Editorial: Learning Chinese Culture

I came to an intersection. It had quite a lot of traffic, and there was a set of traffic lights and a zebra crossing. British zebra crossings are very unusual. In fact they have no "zebra" markings, instead a number of square metal plates are nailed at each end of the crossing. On the post of the pedestrian lights is a similarly unusual object, and on this rectangular object there is a button and some explanatory text. I didn't understand the text, so I just ignored it, and stood on the pavement waiting for the green pedestrian light. After a long time the lights still hadn't changed, and I started to suspect they might be broken. But since the lights for the traffic hadn't changed either, I thought perhaps British traffic lights just take longer to change. In this way I stood there like a fool, watching car after car pass by, for more than ten minutes. At that point, a kind old English gentleman came up and told me that in England if you want to cross the road you first have to push the button below the pedestrian lights.

— from "England, My First Stop After Leaving Home" by Miao Ye (Little Readers May 2002)

Learning about chinese culture is, I'm sure, a goal shared by almost everybody who comes to China by choice, although just how important a goal it is for them, I'm not sure. In truth, unless you fell down an open manhole immediately after leaving the airport and have been there ever since, it's impossible not to learn a great deal about the culture just by living here. But in addition to this, for me, learning the culture is one of my most important goals outside the day-to-day demands of my job. It influences my decisions ("I really should go to English corner today, even though every single person will ask me what country I come from, because I might learn more about chinese culture"), and it brings me consolation ("I spent a whole day running around and I still can't get my visa extended, but at least I learnt something about chinese culture"). It also goes a long way to explaining why I'm currently in a town where there are more sheep than cars.

But of course the first question we have to ask is: what is culture? I think culture can be divided into two categories, the first being the general knowledge that all members of a culture possess to much the same degree. This includes all the things that one needs to know to get by in everyday life: etiquette, tact, guanxi, small talk, haggling, and the like. For foreigners living in China, these are the "compulsory units". But this category also includes a huge wealth of other culturally specific knowledge which does not have much practical use and yet which I find fascinating to learn about nevertheless: childhood games, school, family, courtship and marriage, attitudes towards various countries, events, or people, and so on. When learning about these subjects, it is always important to keep in mind that China is changing rapidly, so some things that were true ten years ago might no longer be true today. The average person's awareness of history, from China's distant imperial past up to recent events such as the Cultural Revolution, also falls into the category of shared cultural knowledge. All of these things are part of what it means to be chinese.

The second category includes all the other facets of human existence which vary between cultures but also vary in the extent that individuals take an interest in them. There are frankly too many to pursue them all in depth. For me, some of the things that I have made an effort to learn about include cooking, literature, and music. Of course, the boundary between these two categories of culture is not always clearly defined, for example familiarity with a large base of well-known songs could be considered an aspect of general knowledge.

Learning the second kind of cultural knowledge is not very problematic; the meaning of "I want to learn to cook chinese food" is quite clear. From now on, I will talk mainly about the first category. How does one obtain this kind of knowledge? Certainly there is material written about it, perhaps even more written in english than in chinese: guide books, web pages, even scholarly articles. But no amount of reading can take the place of first-hand experience. Second-hand accounts are a kind of summary, and will always include omissions, interpretations (or misinterpretations), under- and over-exaggerations, and so on. The writer, regardless of whether they are native or non-native, is only presenting what they think chinese culture is. Furthermore, the biggest obstacle to understanding a foreign culture is to constantly judge it by the norms of one's own culture. Learning a culture requires a "leap of faith" to recognise that it is an internally coherent system. I think it is easier to make this leap when immersed in a culture, exposed to it as a unified whole, rather than studying it chapter by chapter.

At university I took a unit called "The Philosophy of Science". The cover of the textbook bore a drawing of a lion, but the artist (who I wish I could remember the name of) had never actually seen a real lion, he had only read descriptions. The drawing looks like a large hairy dog. I do not mean to suggest that reading accounts of chinese culture is worthless, on the contrary it can help you a lot to understand your own experiences in China, but don't expect that books and blogs can make you an expert on chinese culture before you even arrive in the country. I will probably continue reading material about China even after I leave, but everything I read will always have to pass through the filter of my actual experiences in China: that way I can identify errors, exaggerations, and over-generalisations.

