Chinese Perceptions of the West- and Vice Versa
A bit of a thought experiment here. What perceptions (misguided or otherwise) would the average Chinese person have of the US? What perceptions would the average American have of China?
Of course, there are lots of people with a foot in both countries, so for the sake of this experiment lets cast them out. By "average", let's say a reasonably well-educated person who has never lived in the other country but follows the news and is susceptible to the biases in their respective media. Let's further assume that the "average" Chinese or "average" American possesses no extremist political leanings and is generally patriotic and law-abiding.
What does the "average" Chinese person think of America? A few guesses:
-American concern for the plight of the Tibetans is a red herring, as the US government is primarily motivated by an a priori fear and resentment toward China.
-The American political system is neither inferior or superior to the Chinese one, just different. America, though, believes that its democracy should be adopted throughout the world, posing a threat to the sovereignty of countries such as China.
-American economic strength, while derived from exploiting the resources of other nations, should nonetheless be emulated in China.
-American cultural exports harm traditional Chinese values to a certain extent, but this effect is mostly benign.
-American criticism of China's relations with other countries is hypocritical and unfair.
-Mao Zedong was a national hero who united China after a century of division and humiliation at the hands of enemies, both external and internal. His mistakes during his tenure do not diminish his constructive role in Chinese history.
-China's problems are largely caused by malevolent foreign interference, not by internal governance.
-Americans are militant nationalists who are suspicious of foreigners due to its biased media.
-American hamburgers and French fries taste good, and American movies are cool.
And the American perception of China?
-China is very close to becoming a major economic and military power and poses a threat to American dominance of the post-Cold War world order
-China is rigidly controlled by a malignant government who oppresses the individual rights of the people and uses force to suppress any dissent. As a result, the Chinese are mostly unthinking automatons.
-China's role in Tibet is nothing short of neo-colonialism. The Dalai Lama is a man of peace and should be allowed to govern Tibet unmolested by the Chinese.
-China plays an unconstructive role in world affairs due to its reluctance to pressure rogue regimes in Africa (Sudan, Zimbabwe, etc.) and Asia (Burma, North Korea).
-A new Cold War is possible, though not inevitable. Nonetheless the two countries are poised to become adversaries despite paying lip service to mutual cooperation.
-The Communist Party is unpopular, and is vulnerable to collapse in a popular uprising. The Chinese would prefer an American-style multi-party democracy.
-Mao Zedong was a villainous murderer on par with Hitler and Stalin who ruined his country through megalomania and economic mismanagement. The Chinese will not advance unless they repudiate him further.
-The Chinese are militant nationalists suspicious of foreigners due to its biased media.
-Chinese food tastes good, and kung fu movies are cool.
I don't mean to endorse any of the above, and am just fleshing out what I see are common perceptions that citizens in each country have of the other.
What's spot on? What's off-base?
How I Got Here…The Long Short Version
The other night I met a group of Peace Corps volunteers, all based in rural southwest China. They had come to Kunming to sample the nightlife and indulge in Western treats unavailable in their Chinese hometowns, and were playing cards and drinking beer. One turned to me and asked the usual question, "so how long have you been in China?"
"Going on four years"
"Wow, that's a long time".
I laughed and said that time has flown by, and that I knew people who had been here for far longer. Longer than I've been alive, even.
"So, how did you end up here?"
I told him the usual story....graduated from college, didn't know what I wanted to do except live abroad, thought about Peace Corps, decided to teach English, thought China would be interesting, took a job, and voila! Here I am. That, of course, only explains how I got to China in the first place, not how I ended up in Kunming as a language student and part-time tutor. But I doubt anyone wanted to while their evening away listening to that whole tale.
Far more interesting are the little coincidences and accidents that played a deterministic role in my China experience. I was certainly never destined to go to China. I trace my ancestry to the fjords of Norway and the vineyards of Italy, not to the Yellow River plains. I was never one of those white kids with an Asian fetish, either. I never cared for martial arts. Nor anime. And while growing up in the Bay Area I had a lot of Asian friends, my knowledge in China was limited to General Tso's chicken. If you had told me, as a college senior in 2003, that within eighteen months I'd be calling Lianyungang, China home, I'd have dismissed you as a crank.
But there I was, in the fall of 2004, standing in front of thirty teenaged Chinese kids suffocating in the Jiangsu heat. How did it happen?
The simplest explanation was that about a month prior, somewhere in Australia, a young man bound for China had his car stolen. He had been hired to teach English in Lianyungang, and the trauma of the theft so soon before his departure date left him mentally unprepared to handle the move. So he withdrew, and the company (WITT) that hired him was left scrambling for a replacement. Their usual requirements (experience) went out the window, and I was offered the position.
I was informed that my arrival was urgent, and given a week or so to make up my mind. Lianyungang? Where the hell was that? A solitary English-language website offered no clues. Few people had heard of it. In desperation, I asked a friend who worked with Chinese students in the laboratory to supply me with information. He didn't bring back much. "One guy said it's a port". Great.
I thought of holding out for something in a bigger city, like Shanghai. I spoke to my recruiter, who discouraged that idea. "If you go to Shanghai, all you'll end up doing is getting drunk with other foreigners. Go to the smaller place, you'll have a more authentic experience."
These words elicited a romantic series of imaginations, and I excitedly saw myself tilling rice fields while listening to old men swap stories from the war. This would be great. I said "what the hell" and agreed.
Little did I know that getting drunk with foreigners, in fact, was exactly what I do anyway that year.
