Jottings from the Granite Studio

Via ESWN, James Fallows is blogging from China this week and post #1 involves that old expat grumble of “public manners.”

You can work up all sorts of historical or anthropological explanations behind every-man-for-himself behavior. It’s a survival imperative when there are too many people for too few resources. It’s an effect of big, anonymous city life — what happens when a city is three times larger than New York — or a legacy of the mistrustfulness of the Cultural Revolution years. Who knows.

He makes some valid points. First the obvious: that kind of crush of people in any space will result in a certain breakdown of order and civility. It’s going to happen.

In China, there is also the important inner/outer dichotomy. Westerners who travel to China often comment at the extreme hospitality of their Chinese associates, colleagues, and friends–anyone who has been at a banquet or been out with Chinese friends knows what it’s like to be killed with kindness. (The four most dangerous characters in the Chinese language have to be: 再 来 一 瓶.) And yet those unfamiliar with China can’t believe it when they attempt to board a subway car only to be shoved out of the way with such force you half expect Dick Bavetta to run out of the crowd, blow a whistle, T up the offender, and give you two free throws.

The difference is whether you are in or you are out. Inside the ‘circle’ you are human, you are part of a group, you are one of us. (The Song Neo-Confucians referred to their group as 斯文, what Peter Bol translates as “this culture of ours,” but which I always thought would be more amusingly rendered as “la cultura nostra.”)

Outside my circle and you are an obstacle. You are not really there. There’s no expectation of empathy. (Mencius’ famous story of the child and the well aside.) I have no relationship with you, why should I care?

This contrasts a bit to the West. Even in New York, if I step on somebody’s foot in the subway there is an expectation that I SHOULD say I’m sorry. Maybe I don’t, maybe I tell you to shove it up your ass, but there is a sense that all people are entitled (in theory if nothing else) to a kind of ‘common decency’ regardless of whether you know them or not.

The debate goes back to ancient times in China. The philosopher Mozi criticized Confucians for focusing too much on the five relationships and the narrow, particularistic way Confucians dealt with other people. Mozi instead advocated “universal love.” Not in a 1970s hot tub and cocaine kind of way, but in the sense that all people are entitled to be treated humanely, regardless of whether they are your teacher, son, brother, friend, etc.

Well, where’s Mozi now? The Confucians pretty much won the argument and China, for better or worse, has been built on the web of relationships that make up the fabric of society. Are you in or out, do I know you or not?

All that said, Fallow’s final point about the Cultural Revolution is a good one and it is one that is often overlooked by Westerners: the GPCR acted as a solvent on all kinds of relationships and replaced any sense of community with a grotesque paranoia of all other people. It was a time when children literally ratted out their own parents, students turned on teachers, and friends publicly accused each other of any number of ‘counter-revolutionary’ activities. ‘Saving face’ was replaced by ’saving your own ass.’ That has to have an effect on how people interact in society and it’’s too easy to forget that the GPCR ended only 30 years ago, the wounds are still quite fresh.

It doesn’t make the crush of the subway car any easier but neither does it make the Chinese an especially rude people. It would be a tough call and a bit of a stetch to say that we Americans have some sort of monopoly on the social graces. The consideration of public spaces and other people within that public space is one of the differences between China and the West. And the Chinese know it. For nearly seven decades now, Chinese intellectuals and successive government regimes have internalized Westerner’s critiques of Chinese public behavior and concluded that for China to be truly ‘modern’ there were bad habits (public spitting, cutting in line, shoving, talking loudly) that needed to be eradicated. It’s always tough to be a foreigner anywhere. Sometimes it feels especially tough to be a foreigner in China. And it’s something I’m going to try real hard to remember the next time I’m forced to use my best low post move to get to the ticket window in the Beijing metro. Come on ref….gimme that call.
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Update: Chris, who publishes the great Dalian blog Eyes East, has written a thoughtful commentary on this subject, “We’re all on the same bus.” Well worth checking out.