So in my opinion, the first step to learning chinese culture is to make sure that you're exposed to it as much as possible. That means making chinese friends, eating chinese food, visiting chinese homes, going places that chinese people go, and so on. Making chinese friends is the most important, because all the other things will tend to follow from that.

But there are still some aspects of culture that a visitor cannot experience first-hand, such as living in a chinese family or going to a chinese school. The next best way of learning about chinese culture is by asking questions. If there's anything you're not sure about, or want to know more about, ask a chinese friend. Better still, ask all your chinese friends! If you see something you don't understand, don't just think "Oh, that's odd," and then forget about it, ask your friends. Since I have a bad memory, I sometimes even write down questions that I want to ask other people. The most reliable questions are specific ones ("At your school...") rather than general cultural questions ("At chinese schools..."), because the latter suffer much more from the weaknesses of second-hand accounts that I mentioned earlier. On the other hand, if you have formed your own ideas or hypotheses about chinese culture then it is also a great idea to run these by your chinese friends—if they challenge it, you should probably rethink your idea.

Sometimes, it's tempting to generalise. For example, when you see that cheating is rampant in your class, it's tempting to assume that all chinese cheat in exams. Perhaps misconceptions about the collectivist nature of chinese culture, or the role of socialism in China's recent history, even convince some people that values and beliefs in China really are more uniform than in western societies. In truth, there is as much variation within chinese culture as there is in any country.

Chinese are not "inscrutable", as the old cliche goes, and the longer you stay in China the more things that once seemed mystifying will start to make sense. Nor can every difference between China and one's own country be chalked up to "tradition" or "different value systems". Some phenomenon are due more to practical considerations, economic forces, or government policies. For example, many foreigners have commented on public urination, but not many have made the link between this and the fact that public toilets, although fairly widely available in cities, usually charge a fee. In most of the cities I've visited the standard fee is 0.30 yuan, which is actually quite a lot of money in the eyes of working class chinese. Most public toilets in Australia are free; if they all charged a dollar per use, I imagine there would be a few people who would just go behind a tree instead.

Unlike a computer, the human mind is very capable of identifying patterns, learning from examples, and handling "fuzzy" logic where there are no absolute truths, only "usuallys" and "maybes". This makes the human mind a very good vessel for culture. In China, I may have witnessed a similar situation several times, but the situation is never exactly the same. And I may have seen chinese react similarly in each of these situation, but as well as similarities there are always differences. Then, when I am faced with a similar situation myself, I know more or less what to do, for such is the "fuzzy" power of the mind. But to describe this knowledge to another person is not easy, it calls for generalisation or simplification or approximation. That's why I prefer to learn from specific examples, either examples that I have seen with my own eyes, or if that's not possible then by asking my friends: "At your school", not "At chinese schools".

This is not statistics, where you need a sample or 50 or 100 to be confident in your findings. I think that, as long as a person doesn't succumb to the temptation to generalise the very first time they encounter a situation, then by the fifth encounter they will already have a fuller grasp than they would had they read a book written by someone who had seen the situation 100 times.

It is not necessary to speak chinese to learn about chinese culture, provided that you have english-speaking native friends to help you. But it should come as no surprise that being able to speak and read the language will help you to learn the culture in more depth. Or if you are still learning the language, then many situations become opportunities to understand more about culture and practise your chinese at the same time. Being able to speak intermediate level chinese means that you can communicate with and learn from a wider range of people. It also means that you can understand the connections between language and culture, for example it's interesting to hear the words "water" and "tea" sometimes used interchangeably, and the usage of some forms of address such as shifu (master of a trade) or jiejie (elder sister) is difficult to translate into english. With sufficient levels of written and spoken chinese you can appreciate chinese books, websites, magazines, television, and movies, and from them learn even more about current affairs, values and attitudes, history, and the aspects of society that you do not have the opportunity to experience first-hand. For example, I learnt quite a lot about chinese school life by reading Zhang Zhilu books, which are aimed at 10- to 15-year-olds.

Some people have pragmatic reasons to learn about chinese culture. But for me, the only reasons are interest, challenge, and because it forces me to re-evaluate my own culture and assumptions. The ideas presented on this page are, of course, heavily influenced by my own experience of learning chinese culture over the past two years, and I make no claim that my way is the best way or the only way. Ultimately, interest and an open mind are probably the only two things that you really need.