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China
and America are each other's inside out
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Annie McDonald-Schwartz and Bonnie in Xian, May 2001
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The real name of my wife's student assistant is
Zheng Yonyan. But we call her Vera. Our pronunciation of Chinese
-- even after six months here in Shanghai -- is, well, deficient.
"Vera, does the university have a break during
the spring semester?" Bonnie asks.
"Break?" Vera repeats. "No. No break."
Vera is a student at Fudan University, one of China's
elite humanities schools, and after spending a year at Beloit
College in Wisconsin, she speaks excellent English. Despite this,
Bonnie realizes she and Vera may be misunderstanding each other
even in this simple exchange. Sensing a problem with the meaning
of the word "break," Bonnie rephrases the question:
"I see. Is there any time off during the spring
semester?"
"Oh yes," Vera replies, eager to supply
as much information as possible. "There are no classes for
seven days during the May first holiday."
We're finding that here in China, where I have
been teaching on a J. William Fulbright grant since last August,
misunderstandings even at this basic level are common. We can
only wonder what difficulties diplomats experience during negotiations
over issues more complex than the dates of the spring break.
In many ways, the Chinese and American cultures
are the inside out of each other. Or put another way, we're all
doing the same things -- eating, sleeping, joking, getting up
to go to work, driving cars, solving family problems -- but we
look at these daily activities through completely different eyes.
It's as though we see life through each other's photo negatives.
In the United States, for example, the emergency
phone number is 911 -- in China it's 119. In America we reckon
our ages by how many years we've completed -- one year after your
birth, you are "one" year old. But in China, age is
reckoned by the year you're in -- during the first 12 months of
life a Chinese child is "one," and on his first birthday,
he turns two. A one-year old in America is a two-year-old in China.
Americans cherish the rights and freedoms of individuals,
while the Chinese stress the importance of group cooperation,
responsibilities and harmony. Our goals are the same, but our
ways of achieving them are radically different.
For another example, our Western alphabets represent
sounds, while Chinese written characters represent (at varying
levels of abstraction) pictures. In both cultures we communicate
through words, but the words are organized around different principles
giving different views of the same things. "Vera" and
"Zheng Yonyan" refer to the same person, but in totally
different ways.
Some time ago, before the U.S. Congress voted on
Permanent Normal Trade Relations status for China, a conservative
U.S. senator warned that America must beware of Chinese businessmen
who are told what to do by their government. It apparently escaped
his awareness that China feels it must beware of the U.S. government
which is told what to do by its businessmen. The two views are
really the same -- but inside out.
Even talking together is done differently in our two cultures.
Americans tend to address problems directly, confronting conflicts
by presenting arguments straightforwardly back and forth in debate.
But the Chinese tend to approach problems indirectly, diffusing
tensions through laughter in order to create an atmosphere of
cooperation in which agreement can be reached.
Imagine trying to solve serious problems such as
nuclear proliferation, trade deficits, the political status of
Taiwan, and human rights issues with such differences operating
at the most basic level of simply talking. A light joke on one
side may be misinterpreted on the other side as indicating a serious
problem, and communication may break down.
The stakes are very high. The United States has
the most powerful economy in the world, and China has by far the
most people -- more than 1.2 billion. The United States runs a
$78 billion trade deficit with China, who is in fact our fourth-largest
trading partner (not counting the European Union countries taken
together). From one perspective, this deficit looks like a great
disadvantage for the United States. But from another perspective,
what would happen if all the imports from China were suddenly
manufactured in the States? With an unemployment rate of about
4 percent, America could not supply enough workers to build the
products. The lack of products would soon be felt in the Palmyra
Wal-Mart, because that company accounts for 20 percent of all
imports from China.
On the flip side, if China lost those manufacturing
jobs, millions of people would be out of work -- millions, in
a country whose economy already barely keeps pace with the employment
needs of its gigantic population. As many as 150 million people
in China's countryside are un- or underemployed. In response,
China's central government has loosened controls on relocation,
and so millions of unemployed are streaming into the eastern cities
in search of work, creating serious housing and social problems
in Shanghai, Guangzhou and other already overcrowded cities.
Losing millions of manufacturing jobs would push
China's fragile, yet hopeful, economy to a breaking point. Disrupting
the economy would destabilize social and political order. And
instability in China would create extremely serious instabilities
in all of Asia and therefore -- in this era of globalization --
the rest of the world, including the United States. Because of
its size and complexity, China in a very real sense can make or
break future American business, political and economic interests,
and perhaps more.
So while communication between Americans and Chinese
is difficult and often exasperating, it is also vitally important.
A further way of viewing it is to realize that
all communication is incalculably enriching. The Chinese people
have an extraordinary sense of humor; their love of word play
meshes delightfully with that of English-speaking people. China's
4,000-year-old culture is filled with artistic, architectural,
literary and historical treasures that are not only deeply moving,
but powerfully instructive about human nature and behavior.
We are all doing the same things. We need as much
information, in this amazing and precarious moment in history,
as we can get about each other, from as many perspectives as possible.
Working our way through the meaning of the word
"break" proves useful indeed. During the May first holiday,
we'll be able to travel to the ancient city of Xian in central
China, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road which for centuries
connected Asia to Europe. And even better, Vera may accompany
us as our interpreter.
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