For one thing, I was totally unprepared to teach English. My TEFL course provided a basic education in how to convey the language to non-native speakers, but I had no conception of how China or Chinese people would be any different than, well, anyone else. The urgent nature of my arrival left my company little time to orient me, and so it took me weeks before I realized the actual objective of my lessons. Prior to that, I was gasping at straws, inventing lesson plans on my walk to school.
I had assumed that learning Chinese would be a breeze, given enough immersion. What I didn't expect was being confounded by the simplest concepts months into my stay. My original goal of learning enough Chinese in one year to use it seemed laughably optimistic. In taxis, I pointed when I wanted to go straight, jerked my arm when I wanted to turn, and held up my hand, palm out (like a cop) when I wanted to stop. Five-minute excursions to buy bread turned into incommunicative nightmares. No wonder I preferred the company of pirated DVDs and jaded laowai.
At around Christmas, I thought: "Fuck this. I'll just travel, have some fun, and then go home. A year is enough."
That was three and a half years ago. If I never imagined coming to China in the first place, I certainly never imagined staying this long. And I have traveled, and I have had fun, but I've also met more than my share of amazing people, learned a tremendous amount, and, through a series of coincidences no less deterministic, found myself happily studying Chinese in Kunming.
I've never met the Aussie fellow whose job I took, nor do I even know his name. I sincerely hope it worked out for him in the end. And as for the thief, for the decency of society I hope he's stopped stealing people's cars. But I'd be remiss if I didn't offer a quiet "thanks".
A Joke (or Two)
Here's a joke my Chinese friend taught me:
A stutterer (结巴) walks into a shop to buy a bottle of beer. When he asks the merchant how much one costs, he is told "20 yuan"
Shocked at the high price, the stutterer says "开开开开开开开。。。"
Hearing this word, the merchant does as he's told and opens the bottle.
Then, the stutterer finishes his sentence: "开玩笑"
Explanation:
In Chinese, 开 means "open". The verb to open is usually rendered 打开, but 开 gets the job done. "开玩笑" means, in this case, "you're joking". A bottle of beer in a shop should cost around 3 or 4 yuan, so 20 is a ridiculous price. So, translated into English, the stutterer meant to say "you're joking" but instead said "open", forcing him to pay for the beer.
Here's another one:
Deng Xiaoping plans to travel to the United States on a state visit. Embarrassed by his non-existent English, Deng asks an aide to help him prepare for a press conference. The aide says, "OK. The first question they're going to ask you is "What's your last name?". The second question will be 'What's your first name?'. The third question will be, "Where do you want to go in America?". Deng nods and prepares his answers.
Upon arriving at the press conference, a reporter asks Deng: "Where will you be staying in the United States?". Deng, not understanding, remembers that the first question would ask him for his last name. So he says: "我姓邓" (Wo sheeng dung). "Ah, Washington!" someone cries, and the reporters dutifully record his answer in their notebooks.
Then, a reporter asks Deng: "What would you like to do during your stay in America?" Deng again doesn't understand, but remembers that the second question would ask him for his first name. He says, "å°å¹³" (Sheeow Ping). "Ah, shopping!" someone says, and the reporters write his response down.
The third journalist asks Deng: "In your opinion, what will be the most pressing internal matter for China during the first years of the 21st century?" Deng is startled by the length of the question, and forgets his aide's words that the third question would ask him where he'd like to go in the US. So, in his native Sichuan dialect, Deng says "什么？(sar zuh?). "Ah, SARS!" someone cries, and so Deng managed to impress the reporters without ever understanding a word they said.
There's actually a fourth part to this joke involving a president of Taiwan, but I've forgotten it.
And finally, here's an aphorism a Chinese guy told me months ago:
"å–酒对è‚å处， 抽烟对肺å处，ä¸å–é…’ä¸æŠ½çƒŸå¯¹å¿ƒå处"
(Drinking is bad for your liver, smoking is bad for your lungs, but not drinking and not smoking is bad for your heart)
What’s Hard About Languages?
I met an interesting Canadian guy the other day who has studied both Chinese and Japanese. I asked him which language he considered more difficult, and he said that it depended. "On what?" I asked. He replied:
"Well, in Chinese it's difficult to get even decent at the language. But once you've reached a certain level of competence, getting very good isn't all that difficult, because the grammar is relatively easy. In Japanese, getting decent is pretty easy, but if you try to get really good, it takes an enormous amount of time and effort mastering complex grammar rules."
I've never studied Japanese, but what he said about Chinese strikes me as plausible. In the beginning, learning Chinese is a nightmare. The characters are inscrutable. The vocabulary has few cognates with English or other European languages. Learning to write well takes a lot of practice and maintenance. And even when you think you say the right words in the right order, using the wrong tones can make it impossible for others to understand you.
Eventually, though, you get the hang of the characters, and the tones, and the grammar. For me, as an intermediate student, the biggest challenges are vocabulary, idioms and other expressions, and dealing with regional accent variations. These have and will continue to take up a lot of my time. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. I know it's only a matter of time before my vocabulary and command of the language improves to an extent that I can express pretty much anything I want.
Romance languages are different. Vocabulary isn't really a problem, since so many words are related to English. Pronunciation (particularly in Italian) is very straight-forward. The grammar, though, can be difficult to master. In this way, perhaps learning Italian or Spanish is similar to learning Japanese.
What about other languages? I'd be interested to hear from those of you who have studied Slavic, Germanic, or other tongues. How does the learning curve compare to Chinese?