letting actions (or expensive purchases) speak louder than words. If you came here looking for the Chinese translation for “swag,” then, I’m afraid you’re out of luck, as there isn’t really a close equivalent, at least in common usage. One way this indirect modesty gets manifested is in paying the check at a group dinner. Instead of simply arguing over the check as Westerners might, a clever Chinese patron may do something like pretend to go to the bathroom and instead go find the manager and pay for everyone. Shoving matches have been known to break out over this sort of thing!
By Michael Hurwitz | Date: May 12th, 2014 | Category: Chinese Culture
There are plenty of “first world problems” people in China deal with these days, traffic congestion, pollution, and high-density populations in urban cities to name a few.
More than ever, though, people in China are focused on one question in particular: where am I going to live?
In China, home (and often car) ownership is an absolute prerequisite to marriage and even dating for men. A survey of young women in large cities a few years ago found that home ownership was the most desired trait in a mate for a whopping 75% of female respondents.
OK, so if you’re a guy and you want to get married, you need to own an apartment - that makes sense, right? Stability is a great thing to look for in a potential mate, and China hardly qualifies as the only society on Earth in which wealth and possessions make one more attractive to the opposite sex.
The situation becomes trickier, however, when you consider that an average 20-something office worker in Shanghai or Beijing, if he’s lucky, makes around 6,000rmb per month, and a nicely-located apartment here will run you about 50,000rmb… per square meter.
I’ll do the math for y’all, and it ain’t pretty: our office worker friend would have to spend roughly 69 years’ (untaxed) salary to afford a 1000 square foot apartment.
Houses are so confoundingly, unfathomably expensive for a handful of reasons: China’s fast-growing economy has meant higher living standards and stronger demand for property, and millions have migrated from rural areas to large cities, creating even more demand.
Perhaps the most important reason, however, is that save for real estate, there are not many investment opportunities for the average Chinese person and their hard-earned savings. Without other options, people tend to buy apartments with their savings, which leads to sky-high prices despite the fact that an estimated 70 million apartments are owned but unoccupied.
In Beijing, for instance, the average per square meter price rose some 800% between 2003 and 2011. It doesn’t take a real estate industry insider to see what an absurd rate that is.
Homes make up an enormous share of most households’ assets, as well: 64% on average nationally, and 84% in Beijing, compared to an average of 41% in the US (where, keep in mind, large, expensive single family homes are much more common).
This situation seems pretty untenable, doesn’t it? How can people making that kind of salary possibly be expected to afford apartments with such gaudy price tags while still just getting their careers started?
Don’t underestimate the resolve of the Chinese people to save and band together for family, though. What tends to happen is a bachelor’s family will pull together
savings, call in favors from distant relatives and otherwise pull out all the stops to put together the money for an apartment purchase or down payment.
Though a purchase will often satisfy a potential mate, these apartments aren’t exactly Bruce Wayne’s penthouse from The Dark Knight.
A friend of mine who recently got married here in Shanghai was looking for places, and despite a stable, high-paying job (and a wife with a nice career of her own), the only apartments in his price range were cramped walk-ups in Anting, which is so far from the city center it’s literally further west than the “S” in “Shanghai” on Google Maps.
Yangyang also told me a story about her cousin in Guangzhou, who asked his parents to help him buy a house so he could marry his girlfriend. Surveying the market, they found prices so high that they ultimately opted to give their own house to him and move to a rental apartment in a far-flung suburb.
That’s the sort of sacrifice families make for their kids. While it’s incredibly admirable and touching, I can’t help but think that if the social paradigm were to shift a bit, the burden on families and the grooms-to-be themselves would be a lot lighter.
Here’s some good news, though: It’s getting better.
A survey in 2011 found that more than 70% of home purchases that year includes contributions from the bride or her family, something that was much less common even 10-15 years ago.
In addition, China’s molten, liquid-hot-magma-hot property market has finally shown signs of cooling in the past 12 months, with prices gradually decelerating their meteoric rise. Whether this will make the dual dreams of marriage and home ownership more attainable for the average Chinese remains to be seen.
Any experience finding housing in China? Or maybe even buying an apartment? Share in the comments below!
By Julie Tha Gyaw | Date: May 1st, 2014 | Category: Chinese Culture
If you’ve spent time in China, you know that once some women here hit a certain age, they somehow become, well... feisty.
Some of the toughest people I’ve ever met in China are women over the age of 40. If they cut in line in front of you, you’d better just let them. If they think they are being ripped off, the vendor had better watch out. They don’t let things slide, and they speak their minds, often loudly.
In my experience, once they know you, ladies like this often take pity on foreigners in China who they think don’t know how things work here. They can tend to take on a “mama bear” role with you if you form a relationship with them, and it can be great.
They’ll take pleasure and pride in cutting in line for you, for instance, and making sure you get the best deals. The thing is, though, when these ladies decide to keep their eye on you, it can sometimes feel like they are smothering you.
Sure, it’s great when they keep your freezer stocked up with awesome homemade jiǎozi (饺子), dumpings. But what do you do when they start calling you every other day and telling you to make sure you cook them the right way?
It took me ages to figure out that, when someone like this asks nosy questions or makes comments that feel pushy and patronizing, they are just doing what feisty mama bears do best—showing concern for you.
The word in Chinese is guānxīn (关心). It means “to show concern for.” If you’re like me, you might feel annoyed by this at first, and just want to tell her to mind her own business! But over time, you start to understand that someone who is trying to “guānxīn” you means well.
The trick is to learn how to respond graciously, but in a way that will satisfy a concerned auntie so she does back off a little bit.
Over the years, I paid attention to how Chinese people respond to various “guānxīn” chatter and experimented with various responses of my own. The list below contains the most frequently heard statements and questions, and my canned responses, which usually work pretty well for me. Feel free to use them if you’d like!
Guānxīn Statement: “You’re not wearing warm enough clothes!”
While saying this, a well-meaning auntie will probably frown, give you a disapproving look, and check under your coat to see how many layers you’ve got on.
Pinyin: Nǐ chuān de tài shǎo le!
Characters: 你穿得太少了!
Literal translation: You wear too little.
Canned Response: “I’m fine, I don’t get cold!”
