that is not an imagery i’d expect in this thread. 
Everybody in China jumped, and it threw themselves out of orbit!
Regarding the kid with the visible wang (heh), I’ve read in Jan Wong’s autobio Red China Blues (which I strongly recommend, by the way) that it’s not uncommon for families to show off they that have a son. Given the one-child policy and paternalistic culture, having a male child is apparantly something to show off, every chance you get and in every manner possible.
As for “backward” names, it kind of annoys me that this purely arbitrary practice raises eyebrows in the West, just as it irritated me in the “Ensign Ro” episode of Star Trek: TNG. So her family name comes first. Geez, get over it.
I don’t think it really upset anyone so much as it is just confusion, insofar as most Americans can’t tell the first name from the last, plus the fact that some Chinese (most Koreans, Japanese, et cetera) reverse them in Occidental style, so that it’s often difficult to tell. (For what it’s worth, sometimes Americans use a last name for the first name. I, for instance, have three “first names” or “last names” or however you wish to count them.)
I’ve wondered if there isn’t something telling about that–placing the family name before the individual name in Asian cultures, and vice versa in European cultures–but I wouldn’t place to much emphasis on that.
I’ve always wondered, though: what do Chinese/Korean/Japanese (and presumably other Asian names) mean? Most European names pertain in some way to an occupation, or a familial relationship, or some kind of characteristic. Do Asians of various sorts have analogous naming conventions, or how do they come up with family names? I assume a name like Fujiyama, for instance, has something to do with that rather impressive mountain on Honshu, but my rather limited knowledge of the Japanese language doens’t really really clue me in.
Stranger
I went to grad school with a bunch of Chinese students, and the only weird thing I noticed was that oral hygiene didn’t seem to be much of a priority. I mean, all of them had funky, grayish teeth and absolute ass-breath.
If it’d been one of them, I’d have figured they were just nasty, but something like 10/12 had this same problem.
Is this oral hygiene thing just a Western thing, or what?
White bread no crust mongrel American that can’t trace roots back more than 4 generations, and possibility of Welsh heritage but zero ties to any old country. Spent my first year in Taiwan in 1982, and travelled extensively in the Chinese countryside from 1985-1989 (about 3 years total). Shanghai has been home for past 8 years.
The changes have been mind boggling, and generally for the better. This was a damn poor country, especially the countryside in 1985. It’s still got some horribly poor places, but I see grass roots wealth creation deep into the countryside.
Industrialization has been pretty interesting. Companies have generally learned the right mix between modernization and labor. Urbanization has been no less advanced. From your basic pre-liberation falling down hovels to mass worker housing in 6 floor walk up concrete blocks, to now high rise heaven. It would take a lot more than a few sentences here to spit out my views but I generally try to get in on China related threads for my 2 cents.
I’ve always wondered if the teeth thing (some of them I’ve seen are actually green) isn’t some kind of early childhood vitamin deficiency. The 2nd generation and beyond “American” Chinese I’ve known don’t show this at all.
Some of the traditional Chinese (and generally Asian) foods are things most Americans/Europeans wouldn’t eat if they were starving. Conversely, my Japanese girlfriend was pretty repulsed by any kind of soft cheese or cultured dairy product (though she’d eat pizza and aged cheeses.)
Remember, too, that prior to the 20th Century, dental hygiene among Europeans and Americans was nothing to brag about. Having a full set of teeth after the age of 30 was exceptional.
Stranger
Well, that pretty much jives with what I’ve read and observed. The country has gone through about 100 years of change in about twenty years, so it’s no suprise that the post-Cultural Revolution demographic is so much different than those who came of age in the Seventies and early Eighties (which are most of the people I know.)
IMHO, if they can meliorate their natural resource limitations they have the potential to become the economic superpower of the Pacific Rim. They’re already taking away what little industrial base the US has left (and I suspect they are doing something of the same to Europe) and the have the advantage of still having a lower labor burden than the more developed PacRim nations.
It may be that sometime in the middle of the century the lingua franca is pidgeon Mandrian rather than pidgeon English. :eek:
Stranger
Most of the “grey teeth” syndrome would be among the 30-40 age group. It was a side effect of less than pure anti-biotics. Choice was die from an infection or get grey teeth.
