Received an email this week at the Granite Studio:
You always hear people talking about people have bad public manners and very low level of trust of strangers in China. As a Chinese , I think this is true. Lots of people blame this on the Culture Revolution. My question would be was there more mutual trust in Chinese society during Ming or Qing dynasty or even Tang than that of contemporary China?
I’ve heard the Cultural Revolution theory as well from people here in Beijing and in Tianjin. The story usually goes that the GPCR acted as a solvent on bonds of social reciprocity and thus balkanized once close-knit communities with each person or family group regarding others with a mixture of paranoia, fear, and mistrust. It makes sense. This was a time when neighbors routinely snitched on each other as old hutong scores were settled amidst flying accusations of “anti-revolutionary crimes.” It’s too easy for those of us from outside China to underestimate the immense damage done by the GPCR. One of the lingering effects has been an ‘every person for themselves’ mentality: If it benefits me and doesn’t have any direct negative consequences, then why not do it?
And there is a connection between diminishing mutual trust and the oft-mentioned “etiquette problem” in China. It’s the difference between paticularist and universalist cultures. Last December, I wrote a post on this topic in which I suggested that, again in VERY general terms, one difference between Chinese and Western culture was that in China consideration of others often depends on whether or not a particular person falls within a previously defined “circle of trust.” (Something lamented by the early Chinese thinker Mozi.) That is to say, if I know you or have established some form of connection, however tenuous (e.g. brother’s girlfriend’s teacher’s son), then I will extend to you my trust and my consideration. If I don’t know you then get out of my way, I’ll roll you over if you’re between me and a precious seat on the subway.
In the West, IN THEORY, all people are owed a certain basic level of consideration.
Even in New York, if I step on someone’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.
That is one reason why in China establishing the relationship is so important. Unless you are in the circle of trust, it can be very difficult to get things done. Even during the Ming and the Qing dynasties, travelers and traders visiting a new city would make a quick pit stop at their “Native Place Association.” A merchant from Hangzhou traveling to Beijing would check in the Hangzhou Guild and establish his credentials with the Hangzhou community there. The idea of good faith in business is a culturally specific value–one thing that American and European traders in China lamented then as now–contracts had less value than the word of somebody with whom you had a good relationship.
Fortunately, there was a wide variety of networks and institutions through which one could establish the kinds of relationships necessary to get by in the world. Elite men had their patron/student relationships, their literary societies, and their Confucian benevolence leagues. Elite women had their poetry clubs and sewing circles. Common people in the south had their extensive and often highly-organized kinship groups while in the north laborers and farmers frequently banded together in secret societies.
But many of these institutions for building trust–native place associations, guilds, village associations, poetry clubs, temples networks, religious sects, secret societies, lineage groups, elite benevolent societies, etc.–were specifically targeted by China’s 20th-century state builders. The CCP in particular viewed a lot of these groups as either explicitly feudal or at the very least a potential threat to its authority, especially at the local level.
In some ways then, the GPCR acted as the final blow to an already unstable framework by which people could maintain relationships beyond themselves and their immediate families. With the community bonds of reciprocity on the ropes, it became easier to view others only as competitors–for jobs, for resources, for a seat on the bus–rather than as people deserving of our compassion and consideration.
As for public manners, I’ve posted about this before and I also wrote a column about it over at Jongo.com. But the short version is that there is a long history of Chinese reformers seeking to ‘modernize’ China by ridding the Chinese people of ‘backwards habits.’ Many of these habits were those explicitly criticized by the Westerners, especially missionaries, who came to China in the 19th century. Historian John Fitzgerald has argued that elites in the early 20th century internalized Western criticisms of China and conflated western standards of etiquette with an overall discourse on modernity. In short, Westerners don’t spit chicken bones directly onto the table. To be Western was to be modern. If China wished to be seen as modern, Chinese should stop spitting chicken bones directly onto the table. The formula was flawed then and has become no more workable for the passage of time. (First of all, does “Western” necessarily equal “modern”?) but flawed or not, this subtext persists to this day. Beijing is fixated on anti-spitting, quiet voices, table manners, public hygiene–all things that were high on the list of 19th-century missionaries as well as early 2oth-century Chinese reformers, especially those of the May 4th generation.
Thanks for the question and sorry for the rambling answer. You know the old saying, “Ask a grad student for the time, and they’ll tell you the history of clockmaking.”
10 responses so far ↓
1 feng37 // Jun 29, 2007 at 5:26 am
Great post!
Made me wonder what you’d say to this: http://tinyurl.com/2jthv8
What impact would an equally successful Chinese replica of Facebook effectively have on the class-transcending possibilities created by internet chat and personal ads, arguably one of the few spaces where that happens and money doesn’t play a key role?
2 Anonymous // Jun 29, 2007 at 11:52 am
Thank you for your excellent post. I sent you the email you quoted. As for “bad” public manners, I think some of them are actually neutral and defined by culture context, like spitting bones on the table, but some of them are indeed annoying or even pose health risks to others, like spitting on streets. Use a Confucius quote almost everyone knows (”己所不欲，勿施于人”) “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others”, we should get rid of these truly bad habits even from our own cultural perspective.