This response is usually followed by a comment about how foreigners have such “strong bodies.”
Pinyin: Méi shì, wǒ bú pà lěng!
Characters: 没事，我不怕冷！
Literal translation: No problem, I don’t fear cold!
Guānxīn Question: “How come you bought so much stuff?”
Said as she’s looking in your shopping bags.
Pinyin: Nǐ zěn me mǎi le zhè me dūo dōng xi?
Characters: 你怎么买了这么多东西？
Literal translation: You how bought this many things?
Canned Response: “Yeah, I bought too much!”
In my experience, in this situation the question is more like a comment, so there’s no need to give an actual reason why. Just a vague agreement like this is fine.
Pinyin: Shì de! Tài dūo le!
Characters: 是的！太多了！
Literal translation: Yes! Too much!
Guānxīn Statement: “You have a cold? Drink more fluids and get more rest!”
Pinyin: Gǎn mào le? Dūo hē shǔi, dūo xīu xi
Characters: 感冒了？多喝水、多休息！
Literal translation: Have a cold? More drink water, more rest!”
Canned Response: “Got it, thanks!”
Actually, this generic response works well pretty much any time somebody gives you a piece of advice like this.
Pinyin: Zhī dào le, xìe xie!
Characters: 知道了，谢谢！
Literal translation: Know now, thank you!
Guānxīn Statement: “[Place] is dangerous! Don’t go there!”
Often said about train stations and certain cities that have a reputation for being dangerous.
Pinyin: [Place] hěn luàn! Búyào qù!
Characters: [Place]很乱！不要去！
Literal translation: [Place] very chaotic, don’t go.
Canned Response: “Got it, thanks! I will be careful.”
Pinyin: Zhī dào, xìe xie. Wǒ hùi xiǎo xīn yì diǎn.
Characters: 知道，谢谢，我会小心一点！
Literal translation: Know, thank you, I will careful a little more.
Guānxīn Statement: “That’s too expensive!”
Said in response when you say how much you paid for something.
Pinyin: Tài guì le! Tài guì le!
Characters: 太贵了！太贵了！
Literal translation: Too expensive! Too expensive!
Canned Response: “Is it? Next time, help me bargain down the price!”
Pinyin: Gùi ma? Xìa cì bāng wǒ kǎn jìa ba!”
Characters: 贵吗？下次帮我砍价吧！
Literal translation: Expensive? Next time help me bargain!
So there you have the question/comment responses that more or less work for me every time. Of course, there are some questions that I still just don’t quite know how to answer.
For example, before I got married, people would ask me why I wasn’t married yet. That’s a tough one that I’ve seen Chinese friends struggle to answer, too.
Then there are those questions that nosy people who don’t necessarily mean well might ask you, such as how much money you make. I’ve even been asked more than once how much money my father makes, and how much my parents’ house is worth.
It’s not uncommon for Chinese people to feel perfectly comfortable discussing this in detail with people they don't even know that well, but it’s my opinion that nothing good can come from getting into a conversation on those topics.
So, in my case, those questions are usually followed by an awkward silence!
But when you know someone and it’s clear that they mean well, it’s much easier to answer anything they say. Just keep it light, and remember that they are just expressing concern (guānxīn) for you.
Anyway, that's my experience dealing with these fiesty mama bears! If you're lucky enough to have a mama bear in your life, tell me about her in the comments below.
If you have any more questions or need help with finding a room in Shanghai, feel free to contact me. I will be here for a while.
This entry was posted on April 6, 2014, in Shanghai, Shanghai housing and tagged Find a room in Shanghai,Living in China, Renting a room in Shanghai, Shanghai, Shanghai agency, Shanghai Expat, Shanghai housing, Shanghai living expenses, Shanghai People's Square, Shanghai Pudong, Shanghai rent, Smart Shanghai.
Toilet paper was invented in China in the late 1300s. It was for emperors only. I wonder if that’s where the saying “sit on the throne” comes from?
Fortune cookies are not Chinese. They were invented in 1920 by a worker in the Key Heong Noodle Factory in San Francisco. Either way they are delicious.
What time is it? That’s easy; all of China is in one time zone.
The number one hobby in China is stamp collecting.
Contrary to western civilization: white, rather than black, is the Chinese color for mourning and funerals.
By Michael Hurwitz | Date: February 26th, 2014 | Category: Chinese Culture
In the U.S., we have our fair share of regional stereotypes: Southerners are friendly, New Yorkers are rude and impatient, Californians are laid back surfers, you know the drill. And, although some may think of China as a pretty uniform place, if you look closely you’ll see that it’s as diverse and divided as any Western country. Along with that, of course, come some pretty hilarious and interesting stereotypes. We’ve written about Chinese stereotypes of foreigners before, but here are our six favorite Chinese stereotypes — of other Chinese people!
Northerners are Manly as Can Be
Just as in the US, perhaps the biggest cultural division in China is between north and south. With Northern China’s brutal winters and infamous pollution, northerners (usually known as Dōng běi rén/东北人) are often regarded as more masculine than their southern cousins: larger in stature, heartier in constitution, and most of all having a higher alcohol tolerance are the main stereotypes I’ve heard, and these all have kernels of truth to them.
I had a boss from Changchun (长春), which is way up by the border with North Korea, and the dude could throw back baijiu shots like no one I’ve ever seen (and I went to public school in the Midwest).
In my observations, they do also tend to be a bit bigger and broader than southerners, though that’s harder to pin down as there is now so much mobility and intermarriage between provinces.
Beijingers Love to Talk Politics
Beijingers are famous above all for theiramazingly entertaining “er hua” (儿化) way of speaking, but if you’ve ever taken a cab in Beijing, you probably also remember how talkative and chatty the driver was. Beijingers in general, the stereotype goes, love to chat, particularly about “big” topics like politics, current events, etc. This may not seem unusual but it’s actually pretty rare to find people elsewhere in China that will ramble on (kǎn, 侃, lit. “to chat idly, to boast smoothly”) to complete strangers about these sorts of topics.
My personal Beijing experience really backs this up, and the drivers and locals I met would often finish their observations with a laugh and say, “wǒ men Běijīng rén tè bíe xǐ huan kǎn” (“我们北京人特别喜欢侃!”, “We Beijingers particularly like chatting!”, though it’s a bit tough to translate 侃 directly).
