# Chinese culture and always answering "yes" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 10, 2009, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652 "2009-04-10T15:28:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2009, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/61 "2009-04-11T13:26:35Z")
> [@Cosmic Relief](#): > > After hearing so many such anecdotes, and invariably noting that they serve to buffer the Westerner (typically American’s) sense of superiority in their cultural attitudes toward learning, one should inevitably start to question whether they are true, or if they are, whether it’s representative of that country as a whole. China, Japan, Brazil… these countries all produce engineers, scientists, patents in large quantities. Broad swathes of American surburban colleges pump out hordes of rote-learning alumni. Is it more likely that there’s a cultural bias against original thought, or that visitors simply remember the encounters that reinforce their preconceptions? Think about that the next time you get in your wife’s Honda Accord that has been magically running for 4 years without a service appointment. Personally, I think memorization has gotten short shrift in the past few decades. With good reason, because you an take memorization too far. But IMO for most people it’s impossible to memorize huge bodies of material without having understood the material. Indeed, I suspect that there are people out there for whom memorization is the _best_ way to learn. (Certainly not me–I can’t memorize worth crap.) ---
**Author:** ![Avumede](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/avumede/32/7235_2.png) [@Avumede](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Avumede)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2009, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/62 "2009-04-11T16:08:58Z")
Anecdote: A businessman in Hong Kong told me that he never tells clients that he doesn’t know something. Instead, if he’s asked a question that he does not know the answer to, he will give a reasonable guess. Later, at his leisure, he’ll find out the real answer. If he made a mistake then he will call up the customer and say that there was a misunderstanding, and that the customer received some misinformation, etc, etc… ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2009, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/63 "2009-04-14T04:07:55Z")
In my experience, this is very real. One of my foreign teacher friends wanted to start a women’s group. So she made all of the arrangements with the people in charge of her school. Everyone was very enthusiastic. The day of the meeting, nobody showed up. The next day, she asked all the students, and they all replied that of course they want to be in the women’s group and they will be there next time. Next week, nobody showed up. She finally figured out that the authorities had decided not to let her have a women’s group, and indeed had never intended to let it happen. This sort of thing is very common, and comes in many guises. Nobody wants to say “no” directly to you. So there are a million indirect ways to say “no.” You get used to it eventually- there is a pattern to it. But it can drive you nuts. Here are the ones I’m used to:[ol] [li] **Maybe** Maybe is an all purpose word in China, used to soften even the hardest statement. In response to questions it usually goes something like “maybe the store is not open right now” or “maybe you can’t buy a train ticket today.” This always means “No.”[/li][li] **The Runaround** You’ll be told that there is a form or something you need to make what you want to happen happen. Of course, this form doesn’t exist. Or you’ll be told you need to talk to somebody else. After being told that by quite a few people, you figure out that what they meant was “no.” [/li][li] **The Not-a-suggestion** You’ll get a lot of things phrased like “Maybe it is better if you do this…” or “It might be more convenient to do that…” These aren’t suggestions- you are being told what to do. [/li][li] **I’ll Get Back to You** Unless they give you an exact time that they will reply, they mean “no.” [/li][li] **The Polite Lie** This is where they tell you stuff like “the plane is delayed.” Think of it as a better version of the truth.[/li][/ol] Most of these things show up in work situations, and usually you can get a straight answer out of restaurants and such. And of course, in really important situations it’s okay to be direct. As for “face”, it is real. The key to understanding it is to know that when someone you are with loses face, you also lose face. So they are not protecting face out of self-obsession. They are trying to protect you from being embarrassed. It’s hard to wrap your head around this stuff sometimes, but you get used to it. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/64 "2009-04-15T09:46:11Z")
Another example. I’m studying Mandarin, and my teacher is a _very_ Chinese Singaporean (as in, unlike other communities or even Chinese individuals in Singapore, her first language is Mandarin, and she speaks English with a very strong Chinese, not a “Singlish” accent). Every time I am unsure of a grammatical principle, and I ask if what I just said was correct, she _always_ says “yes”. Then maybe several minutes down the line she might say “…or you could say X”. Invariably, what I first said was wrong, and X is the correct answer, but she will not just come out and tell me I was wrong - to protect my “face”. It was very frustrating until I worked out what was going on. Now, if she doesn’t say “very good” when I say something, I assume I’ve made a mistake and work towards finding out what it is. ---
**Author:** ![Mojo\_Pin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Mojo\_Pin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mojo_Pin)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/65 "2009-04-15T17:40:41Z")
I just want to add that Feynman’s observations of Japanese learning are spot on, and my experience in Korean classrooms has been identical. There is also a whole lot of diplomatic saving, losing, and sabotaging “face” that goes on in an all boy’s highschool. > [@jjimm](#): > > Third anecdote: [Bus Uncle](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsYRQkmVifg) [NSFW Cantonese swearing and subtitles]. The young man made a complaint against the older guy’s cellphone use, apparently by tapping him on the shoulder. The older guy feels his “face” has been lost, and it is such an insult that he won’t back down. Not at all. Even when the young man explicity and repeatedly apologises: the older guy continues to raise the requirement for the apology to be acknowledged. (A similar thing happened to me on a tram, and ended up with me being whacked with a rolled-up newspaper by an elderly man.) However, the young man is also more subtly undermining the older guy’s “face” towards the end by picking up on the (relatively standard insult) “F\*\*\* your mother” insult and applying its meaning literally, and taking “offense” at that. Heh heh. He couldn’t have possibly picked a more embarrassing and degrading way to “save face”. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/66 "2009-04-15T17:45:40Z")
“Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” Case closed. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/67 "2009-04-15T17:59:29Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” > > Case closed. That’s ass-saving, surely. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/68 "2009-04-15T18:05:39Z")
> [@mattomic](#): > > In South Asian, South American and Caribbean countries (something about the hot weather making people more relaxed? Now THAT would be an interesting study) Actually, this is something of a known factor. Cultures strongly enmeshed in hotter climates do seem to produce slower paces of life, partly simply because nobody likes to be out and about in the daytime. However, it’s not quite universal and is definitely not consistent in application across cultures. “Lateness” in the -party-officially-starts-at-7-but-you’ll-be-there-at-8 routine seems to be unrelated. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/69 "2009-04-15T18:11:52Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Personally, I think memorization has gotten short shrift in the past few decades. With good reason, because you an take memorization too far. But IMO for most people it’s impossible to memorize huge bodies of material without having understood the material. Indeed, I suspect that there are people out there for whom memorization is the _best_ way to learn. (Certainly not me–I can’t memorize worth crap.) Although I’d like to agree with you… it’s not really the case. SOme memorization accompanies learning, but it’s pretty seperate. IN a lot of cases, people are memorizing the words and not learning the principles and how to apply them. It’s the difference between being able to to give you a word-for-word rundown of the definition and description of finding the derivative… and actually knowing how to do it. The guy who knows the former probably cannot do the latter. The guy who knows the latter doesn’t give a damn about the former. > [@billfish678](#): > > “Honey, does this dress make me look fat?” Well, yes and know. That’s not about face per se. That’s a loaded question where one individual wants a pleasing lie to gratify her ego. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2009, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652/70 "2009-04-15T19:48:39Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Although I’d like to agree with you… it’s not really the case. SOme memorization accompanies learning, but it’s pretty seperate. IN a lot of cases, people are memorizing the words and not learning the principles and how to apply them. It’s the difference between being able to to give you a word-for-word rundown of the definition and description of finding the derivative… and actually knowing how to do it. The guy who knows the former probably cannot do the latter. The guy who knows the latter doesn’t give a damn about the former. The reason the issue comes up in my mind is this. There was a philosophy professor I TA’d for who gave his students 100 study questions on the first day of class, and then made his exams by drawing twenty of those questions out of a hat. His lectures basically consisted in his providing the answers to these questions, in order, by means of discussion of the assigned readings. A lot of students and TA’s derided this procedure, saying it focussed on memorization and not understanding. But I was one of this professor’s rare defenders. Because in my view, remembering the answers to these 100 questions required a very clear and pretty precise understanding of the material that had been presented in lecture. (Moreover, in my view, doing well at this act of memory also required that one have at least a modicum of critical and philosophical thinking skills, since it is these skills which would best allow one to organize the knowledge being presented.) And the lectures, in turn, couldn’t really be understood unless one had read the texts, so understanding of the texts was required too. Now, were the students _memorizing_ answers? To the extent that they drew up answers to the questions (which could be found quite explicitly, word for word, in the text of his lectures–which he also freely distributed at the beginning of the first day of class) and attempted by various means to make themselves able to remember them on test day, yes, they were memorizing answers. But to the extent that they couldn’t possibly remember all of that without understanding the material, their act of memorization doesn’t seem to be attended with the purportedly concomitant problems that are supposed to follow on a student’s “merely memorizing” the course material. I’d agree they were encouraged to memorize, but I’d disagree that there was anything pedagogically wrong with their memorizing, at least in this case. (By the way, my post about memorization shouldn’t be confused with any imaginary post about _rote_ memorization.) It appears to me that this professor managed to blur the distinction between memorization and pedagogically fruitful remembering. What about a case like the one you brought up–calculus? Someone might be able to remember word for word a description of how to find a derivative, and yet be unable to find the derivative. But I doubt very much whether someone could remember (it doesn’t have to be word for word–I was never talking about rote memorization, and no one else in the thread seemed to me to be either (there, see, this post _is_ about this thread so it’s not totally off topic!)) descriptions of the procedures for doing _everything_ taught in a Calc I textbook without understanding how to execute these procedures. It’d be strange, to be sure, to call this “memorization,” but it’s certainly “remembering” and I’m having a hard time seeing the meaningful difference between this kind of remembering and the kind of “memorization” required of students in the Phil 1 class I just described. It may be that it seems plausible to call one “memorization” and not the other simply because of the subject matters involved, I don’t know. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chinese-culture-and-always-answering-yes/492652.md?page=3)