That said, in my experience throughout China, the Chinese brush their teeth obsessively.
IMHO, as a chinese living overseas, Chinese will try and assimilate when “outside” and in contact with westeners but are a lot less shy about acting “chinese” in private than most other cultures. It could be that they regard you as a sort of honarary chinese so they don’t need to pretend to be assimilated while your around. The behaviours you listed aren’t any of the ones our family practise but I probably wouldn’t bat an eye if another chinese person did it to me.
As for your chinese PhD students, well, it sounds more like the PhD than the Chineseness that’s the reason for lack of common sense.
When I was living in student housing at UBC there were many Chinese students around, mostly coming from very rural areas. They’d tend to bring their whole families over too (or at least a set of grandparents) and live in very cramped conditions. Having six or eight people living in a one-bedroom apartment was common.
Most differences came about just from learning to deal with electricity and modern appliances. (You can’t use the oven for storage space even if it’s not turned on. You have to turn off the stove. No you can’t put a BBQ on your balcony.)
When I was part of the housing association we’d regularly hold meetings to explain acceptable behaviour, and how to make complaints, and all the new immigrants were shocked to find out you could demand things like having that leaky faucet fixed, and have it repaired within a day or two, and you wouldn’t have to pay for it!
But I did learn that holding a free BBQ for the neighbourhood is a bad idea, even if your budget allows for it.
I’ll second the opinions of some of the other people in this thread; that quite a lot of Chinese are not used to dealing with an industrial society and/or non-Chinese. Something else to think about is that although most outsiders and possibly even most people who live in China think of “Chinese” as being a useful identifying term, when there are some huge differences not just in living conditions but culture. There are still several mutually unintelligible languages that are lumped under “Chinese” even though they would be considered different languages in another context. There are different religious practices and superstitions, different regional dishes, and probably many cultural differences. They’re not anywhere near as homogeneous as they are commonly held to be.
I don’t know anything specifically about Chinese or Korean names, but since they use characters for writing their names, the name will always have an intrinsic meaning from the characters used.
Japanese family names are a fairly recent thing for most people. Before the Meiji Era, only powerful or important families and clans had traditional names. Names were sometimes bestowed on someone by the Emperor for significant deeds. After 1868 everyone was entitled to have a name. They could create their own or borrow one.
In theory, since there are literally thousands of kanji with multiple readings per character (including some really arbitrary ones) that are approved for use in names, there are potentially millions of different names possible. In practice, a lot of the names are pretty simple and a few names are much more common than any other. In my area, Takahashi　高橋　(high/tall bridge) is a common family name. I know at least ten Takahashis. Fujiyama, depending on the characters used, could be related to Mt. Fuji　富士山　(rich warrior mountain). Other characters could be　藤山　(wisteria mountain) or　�二山　(beneath two mountains), among others.
Wikipedia has a decent article on family names in Japan.
My first year of law school (1989-90) I had a Chinese roommate. He was a pharmacy student. Also a political refugee – he was a leader of a pro-democracy student movement at Hunan Medical University, and got out of the country right after the Tienanmen Square crackdown. So he was committed, in principle, to being open to Western ideas. And he was certainly a very polite and easygoing and open-minded fellow. First month he was here, bought a big color TV and VCR just so he could explore American culture. However . . .
The Chinese call their country “Chung Kuo” or “Zhongguo,” which I’ve always read translated as “The Middle Kingdom.” But my roommate translated it as “The Center of the Earth.” I think that sums it up. For most of their history the Chinese have known that their country was the most important and civilized country in the world. There were the Chinese, at the Center, and there were the “Four Barbarians” (the Barbarian peoples of the North, South, East and West). That attitude, more than physical isolation, has tended to insulate them from foreign influences, and make them, well, different.
I should add – my roommate was open-minded, and had spent a summer in the U.S. as an exchange student before, but there were still a lot of things about America that purely astonished him. For instance, we were walking around one day and passed a street preacher. I had to explain to him what this crazy man was doing; he had never seen such a thing. And when we passed a group of Orthodox Jews wearing yarmulkes, I had to explain why they were wearing those funny little hats.