It’s actually pretty similar to how Washingtonians in the US tend consider themselves a bit more knowledgeable about politics and current affairs and love to bust out that knowledge at dinner parties, galas and progressively more disappointing football games. Whether or not there’s any truth to this for both Washington and Beijing, the stereotype remains.
Shanghainese Women are Materialistic
Shanghai is China’s wealthiest city, but sometimes the wealth here is ostentatious to an extent that is, itself, ostentatious - it’s pretty absurd all around.
Here’s the thing though: in my experience, it’s not the Shanghainese women themselves that are materialistic, even though this stereotype is widespread. It’s the migrants from elsewhere in China (often referred to as wài dì ŕen (外地人, “other place people”) or more derisively as xiāng xià rén (乡下人, lit. “countryside/village people”)) who, wanting to fit into this stereotype, affect a strong sense of wealth and materialism. The most ostentatious cars and apartments tend to belong to non-natives, for whom the wealth and spoils of the city are a relatively new phenomenon. People raised in Shanghai tend to have grown up around wealth and are often more subtle in showing it off.
In any event, it blows my mind that in a country where 50 years ago YOU COULDN’T OWN PRIVATE PROPERTY, there is a city known for producing some of the world’s most materialistic women... what a time to be alive.
Sichuan Women are China’s Beauty Queens
Sichuan (四川) is sort of the “heartland” of China, the equivalent of Ohio/Kentucky/Michigan in a John Cougar Mellencamp type of way. Much as the Miss America pageant has been dominated by heartland ladies of late, Sichuanese women are renowned nationwide for their beauty. This is a tricky stereotype, because if you’re Sichuanese you might get held up to an unrealistic standard, but hey, it’s not hard to see why:
There’s even a term for them, là mèi zi (辣妹子), which plays on the spicy (là/辣) food the region is known for. It’s almost as cheesy as referring to Latina women as “spicy hot!”, if you’re wondering.
Southerners Will Eat Pretty Much Anything
The somewhat offensive global stereotype of Chinese people as being willing to eat anythinglikely originates from southern China, namely Guangdong province, which produced the vast majority of immigrants to the West in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
I can confirm though, Cantonese cuisine, especially the authentic stuff when you’re actually down in Guangdong, has some very bizarre ingredients, including staple dishes like hé yè zhēng tián jī (荷叶蒸田鸡) – steamed frog wrapped in lotus leaf (bonus points because frog in Chinese is literally “field chicken”).
The more offensive stereotype of Chinese as consumers of dog and cat meat is also a Guangdong phenomenon. While this does occur, it’s by no means widespread, and Guangdong natives are often the object of derision by other Chinese because of this stereotype, sort of like how Americans make fun of southerners for eating things like pickled pigs feet.
Wenzhounese are the Jews of China
For a fairly random city on the Zhejiang coast, Wenzhou (温州) has become amazingly wealthy. The theory is that because it’s pretty isolated (separated from other population centers by mountains), it was generally left alone by the central government, allowing the city to develop a very strong business and entrepreneurial culture. This business savvy has led to the popular saying, “Wenzhounese are the Jews of the Orient” (dōng fāng de yóu tài rén/东方的犹太人), which is pretty silly because who calls China “the Orient” anymore?
Anyway, this stereotype is pretty pervasive, and while it’s weird as hell to call a group “the Jews of ___” (they definitely don’t keep kosher in a city whose signature dish is “a piece of cake cooked with crab meat and pork”), there’s validity to the stereotype about business savvy: Wenzhou is often considered the birthplace of China’s private, capitalist economy, and the city’s residents were some of the first to take advantage of the new economic opportunities in the 1970’s.
By Michael Hurwitz | Date: February 21st, 2014 | Category: Chinese Culture
Today we’re talking about the nature of design in China. With a culture and history as long as China’s, you’ve got to expect that they have some pretty unique and ingrained design concepts going on - and you’d definitely be right.
From color choices to amazing engineering to eccentric Chinese web design styles, the overall look and feel of life in China is greatly impacted by the nation and its design choices, so we’re going to take a look at three key elements of Chinese design and try to sort out what makes them so Chinese and why.
Color Me Surprised
One of the first things you notice when you land in China is that things simply look different. It’s hard to put your finger on it exactly, but it’s really about all the little things: wider streets in some places and narrower streets in others, buildings of mismatched heights, and unique house/apartment layouts are just some of the things that let you know you’re most definitely not in Kansas anymore (never been there so not sure if that’s a valid thing to say still…), but for me at least, the most prevalent visual element was color.
Chinese designers think of color in a totally different way than most Western designers do, and it’s a pretty interesting window into the culture.
For one, you’ll notice red everywhere. In the West red is certainly a key design element, but it has a relatively limited emotional range, usually connoting passion, love or fiery anger. Here in China it symbolizes everything from death to birth to good luck to wealth and prosperity, so it’s used in an astonishing variety of architectural, interior and advertising designs. Just look:
There’s a joke in here about painting the town red but I’m not going to be the one to make it. Anyway, part of this (arguably) excessive use of red comes down to a certain emphasis on directness and lack of subtlety in Chinese culture. Have you ever had a Chinese person tell you you look fat today? You can blame that on cultural differences and have that second piece of cake anyway ;)
Another interesting color element is the recent rise to prominence of a color referred to as tǔháo jīn (土豪金), or “tuhao gold.” Super-quick primer, “tǔháo” is a Chinese term that has come to refer to the nation’s nouveau riche, known to spend their newfound wealth in particularly tasteless, showy ways.
Tuhao jin is a type of gold color the came to prominence last year when Apple released a special gold iPhone in China that immediately became a must-have for the nation’s Tuhao. Soon, Chinese netizens termed the gaudy hue “tuhao jin,” and the color quickly became a defining design element of China’s new wealth. It’s used frequently in advertisements and other materials intended for a newly-wealthy audience, and is indicative of the interesting way color carries weight in Chinese culture differently than it does in the West.
Web Design Craziness
If you’ve ever visited a Chinese website intended primarily for domestic consumption,check out these examples. Does that design style look cluttered and overwhelming to you? But these are some of the most popular sites in China and get as many if not more hits than famous Western websites.
