What I Value About Chinese Culture.

culture shapes what we do and what we
can do in ways that most people find difficult to talk about difficult to measure with any accuracy when I was living in Saskatchewan and in constant contact with First Nations people with indigenous Canadians crea jib way some den a some other groups one of the most profound unexamined assumptions they had was that they would meet up with me later without making any arrangements to get together you know not deluding myself on this I realized not everyone who meets me really wants to be my friend but quite a few guys and they were all guys not females all men they're quite a few guys who met me and we're really happy to meet me and really happy to talk to me each time they did bump into me but you know let's say they met me once and talked for half an hour then six months later we happen to see each other again and they would really leave those conversations you know happy never say oh well great you know I'll see you again soon we've tried to save them my dude you are not going to see me again soon if you do not write down my email and send me an email and make arrangement to see me you are not going to see me ever and and those guys obviously this isn't true of all First Nations people it's just that experience I had to get in with those those ethnic groups in that area on a cultural level they were really used to being in small towns where there was maybe only one pub people would hang out at or you know keeping all the way real because of racism there would only be one pub where First Nations people would hang out at and boy goddam in Saskatchewan if you ever get into a taxi and asked to go to a bar that is known as a place where indigenous people hang out who the attitude you get from the taxi driver the racism of the taxi drivers unbelievable they all they all know it the taxi drivers know which bars white people go to and which bars indigenous people go to and there's normally there's no overlap between the two so much so that you know different cars people absolutely assumed I was that are assumed I was First Nations or that I was married to a First Nations woman even if I told him wasn't so because it was still it was so taboo for a white man to just go and hang out and some of those places and wide obvious reason to it was studying the language of state into politics but that that kind of cultural assumption oh great I'll see you later dude this is not a small town and I don't really live in this town like you know I'm here as a student but you are not gonna see me later like I want to talk to you I'm looking forward to seeing you again too but you have to actually make Richmond and culturally anyway those guys the guys are you think never shook it up anyway they themselves joke about some of those some of those cultural differences and not others understandably so anyway for me I was introduced to Chinese culture not once but many many times in my life starting just growing up in Toronto I know plenty of Chinese folks around in Toronto but then later moving to Hong Kong moving to Taiwan etc but you know I was reintroduced to Chinese culture to the real mainland Han Chinese Chinese culture in a in a remarkable way when I was kicked out of Laos so the account of this has been written on on the internet but I did leave Laos the Lao People's Democratic Republic with death threats from government officials in a very strange political situation and at that time unexpectedly with nothing but my backpack in my bicycle I really went as a refugee from Laos straight up into you nan China actually I'm simplifying to say straight up it was a somewhat somewhat complicated process of relocating but anyway that contrast was just remarkable because for me for like two and a half years I'd really been living in immersion in the Lao language and the Lao culture and Lao politics and now I was suddenly confronted with such a different culture and different in subtle but profound ways what is work what is scholarship what is history what are our attitudes towards these things how do they matter to us you know what is social status on these deep deep levels of cultural assumptions Chinese culture was was profoundly different from Lao culture and even though I knew that from previously living in Hong Kong and Taiwan and even living in Toronto how I felt about it when I went to Yunnan really changed and I felt especially in talking to women that when I went from Laos to you nan I was suddenly surrounded by geniuses now that's not because Chinese women are you know inherently much smarter than the women from other countries but China just went through a unique period of history with the one-child policy where families were forced to care much more about women's education than they ever had historically in the past there are many many families they only had one kid if that kid was a daughter then even if the parents had chauvinistic gender biased attitudes whatever want to say they would be forced to put all their energy and effort into getting that daughter the best education they could the best preparation for life that they could you know even if the family owned a small shop they would still be teaching that daughter everything the daughter needed to know to take over that shop and historical that was not the case for China that was a that was a huge impact of the one-child policy they were relatively over educated women all around me and that's a shocking contrast allows because in Laos they were just ending period of history of families having nine kids and twelve kids and the government was still encouraging people to have more than four kids you know the official government policy was to encourage families to be large and have many children and generally Lao culture put a much much lower emphasis on education for anyone much lower value on education and for women perhaps especially you know didn't have that senators so that contrast being kicked out of Laos finding myself suddenly in Yunnan China and finding that part of China could mingjing Hong and so on so different from Southeast Asia but also so different from Hong Kong or Taiwan in Kunming I found the level of education among normal people to be much higher than it was in Taipei I remarked in that many times when I was in Taipei I was encountering illiteracy constantly among normal people in the city taxi drivers in Taipei who were illiterate and in Kunming seemingly even very poor people were illiterate it was really surprising to me the attitudes towards history and politics even though these things are sensitive in China you know every culture has a sort of jagged line between when we're being silly and when we're being serious and I think one of the things I really appreciate about Chinese culture although you know there's plenty of time to be silly there's plenty time to be relaxed is that they reflect my own values in that mainland Chinese people will switch into treating things seriously like okay now we're gonna talk about history now we're going to talk about politics this is this is not a game they treat that seriously and by contrast