“Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it.”

--- Lao Tzu       

Humans don’t process differences very well and living in China the seemingly natural tendency to generalize kicks into high gear. There are many reasons stereotypes spring up and many reasons why they persist – some certainly better than others – but it’s something, like syphilis, we should try to avoid passing around.

It is way too easy to generalize, to see a Chinese person spit and decide that all Chinese love to hock loogies in the street; in no time at all you’re thinking that spitting must be up there with ping pong as the national sport. Lack of cultural understanding and language barriers go a long way in promoting and perpetuating this sort of thinking.

Here are 3 things I thought misunderstood about Chinese people before I came to China:

1) Chinese people are small
This turns out to not be true. Everyday in the morning I find myself jammed into the tiny elevator with 16 other people, and invariably, one of them is as at least as tall as I am (188cm or 6’2”).

In fact, Chinese people are getting taller. In 2006, the Ministry of Health reported that Chinese children are growing, on average, 6 cm (2.34”) taller and 3 kg (6.6 pounds) heavier than they were in 1975. The main reason for this is nutrition – Chinese are no longer starving and, despite the dairy scares, Chinese are consuming far more dairy products than they ever did before.

When I first returned home to the US after a couple months here I was surprised to find that my fellow countrypeople weren’t noticeably taller than Beijingren. Immediately obvious, however, was how much wider Americans are. Except for the poor girls that work at the McDonald’s on Xueyuan Lu, Chinese people are generally quite fit - despite eating large amounts of oily food – stocky is about as big as they get. I hope China manages to fight the preservatives, chemicals, and lifestyle habits that have made Americans an average 20lbs heavier than they were in 1960 (and we weren’t exactly starving then).

2) Chinese people (all 1.3 billion of course) are quiet, prim, and proper
I’m not sure where this misconception originated, perhaps I was subconsciously mixing half forgotten impressions of China and Japan gathered from old movies – but whatever I did, I was shocked by the din of Chinese restaurants, some offices, and cities.

 

And, for the most part (fireworks and mass chainsawing of trees should never start before 8am) I’m totally into it. The re nao – liveliness – is one of the things I love about China: the back and forth between old people shuffling along opposite sides of the street, or the give and take between fuwuyuan and customers in a restaurant. Many Americans find it funny that Chinese sometimes consider us to be loud. I fall into the loud category, by anyone’s standards, and love the energy and action bubbling all around me everyday in Beijing.

3) Young Chinese look at their government the same way I look at mine
I suppose I should first explain where I’m coming from. In American political terms I would probably be considered left of liberal. Certainly, my friends have always been interested in politics and on a damp day I once almost caught pneumonia participating in a “die-in” (lying on the ground and not moving for a period of time) to mark the anniversary of the Iraq war.

Now I knew the last 8 years in America have been like bungee jumping with a piece of twine while in China growth has skyrocketed along with individual wealth and consumerism. I knew the media here was state run. I knew people might be cautious about expressing their political opinions. What I didn’t realize is that young people in the cities are content. They are wealthier than previous generations ever were and their options infinitely varied. Instead of Mao suits they can buy Prada, or more likely, the thousands of brands constantly offering new styles and fashions (and amazing variations on the English language printed on T-shirts).

At the same time, the hyper-competitiveness of the school system and increasingly clogged job market keeps their focus on supplementary English textbooks for computer programming, and going to dozens of cattle call-like mass job interviews. What place in that life is there for armchair quarterbacking of Chinese government/business interests in Africa? And even if one has those feelings and thoughts, what do you do with them? I failed to realize how far widespread voting goes in making citizens feel involved in the process, and how much that little act – even if people only get their wide selves off the La-Z-Boy every four years – does to make us feel like our opinions matter.

I’ve been surprised enough times by China and Chinese people that I’ve finally come to realize that I will never really know what’s going on here. Living in China requires flexibility in many ways: when squeezing into the subway, when finding out payday isn’t actually a day so much as an undefined period that happens (hopefully) once a month, and when realizing your expectations were uninformed and incorrect.

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Expat Corner > Wo Chi Su – Being a Vegetarian in China
Expat Corner > Green Shanghai Part II: Eco-City
Expat Corner > Our Favorite Things About Living in China (Part 1)

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