How is this possible? Chinese web design is a bizarre animal, but it’s bizarre for a reason.
For one, these sites look a little crazy to us in part because of the language difference. Even for those of us who have studied Chinese for years, it’s tough to comprehend a wall of Chinese character text upon first glance, and there’s still a bit of an immediate intimidation factor no matter your comfort level with the language.
The fact remains, though, that there is an overwhelming amount of text and little to no graphics or guiding menus, not to mention frequent pop-ups and other interruptions. As one American web designer working in China put it, “they regularly practice many of the fundamentally understood bad design principles that Western designers strive to avoid at all costs. I honestly felt like I was back to 1995 all over again.”
I can confirm, surfing the Chinese web often does feel like Clinton’s in office and we’re all wearing acid-washed jeans and listening to Boyz II Men and C&C Music Factory. So, what’s the story?
One theory is that the way Chinese people tend to absorb and process information is different in many ways from how Westerners do.
My personal observations as well as some research suggest that Chinese students (and really East Asian students in general) are trained to absorb the maximum amount of data upon sight and then analyze and interpret later, whereas in the West we tend to try to interpret and apply information right away.
As such, Chinese websites put a premium on showing as much information as possible because that’s what the Chinese audience prefers and interacts with best. I think it’s fascinating how this design feature reflects ingrained cultural traits!
I’ve noticed that this is gradually beginning to change, however. Two of the most popular e-commerce sites in China, for instance, are the all-mighty Taobao and 京东 (jīngdōng), both of which feature very modern, clean-looking web designs that aren’t especially distinct from theirWestern counterparts.
Is this a sea-change in the way Chinese netizens process information from websites? Or just a gradual globalization of Chinese web design? Either way it’s an interesting interaction between design, culture, business and technology.
Engineering
China’s high-speed railway lines were all over the headlines a few years back, and for good reason - they’ve made travelling between the country’s large cities much faster, easier and cheaper (imagine taking a train from New York to Chicago in 5 hours for $90, and you only have to show up at the train station 10 minutes before departure! That’s what the Shanghai-Beijing train is like).
The experience of taking the trains feels pretty different from what it’s like to take a train in the US or Europe, though. It’s hard to really explain, but there’s a certain uniformity to the entire system - every station pretty much looks the same, all the trains themselves are identical, etc.
This is, in many ways, a uniquely Chinese approach, as Chinese design and culture tend to favor central planning over other methods. In the US, rail lines and stations were all built at different times, lending each rail experience a distinct feel, but in China, they’re all the same - for better (simplicity/convenience) and for worse (boredom).
Another interesting aspect of Chinese design that you can see in the train system is the affinity for shānzhài (山寨) - knockoff/imitation culture. When you can buy 100 kinds of fake iPhones and handbags in a country, it leads to some interesting design quirks at the industrial level.
Because China is a relative late-comer to the high-speed rail game, for instance, it has had the chance to piece together the best parts of other country’s system to create a uniquely Chinese rail system.
In a sense it’s like a knockoff of something other countries are producing, but rather than just being a cheap imitation, it’s their best shot at emulating the diǎnxíng 典型 (典型), or optimal/original example.
Harvard University railway expert Har-Ye Kan talks about “principle of emulation that is intrinsic to the Chinese culture: to model itself after what it deems as the classic exemplar.”
Have you seen any crazy or cool instances of design in China? Leave em in the comments below!
By Michael Hurwitz | Date: February 6th, 2014 | Category: Chinese Culture
Westerners (myself very much included) have some interesting ideas of what China is actually like. As this reddit thread demonstrates, however, expectations and reality often don’t match up, which is why we’re here to debunk some common urban myths about China. From dubious claims about five millennia of history to misconceptions about speaking “Chinese”, here are our top ten urban myths about China!
1. Every Chinese person is an only child
China’s one-child policy has been in place for decades, and it is true that many Chinese don’t have siblings, but it’s far from a universal situation. Ethnic minorities and couples who themselves are both only children have long been able to have 2-3 kids, and the restrictions are being eased further beginning this year to allow anyone who is an only child to have multiple kids.
2. "Chinese" is one single languageWe’ve covered this topic a lot before, but there tends to be this myth in the West that there is one “Chinese” language that everyone of Chinese ancestry speaks. Truth is, until the mid-20th century, China had enormous problems with domestic communication in large part because there wasn’t a widely-used, unifying language.
Mao Zedong changed all that by introducing Mandarin (pǔtōnghuà 普通话, lit. “the common language” and the dialect traditionally spoken by leaders in Beijing) as the nation’s standard language, uniting people who spoke thousands of different dialects under one linguistic flag.
Still, many people these days grow up speaking their local dialect at home and learning Mandarin in school, and these dialects are serious business: I was in Fujian province a few months ago and noticed how people from towns just 30 miles apart spoke (native!) languages that were completely mutually unintelligible. That’d be like if people from Baltimore and Washington, DC couldn’t understand each other unless they spoke a dialect from Boston.
3. "Chinese food" is all one type of food
In the West we tend to get sold one unified brand of “Chinese food,” but that’s patently ridiculous. Chinese food is incredibly diverse, from super spicy Sichuan (四川) dishes to dairy-infused Yunnan (云南) cuisine to food from far western Xinjiang (新疆) that’s like a heavenly fusion of Hunan and Turkish food.
In the US, “Chinese food” tends to be a Westernized fusion of Hunan and Sichuan cuisine, and while it’s delicious in its own right, calling it Chinese food makes as much sense as calling dollar store spaghetti Italian food - there might not be a better term for it, exactly, but an Italian person wouldn’t take kindly to it.
4. Everyone in China is the same ethnicity
When you (and I, for that matter) say “Chinese”, we usually mean people of the Han (汉) ethnic group, who make up about 92% of the population of China. That other 8% are the country’s shǎoshùmínzú (少数民族), consisting mostly of Zhuang, Manchu (of Manchurian fame), Dai, Hui and Uygur peoples.