3 花崗齋之愚公 // Jun 29, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Anonymous,
I think that you said it perfectly. At the end of the day, some variation of either Confucius’ “Do not do unto others…” or the Golden Rule, “Do unto others…” really is the only standard for “etiquette” that is truly needed.
Thanks for starting this discussion.
4 musafiremes // Jun 29, 2007 at 9:45 pm
The GPCR theory sounds quite reasonable given the experience I had with my mainland Chinese research colleagues, especially the GPCR generation. At the time though, I did not realize that this historical factor could have impinged on the behavior of some of these mainland Chinese scientists - paranoia and distrust almost to the point of hysteria, which I was not expecting when I was still green in the collaborative scientific work environment.
5 Froog // Jul 1, 2007 at 10:46 am
I’m cool with the spitting. I don’t necessarily like it, but I understand it, accept it….. and don’t go on and on about it all the time.
To turn this discussion on its head for just a moment - it seems to me to be a particularly (not exclusively, but predominantly) American preoccupation - to still be grossed out about the spitting and to remark on it repeatedly, even after a number of years of China exposure. Most other non-Chinese - in my experience - get over it in 3-6 months, and don’t feel the need to constantly discuss it.
I once skimmed in a bookstore one of those ‘doing business in China’ books that included a quotation - supposedly a proverb, or an aphorism of one of the great philosophers - to the effect that anyone outside the golden circle of guanxi could be regarded as “legitimate loot”. I have not been able to discover the origin of that phrase, or the original Chinese, but it has haunted me.
And on the issue of ‘making connections’, I was struck when reading ‘Guns, Germs & Steel’ that Jared Diamond described a scene in Papua New Guinea where a tribesman he was out trekking with in the jungle encountered someone from a rival tribe and went through a ritualistic conversation about who they were, what their genealogies were, whether they had any familial contacts. They were looking for an excuse to avoid having to have a fight - any kind of family or host/guest relationship within their sphere of acquaintance would absolve them of the tribal duty to attack an enemy alien. It’s an oft-repeated formulaic scene in Homer’s ‘Iliad’ too.
The preoccupation with guanxi and the preoccupation with ’saving face’ are the aspects of Chinese culture that I find hardest to accept. I am reluctant to use the word ‘primitive’, because that’s so judgemental. But judgement on these phenomena is called for….. and these things aren’t good.
6 無名 - wu ming // Jul 3, 2007 at 12:38 am
i kind of enjoy the spitting, and the old guys with the unbuttoned shirts and bellies hanging out. i guess i’m not very wenming, or perhaps my suzhi is low, but i just find it all rather endearing.
7 Jeremy // Jul 4, 2007 at 8:31 pm
J - interesting post, any particular reason for the North-South secret society/kinship organization divide? Also, it’s a shame that I’m no longer in Hong Kong to see the Qingming Shanghe Tu, looks amazing. Gives me a new respect for the HK Museum of Art, which I’d mostly considered an afterthought after having been to the Palace Museum, the Shanghai Museum, and Taipei Gugong. WIll def have to check it out next time i’m in town.
8 canrun // Jul 5, 2007 at 5:14 am
“i kind of enjoy the spitting”
Yeah! Spot on! Hear hear!
And monkeys might fly out of my butt…
9 Panoptikum // Jul 21, 2007 at 12:00 am
The story of the particularistic culture isn’t new and I do not claim there is no influence on public behavior. Of course while in the West (at least in Germany my home country) throwing rubbish out of the window in high rise areas is seen as a sign of utmost social decay, it is nothing uncommon in Mainland Chinese cities as far as I know. However, these places do not necessarily show other symptoms of social decay that we know from Western problematic districts.
However, I do not think the culturalistic explanation is sufficient. Authoritarian political environments surely exert influence as well as this blogpost suggests. http://www.danwei.org/tourism/whos_responsible_for_chinese_t.php
Another point is for sure levels of education and wealth. If we compare Hong Kong with Mainland China, we can see the difference. Actually, Sun Longji in his book “The deep structures of Chinese Culture”, which I do not regard as high class scholarship but has interesting anecdotes, complains about the uncivilized manners of Hong Kongers in the 60 and 70s. What he describes there has largely disappeared from daily life in Hong Kong today.
I have not been there, but what about other “developing” countries? I have not been there, but what I read from public behavior in India seems not so different from Mainland China. I guess even that 19th century European industrializing cities weren’t much different in terms of public behavior than China today.
While I do think it is necessary regarding Culture as an important variable with at times independent influence on social life, we should be careful to disentangle the maze of causes and effects from political institutions, economic development, ideas, culture and the galvanizing effect of history, if we want to get valid answer to explain social life comparatively.
Sorry for the rant and thanks for the interesting blogpost.
10 kole // Sep 11, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Nice, I’m from NYC and when you step on someone’s foot while riding the train, believe me no one will tell you to shove it. In the city we a healthy fear of each other. Anyone is capable of doing anything, so lets keep it nice and easy.
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