it can be very frustrating for me with the British but even with Americans I've had many negative experiences of Americans where they want to treat what I consider deadly serious matters of history and politics the very flippant and childish and insulting attitude Americans Australians the British you know and again it's fine it's fine to be joking around some of the time but now when the conversation turns to millions of people dying in the history of Cambodia or you know whatever the Holocaust any of these things I really want to be around people who know how to treat those topics seriously and I have found that with the Chinese people who are culturally Chinese at every level of education I'm not just talking about professors in the Universities I did I didn't spend a lot of time talking people with PhDs and professors but I I talked to guys who were ex-military you know with no formal education or there were only educated inside the military I had one friend there memorably who was an electrician an emergency electrician so only education being in an electrical engineering you know so that quality again it's on a broad unexamined level of cultural values that I really appreciate about China and you know here in Victoria the only people really willing to talk to me are Chinese even though I'm living in Canada which is bizarre just a few days ago in a bookstore I was looking at books in Chinese and I started talking to a Chinese woman a middle-aged Chinese woman who was there in the same section and you know she did something that again Chinese people often do with me at first she looked at me and was kind of trying to establish like you know are you just a ruffian or you a person not taken seriously and you know I presented her with my business card and told her a little bit about my background and then that switch happens where she's taking me seriously talking to me as a scholar or talking to me as an historian and we stood there and I think we had a 30-minute conversation about history and politics in that bookstore complete stranger and she's not a I mean she's not a traditional academic she's not a university professor or something I had a better conversation with her a random Chinese person in a bookstore that I have had with any white person at my university I mean like any any white student or I guess I guess you know I have a couple of white professors who have had meaningful conversations I got to make something there but you know the contrast is amazing and again it's not that Chinese people are smarter than other people it really is just on a deep level of cultural values where the category of history politics the type of scholarship I happen to care about they also culturally take seriously and care about I had more friends in Kunming than I ever had in Toronto and when I was living in could make in the past I couldn't speak Chinese at all I could I could count to 10 I could buy things like I was communicating in English 99% of the time but nevertheless I had friends there who valued who I was and what I contribute even though I put it this way when I was in China I met Chinese people who really took seriously and valued like what I knew about Cambodia more than people in Cambodia did weather was Cambodia Laos but azzam politics elsewhere you know just that that sensitivity towards history itself for me you know it means a lot and in again I'm it's not false humility I'm showing up at all these places I have no PhD I have no meaning my formal credentials you guys already know I studied political science University I'm now getting a second diploma and in Asian Studies but I mean you know these are people who you know skeptically respond to Who I am and what I know and yet they have that capacity to say okay this guy is an intellectual or this guy is a scholar in some sense and you know they're gonna relate to me in that way now you know there are terrible things about China I guess you know to just name one cultural aspect that to counterpose to that one of the scary aspects of Chinese culture is what I call the the money now aspect there are a lot of people and trying to talk to you and they're only interested in money today and they're not interested in anything for the future or long-term cooperation have you they're interested in what money you can put on the table right now with no long term foresight and those are the people who are going to judge you just on how expensive your clothing is whether or not you're wearing expensive jewelry they want to know your social class today they want to cut a deal now and even though that may sound absurd you can meet people with that attitude inside a university inside a language Research Institute inside an archive you know because I was going to all these very inside museums you know I was going to all these institutions where there really is no money or there's very little money very little opportunity to make money but when you meet those people who are motivated by money it is true in Chinese culture that is much more overt and direct and nasty than it is in British culture by contrast where that's very much concealed the British never wants to admit to you that something is about money but I tell you what I can take it you know the rough-and-tumble aspects of Chinese culture they don't bother me it's a bit like yeah you know we all have different advantages and disadvantages in life in in dealing with those situations but I mean you know these things have said I value the real contrast is just to the ecological devastation that's around you at all times the tragedy of China in 2016 is you can't breathe the air you can't drink the water most of the food is not really safe to eat contagious disease is terrifying the hospital system is terrifying if you get sick if you need help there are many things about China I am NOT looking forward to to coping with but you know that that sense of gravity that sense of seriousness and the level of education as a side effect of the one-child policy or whatever it is that's tremendously valuable to me and tremendously meaningful to me and whenever I deal with the Chinese I feel a sense of hope for the future that tragically I never feel in dealing with white Canadians white english-speaking Canadians I don't feel that at all I remember sitting down at the table with a scholar who was specialized in Tibet and because she was a specialist in Tibet she kept saying really nasty things about China and the Chinese and I remember you know I let her speak for a while but then I interrupted her at one point when she was saying something basically racist against the Chinese I said look you know you're saying a lot of stuff against China but I'm gonna tell you one thing right now that for me carries more weight than all the things you've complained about and you know if she was listening to the Chinese read books the Chinese read books and the care about history and for that reason alone whenever I deal with China and the Chinese despite all the terrible problems their history all the problems of ecology all the problems in that economy in that culture I have hope for the future