Traditionally these minorities lived mostly among others of their group in rural areas, but these days it’s very common to find minorities in cities, and I even had a Chinese teacher at my university who was from the Dai ethnic group. Uygurs in particular are very visibly not-Han, and in low-budget Chinese movies or TV shows they’re often selected to play Westerners because, with a bit of makeup and lighting, they can look very Caucasian (this is a whole other hilarious topic that we’ll surely get into at some point!).
5. Chinese students have the best test scores in the world
Every year when the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test results get released, the global media inevitably throws a kanipshin about how the Chinese educational model is superior because of the extraordinary test scores coming out of Shanghai.
While there are, of course, incredibly gifted and intelligent kids here in China, the scores are exceptionally misleading because they come exclusively from Shanghai, which draws the best and brightest kids with its top-notch schools and then puts them through the academic ringer, pumping out skilled and intelligent kids but leaving the vast majority of the country with inferior educational resources.
Supposedly the PISA tests measured results from 9 other cities in China as well, but the government declined to release those figures, and they’re not included in the “China” score at all.
6. Chinese are non-religious
While the PRC is officially atheist, it is hardly an irreligious country. Home to some 70 million practicing Christians (as many as in the UK and France combined, it’s worth noting) as well as millions from other religions, China has a long and storied tradition of Buddhism, Daoism and of course Confucianism that continues to be present in everyday, modern life.
Superstitions based on folk religions continue to appear today - if you’ve never visited an old Chinese doctor, I...well, I don’t recommend it, because they believe some weird stuff.
Traditional Chinese cultural beliefs, as well, discuss how divine beings from these religions transmitted many of the values (namely the importance of family) that are still so central to Chinese society today. I’ll admit I’m not especially informed about this subject, but this guide from the always-excellent Asia Society is a good resource to learn more.
7. Everything you do in China is monitored by the government
When I first moved here I had a vision of China as a vaguely-Orwellian surveillance state, but I quickly learned that that is an enormous exaggeration. While there are cameras on street corners, protests are actually fairly commonplace (depending on what they’re protesting against) and the personal, day-to-day level freedoms you enjoy are actually somewhat better than in the US!
Enforcement of laws like drinking age, alcohol consumption and driving rules tend to be very lax, and there’s a very hands-off attitude about anything that doesn’t directly challenge party rule. Compare this to Singapore, for instance, where there are hefty fines for things like chewing gum, and I’d go so far as to say that in some ways, China is one of the world’s freer countries.
8. China is the world's oldest culture
This phrase gets thrown around a lot, particularly if you levy criticism at some aspect of Chinese culture or society. “Chinese culture is 5,000 years old, we know what we’re doing” is generally the gist of the response.
That’s BS though - for one, just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s good (Led Zeppelin notwithstanding), but more to the point, Chinese culture isn’t even 5 millennia old. This commonly-cited figure is based on the supposed existence of the Yellow Emperor (皇帝, huángdì), who, we’re told, reigned around 2700 BCE and oversaw the birth of what we now call the Chinese people and their culture.
Here’s the thing: there’s no evidence he ever existed, and the 5,000 years talking point wasn’t even common until the early 1990’s, when the CCP increased their efforts to globalize the country and realized they needed to stand out from other ancient but extant cultures like Greece and Egypt.
9. China is primarily a communist country
The CCP, of course, rules the country and the PRC is officially listed as a communist country, but these days that’s not much more than window-dressing: China is a capitalist, consumer society with some aspects of communism left over from the Cultural Revolution days. I’m no political scientist, but when there are two Starbucks’ on your block as well as a store that sells 5 kinds of imported blue cheese, I’m not sure how communist your country can be.
The things we think of as communist, like huge bland apartment blocks, food rationing and big fiery speeches in enormous city squares are but a distant memory for most Chinese, and unknown to anyone under 35. Thing that you’d expect to be free, like healthcare, transportation and even entry to parks and museums often come with high price tags.
Though they’ve got a bit of a bias, this report from the CATO Institute sheds some light on the issue in a way I’m not knowledgeable enough to do.
10. China is better at "getting things done" than the US/Western countries, in part because they don't have to vote or seek approval for everything
Ah, the central point of many a Tom Friedmanarticle. The argument usually goes something like this: China is doing amazing things these days in terms of infrastructure, scientific advancements and the like because they don’t have to deal with the choking, glacial pace of American democracy; they have the money and the power so they just do it, resulting in rovers on the moon, record-setting supercomputers and the world’s fastest trains.
I’ll be honest, there is a bit of validity to this argument (I took the Shanghai Maglev with a visiting friend who remarked on how they’ve been trying to build high speed rail in the US for decades with no luck - it’s a tough comparison to ignore) and it’s frustrating to watch serious, beneficial projects fail in the US because of congressional chicanery.
That said, it’s ludicrous to claim that China is superior at “getting things done,” because 99% of the time, the opposite is true. China is still a developing country and is wildly inefficient in most spheres, even those amazing trains my friend was awed by: there have been innumerable high profile rail and road catastrophes in the last three years alone, including a much-hyped high-speed rail link between Shanghai and Beijing that had to shut down due to mechanical problems just three weeks after opening, and a highway bridge collapse that revealed supports stuffed not with concrete but with sticks, plastic bags and other trash (I suppose this is efficient from a waste disposal perspective).
On a smaller scale it can be hard to get basic stuff done in China, as well. If you lose your bank card, for instance, it can take more than a week to get a new one from a state-owned Chinese bank (twist: they’re ALL state-owned), and you can’t withdraw money any other way for some completely inexplicable reason, so I quickly learned to keep backup bank accounts and other cash sources in case I lose my card. In my book, that’s not a hallmark of a country that has mastered the art of efficiency and “getting things done”!
What are some urban myths or misconceptions you've heard about China? Do you agree/disagree with the ones I've laid out here? Let us know in the comments below!
By Michael Hurwitz | Date: November 7th, 2013 | Category: Chinese Culture
Now that I’ve put a four year term of service in the People’s Republic, it’s a good time to look back on how things hit me when I first arrived:
1. Holy crap there are so many people
It’s honestly not something you can grasp until you’re actually surrounded by it regularly, but the number of people in cities in China is extraordinarily overwhelming. It’s not even that it’s really dense, like it is in India, but the sea of people just sort of goes on…forever. The fact that they’re almost all the same ethnicity adds to it as well, and can make it almost seem like some sort of collective mass of humanity that’s as much a feature of the city as the buildings or roads. The thing is, you get used to it veryquickly; I went to my sister’s wedding in rural Virginia last year and I was thinking, where the hell is everyone?!
2. Everything looks dirty, but kind of isn’t.
You may well have read about the pollution issues plaguing China’s cities, particularly in the North. Even here in Shanghai, which usually enjoys air quality on par with a bad day in LA, we have bad days (this morning, for instance, the AQI was above 200 and I had to eschew my usual morning run), which makes everything look kind of…hazy, I suppose. It’s a bit like when you’re watching a stream of something online and the picture quality suddenly goes down (looking at you, NBA League Pass), and all of a sudden things look bleaker. However, usually things aren’t actually dirty – there isn’t extra dust in your apartment or stuff all over your bike or whatever, unless the pollution is really, really bad. People cook food outside that is totally OK to eat (sometimes not, but that’s for other reasons!). Reconciling how things look with how they actually affected me took a long time to sort out.
3. People speak like, 500 kinds of Chinese
Especially when you can barely get a sentence out in Mandarin (even that was a charitable description of my skills my first few months in Shanghai), it’s entirely overwhelming to try to grasp how this language that already seems so foreign is like the simplified, universal form of what is actually a widely-fractured language family. The first time I heard Shanghainese, for example, I was pretty sure it was Russian or Romanian or something, and remember thinking, those old Chinese people sure do speak that random Eastern European language well! Staring down that linguistic landscape got a little easier once I saw how nearly everyone speaks Mandarin, but it was still potently freaky at first.
4. Your personal space is now everyone’s personal space
Growing up in a city in the Eastern US and going to university in a smaller Midwestern town, I thought I had mastered adjustments in interpersonal space dynamics – boy, was I wrong. In a country with a billion and a half people, your space is really everyone’s space. I distinctly remember my bus from the airport, on my very first hour in China, being crammed in with dozens of people, without any room to move my shoulders around. It very much freaked me out, to the point that I was sweating and probably visibly uncomfortable with how close these strangers I couldn’t talk to were to me. These days though, I totally disregard any sense of personal space, and when I take the metro in DC and people back away from me in a frightened manner I question if I need to switch deodorant brands or something.
5. People can seem so rude until you’ve exchanged a half dozen words
I was completely taken aback, initially, by how downright rude people seemed to be – like, you’re going to scream and curse (presumably; I couldn’t understand anything back then) at me for walking next to your car? C’mon man. Maybe it was my time in the Midwest or my year in New Zealand, but I was totally unaccustomed to rudeness to strangers as a default personality mode.
By Michael Hurwitz | Date: January 22nd, 2014 | Category: Chinese Culture
If you’re doing any sort of analysis of China, it pays to remember that until relatively recently, China was a closed off country, with little substantive contact with the rest of the world. While this has changed tremendously in the last several decades, old habits die hard, and within China there are still very strongly-held stereotypes about the outside world, in part because of the very limited information that was available for so long.
As a result, China is home to an interesting phenomenon - there tend to be very specific stereotypes about various non-Chinese nationalities and ethnicities that are so pervasive as to be inescapable, whether you’re talking to a rural farmer or a highly-educated Shanghainese. Part of this is that, in the minds of many Chinese, there is often really strong link between a country and their celebrities or cultural output. When the new season of the BBC show Sherlock was in production recently. For instance, UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s Weibo account was flooded with requests to speed up filming and messages of thanks upon the season’s release, even though Cameron repeatedly mentioned that he had absolutely nothing to do with the show whatsoever. Anyway, here are my favorite Chinese stereotypes of other nationalities and ethnicities (and my thoughts on why they exist)!
French - romantic (làng màn-浪漫)
We sort of have this stereotype in the States as well, but it’s on a whole other level here in China. I’ve heard Chinese girls say they’d do anything to have a French boyfriend out of the misplaced belief that they’d invariably be showered with wine and chocolates. If you’re trying to pick your mate based on country of origin, you’re in for some rude awakenings (in my view, anyway).
Americans - open-minded (sīxiǎng kāifàng - 思想开放)
I get these ones all the time, especially from cab drivers, whom I have to inform that I’m broke as hell (which they usually find out when I argue over the price at the end of ride) and I never knew anyone with a gun growing up.
I think these perceptions stem from the fact that the Americans that travel to/live in China tend to do so because a.) they are open-minded enough to launch themselves into a very foreign culture like China’s and b.) they used to primarily be high-level executives of multinational corporations, though that’s no longer really the case.
All our shoot-em-up movies probably contribute to the gun thing, though I don’t complain as much because if a driver assumes I know how to use a gun he’s less likely to try to rip me off!
Related words: rich (yǒu qián-有钱), own guns (yǒngyǒu qiāngzhī-拥有枪支)
Germans - meticulous (yánjǐn-严谨)
I’ve worked for a handful of German companies in Shanghai and seen this first-hand - many of my Chinese coworkers were really proud of working there, reasoning that being accepted into a German firm meant they had a strong work ethic or were otherwise more capable than their peers at other companies.
For whatever reason the Chinese impression of Germany is that everything is very precise and happens right on time, so I always hated to burst the bubble by pointing out that Germans were usually just trying to get through the day without pissing off their boss, just like everyone else.
Related words: punctual (Shǒu shí-守时) hardworking (Gōngzuò nǔlì-工作努力)
American women - promiscuous: (xìng guānniàn kāifàng-性观念开放)
This is something I’ve just started to hear recently, sort of the flipside of the 开放 (kāi fàng) thing I suppose. I think it stems from American movies, specifically the ones that see release and are popular in China, which tend to be action-focused blockbusters or other fare that doesn’t exactly avoid the young blonde bimbo stereotypes.
The fact that a lot of the Americans living in Chinese cities these days tend to be university students who like to indulge in the party scene probably contributes to the stereotype as well.
Canadians - polite (yǒu lǐmào-有礼貌)
Gift giving in China is different from the West in that physical gifts are not usually given for birthdays, weddings or Spring Festival.
Cash – specifically those oversized pink 100 yuan notes – placed in a red envelope, or "hóng bāo (红包)", are the most fitting for those occasions. Giving money for birthdays is reserved for children and senior citizens.
Chinese children holding red envelopes
My kids get money from all the family members and we all give money to my in-laws on their birthdays, but everyone else's goes by practically unnoticed. Spring Festival is much the same except adults give money to the children of their friends as well.
So even though there's not a lot of gift giving going on multiple times a year as there are in Western countries, there are plenty of times when gifts are appropriate.
A thoughtful gift is great when you want to do something like thank a friend, say goodbye to someone, meet your girlfriend's family members or meet with a Chinese associate to discuss a business partnership.
With that said there are plenty of things to remember so that you don't make a faux pas when you meet your girlfriend's dad for the first time or hope to seal the deal on a hot business transaction.
Continue reading for an overview of what to do, what to buy and what you should avoid.
Gift Giving Dos and Don'ts
Keep these tips in mind as you're considering what you'll give:
Do feel free to leave price tags and receipts in the bags if it's an expensive gift. Unlike how it's practiced in most Western countries, you don't have to peel off the price tag.
I was speechless when, at a small dinner to celebrate our marriage, my husband told me to remember how much money each person gave us. Many of them gave us unmarked red envelopes so I quickly found a pen in my purse so I could jot down names and numbers.
At home he took out a small notebook and dutifully wrote down the name of each guest and how much they gave us. Since then, whenever one of those people has had a child or their child graduated from high school, we've consulted the book to see how much we need to give for the occasion.
Don't worry about including a card. Greeting cards are rarely used in China and hard to come by, so a Chinese person wouldn't expect a card along with a gift.
I can honestly say that the only cards I've ever received, in nine years of living in China were Christmas cards from students. The few times my husband has written me a love note and given me flowers, he's had to make his own cards!
Do hold the gift in both hands when giving it to the recipient. Using both hands to give, and receive, gifts is proper etiquette.
Selecting the Right Gift
Gifts for Family
When you're meeting your partner's family, for the first time or during a visit, a gift is expected. Discussing ideas with your partner is a great idea, but if they're not a fountain of ideas, try some of these:
Vitamins and Supplements – These are great for in-laws or in-laws-to-be as Chinese are very health-conscious and love all sorts of traditional medicines and remedies. You might try giving American ginseng, herbal teas or a good-quality multivitamin.
Food/Fruit baskets – Packed full of delicious and exotic fruits, baskets are the go-to gift of choice if you have no idea what to give or if you've never met someone before. If your hometown is known for a special food, buy several to take along as gifts.
Clothing – Sweatshirts or t-shirts from a university or tourist area near your hometown are great options. These work better for people under 50 since senior citizens tend to have wardrobes that consist almost solely of gray, navy and black. I can count on one hand the number of times my 69-year-old father-in-law has worn his bright red University of Wisconsin t-shirt.
Barbies, Legos and Board Games – These are great choices for kids. All three are quite rare in China and super expensive when you do find them.
Gifts for Friends
With friends you'll likely spend less money than you would on family, but the same type of gifts are generally appreciated.
Clothing – Sports apparel, especially if you know their favorite NBA team, is a good gift for basketball fans of all ages.
Perfume and Lotions – Fragrances are catching on in mainland China, so I like to stock up on lotions and body sprays from Bath and Body Works since it's an American company and they offer many light feminine scents. I do avoid giving body wash or soap, lest they think I'm hinting that they need help in the hygiene department.
Other – Pocket knives, appropriate level books in English (if they're interested in English), wallets, key chains, and specialty foods like chocolate or coffee.
Business Acquaintances
Whether you're starting a business relationship or furthering an existing one, a tasteful gift will go a long way in developing and maintaining the relationship.
Engraved Pens – Whether it's a nice pen from your company or engraved with the recipient's name it's a practical gift that will get used time and time again.
Local Snacks – Giving a food gift from your area is both a great gift and conversation starter. A great first-time gift idea.
Cigarettes and Alcohol – I hate encouraging others to smoke and drink, but these are popular and well-received by most businessmen. Even if they don't drink or smoke they can re-gift it to someone who does.
Foreign wines or liquors go over well with close business associates; I used to give my boss bottles of alcohol and he'd take them to business dinners to impress potential clients. These should be reserved for those with whom you already know and have worked with.
Gifts to Avoid
There are some gifts that should be avoided at all costs due to cultural symbolism or the fact that that word shares a similar pronunciation to something undesirable.
Clocks – In Chinese, the words that mean "to give a clock", "sòng zhōng (送钟)", has the same pronunciation as the phrase "sòng zhōng (送终)", which means that the family of a deceased person has completed all the tasks related to burying their loved one.
Due to the sound connection between these two unrelated things, giving a clock is in bad taste.
Chrysanthemums – These flowers are lovely and can be made into a delicious tea, but you don't want to give them for gifts as they're often used for funerals.
Umbrellas – China makes some beautiful umbrellas – both the kind that protect you from the rain and the ones that keep your skin from getting dark (yes, there is a difference!) – but they're not appropriate for gift-giving.
The word umbrella, "sǎn (伞)", sounds like the word "sàn (散)", which means to separate. Giving an umbrella symbolizes that the relationship between you and the recipient may soon dissolve.
Shoes – No matter how cute they are, do not buy those glittery heels or chic boots for your Chinese girlfriend! Shoes should be avoided because, as the thought goes, she could use them to run away from you, thus ending your relationship.
Hats – Green hats, specifically, should be avoided because of the phrase "to wear a green hat", or "dài lǜ mào zi (戴绿帽子)", which is used to express that a man's wife is cheating on him.
As much as my parents would love to give my father-in-law a Green Bay Packers cap to shade him from the sunshine on his daily walks, it's a huge no-no!
The Number "4" – When giving cash gifts, avoid giving an amount that includes a four such as 40 or 400 since the pronunciation of four, "sì (四)", sounds similar to the word death, "sǐ (死)".
This isn't, by any means, a comprehensive list of all the nuances of gift giving in China or with its people.
While the overall culture is quite homogeneous, there's plenty of variances from region to region and within each family. Use this as a guide and seek input from someone close to you if you're unsure.
What are your favorite gifts to give your Chinese friends?
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DIANA XIN
APRIL 20TH, 2015
The truth is, I hate shopping. But something happens when I go to China. Something in the air — either the around-the-clock manufacturing or the settling dust of a run-away economy – turns me into a rabid consumer.
Cute eyeglass frames for $15 USD each. Wooden buttons shaped like elephants. Ceramic buttons painted like porcelain. Tibetan prayer bowls. Cellphone covers for every day of the week.
Some may ask whether I actually needed the same linen balloon pants in three different earth-tone colors.
Honestly? I really did. Because I was on my China shopping spree.
China has its shiny brand name stores, but it also has huge marketplaces filled with vendor stalls that make shopping ten times more fun IF you know what you're doing
China isn’t simply about the Great Wall or 5,000 years of history. With its economic development, China has become a major shopping destination with its own unique flair.
The Guomao district in Beijing, home of the China World Shopping Mall, features such storefronts as Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and Prada.
For me, however, these sterile fluorescent halls with their white mannequins have never held quite as much appeal as China’s other shopping venues.
Packed antique stalls, bustling night markets, and shopping centers divided into booths of different vendors with the same merchandise. That's what I'm here for.
For those inadequately prepared, however, shopping in China can be a complete nightmare. There are certain things you'll have to know to survive your first few shopping experiences.
1. Understand the discount system
Read the explanation below to find out the discount amount this sign is advertising
Shopping centers in China will often post sale signs advertising dă zhé (打折), such as “打2折 (dǎ 2 zhé)” or “打 8 折 (dǎ 8 zhé).”
Instead of posting the percentage of the discount, these signs tell you the percentage of the original price you are expected to pay.
So “打2折 (dǎ 2 zhé)” means you will pay 20 percent of the original price (for an 80% discount) and “打8折 (dǎ 8 zhé)” means you will pay 80 percent of the original price (for a 20% discount).
I found this incredibly confusing at first, but just remember: A lower number means a better deal.
You may also encounter the phrase "...zhé qĭ (折起)", such as “2折起 (2 zhé qĭ),” which means you can get discounts up to 2 zhé, or up to 80 percent off.
2. Sometimes people will follow you
A vendor trying to get her customer to come back. Don't be surprised if she runs after you.
I was seven years old on my first trip to China when this happened to me. A salesperson trying to convince my mother that I needed a pair of khaki pants followed us for several hundred feet.
Depending on where you are, sales associates will be terrifyingly tenacious when dealing with weak-willed customers.
You'll need to be equally tenacious when you're bargaining to get a good deal.
3. It's easy to get exactly what you want
One of the best things about shopping in China is getting your purchases customized.
Jewelry stores often display strings of beads that can be bought and transformed into whatever shapes and patterns you please.
Fabrics of your choice can be brought to a tailor, along with a pattern, photo, or sample of what you want made.
Friends of mine have purchased silk-lined suits, cloth cargo shorts, and even a wedding dress custom-made this way.
4. Most vendors only accept cash
No vendor street is complete without an ATM machine. Most vendors only accept cash
While modern shopping centers typically accept credit cards, you will definitely want to carry cash when you shop off the beaten path.
In general, most Chinese people tend to carry cash rather than rely on plastic.
5. You'll get tons of receipts
Often, when you shop in different departments of a large store, each sales associate you encounter will write down your purchases on a small piece of paper. This is a called a fā piào (发票), or receipt.
Seemingly insignificant, these little slips of paper have become an important part of China’s invoicing and taxation process since the late 1980s.
Properly issued invoices should have a number and a government stamp, but there is quite a bit of fraud and an entire black market around these squares of paper.
For the most part, however, shoppers only need to worry about bringing all their receipts to the cashier counter where they can finally check out, and receive yet another receipt.
6. Vendors expect you to bargain
Modern shopping malls generally have set prices that can’t be negotiated, but vendors at night markets, antique stalls, or personal booths at other shopping centers usually expect customers to question their prices.
But bargaining and haggling isn’t just procedure. It’s an artform. You can see how real Chinese people bargain in a Yoyo Chinese premium video and learn a few phrases to get a good deal.
I've listed a few phrases below this video, too, so you'll have more to work with!
How much is it?
duō shăo qián?
多少钱?
Too expensive! (This should be the first response to any price.)
tài guì le!
太贵了
Let me think about it
wŏ xiăng yi xiăng
我想一想
Can you make it a little cheaper?
néng pián yì yì diăn ma?
能便宜一点吗
I don’t want it
bú yào le
不要了
7. It's okay to talk with your hands
If you are still brushing up on vocabulary, consider learning a bit of sign language instead.
Chinese number gestures allow you to use one hand to signal the numbers one through ten, a “handy” way of naming your price.
Because Chinese dialect is so varied, merchants across the country have long relied on these number gestures to communicate with one another.
If you don't know these hand signals, see some unbelievably adorable local Chinese children show you with this free Yoyo Chinese video:
8. Knockoffs as far as the eye can see
Depending on who you are, fake merchandise can be the highlight of or the bane of shopping in China.
Either way, it’s always good to double-check quality. Read any letterings or labels for spelling errors, and check the stitching and seams for loose threads or unraveling.
Also make sure that colors and materials match up. Jade, pearls, and other precious stones can be brought to an appraiser.
Shopping in China can be fun if you know what you're doing. It takes practice and a thick skin to get what you want at the price you want it.
Just remember that vendors expect customers to bargain. If you can't get the price you're looking for, chances are, you can find the exact same thing in another vendor's stall.
When you've finished shopping for yourself, don't forget about your friends and family back home! Handcrafted kites, embroidered shoes, and feathered Chinese hacky sacks make great gifts for children.
Women may appreciate silk scarves, jewelry, or lipstick cases with decorated compact mirrors.
For the home decorator, there are wooden boat models, calligraphy scrolls, handmade pottery, and ornamental compasses.
What’s your favorite unnecessary purchase? (Have I mentioned my elephant lamp that lights up when you press its belly button?) And do you have any great bargaining strategies? Share in the comments below!
DIANA XIN writes fiction and teaches writing in Seattle, Washington. She used to teach English in Beijing, and hopes to visit again soon to see friends and family and to eat all the food twice. She enjoys cooking, hiking, and climbing big rocks.
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