Since we are on the subject, I have a question that I have always wondered but were always …well, afraid to ask for fear I might offend someone. I know Westerners smell like rancid cheese because of all the dairy products we consume, but what is the cause of the Chinese smell. For example I have bought second hand books that have been used by Chinese people and the books have strong sulfurous smell. This same smell is on many Chinese people. A friend of mine who is of Chinese decent suggests it might be from herbal remedies. Is this true?
I eat lots of Chinese food and have never smelled this in the food either. Is it a ‘special’ type of food?
There are lots of Chinese people living in Sydney. The snorking sound used to make me sick in lectures, but I am fairly used to this now. When I first started Uni I offered a tissue to one chap who was snorking away, thinking he didn’t have a tissue handy, and just got a strange look back in reply.
btw, gong hai fat choi
Sulfurous smell . . . omigod, they really are demons! :eek:
:mad: Oh, yeh? So’s yer old man!
This is at the heart of Chinese supremacist, xenophobic and ethnocentric thought: the “Middle” Kingdom is the centre of everything, in the middle between Heaven and Earth. The Chinese have, throughout history, isolated themselves. Why waste time on the rest of the world when you are above it and better than it?
As for the stereotypes mentioned here, some are undoubtedly fairly accurate, others are or will be out of date.
There is in my experience a serious problem with oral hygiene across all of China, and I don’t see it restricted to any particular age group (except that younger people now seem, generally, to be getting a better start in such matters). Things are slowly changing for the better, but it can still be a nightmare to meet and have to talk with people whose decaying teeth are encrusted with black and brown. Halitosis seems to be serious problem among the Chinese, and I don’t think it is necessarily a dietary issue in the way that, for example, it is in India (with curry and various spices) or to a lesser extent in some mediterranean countries (with garlic). It simply appears to be sloppy oral hygiene.
Said that, India is an interesting case when it comes to oral hygiene. Toothpaste is a concept embroiled in a thousand and one conspiracy theories, and the practice of cleansing your mouth with charcoal still persists. I suppose such massive, uneducated populations simply need a bit more time to come to terms with a modern lifestyle (many Indians also believe that iodized salt – introduced to counter the epidemic of iodine dietary deficiency in India – causes illness and is a foreign ploy to weaken India).
Regarding driving, there is zero common sense in force over all of China, including Hong Kong. Said that, I invite you to drive in Egypt one time, where the penchant for speed and tight turns will make China look as orderly as Switzerland. Following a car at a distance of 15cm here is normal behaviour. Considerations such as what might happen if the car you are following were to halt abruptly or have an accident all fall into the realm of common sense, and are therefore immediately discarded.
The “snorking” factor is also seriously disgusting. In Hong Kong, the revolting practice of clearing your throat and spitting the products anywhere and everywhere was made illegal several years ago, when the government got tired of recurring cholera outbreaks. Educated Hong Kong people claim that spitting is a practice perpetuated by the lowest classes and by mainlanders of any class (but not from Shanghai), which fits with my observations.
According to people I have talked with, clearing your throat gathers evil spirits (or something to that effect) and they must be removed for the well being and smooth flow of your life energy. Removed loudly and visibly.
I saw a revolting thing in the ultra-efficient subway system here in Hong Kong, in Central station of all places. An exceedingly grotty man wearing flip flops sitting next to me started grooming his filthy toenails while waiting for the train, basically just worrying at them with this fingernails. Eventually, he grabbed his foot, hauled it up to his mouth, and started biting his toenails. He chewed, he spat, he chewed some more.
I have a strong stomach, but that one experience really tested me. Keep in mind, this is in the heart of Central, where slick business suits and glamorous women are a common sight. Thank goodness this fellow was the exception rather than the rule. I have only seen a couple other people biting their toenails in public in 8 years I’ve been here.
If you go visit the Great Wall near Beijing, which is a very popular destination (much of the Great Wall is either inaccessibly far away or crumbled into dust), you will be shocked at how the hordes of Chinese tourists treat their greatest monument. Garbage is thrown down anywhere – on the Wall itself, in the branches of scenic trees growing by the Wall, and so forth. The guard towers are best avoided because they reek: since there are no toilets nearby – only objects such as hills, trees, bushes, etc. – it follows that the guard houses of this mighty structure must be used as toilets. I guess that this might be a lingering result of the Cultural Devolution, which dealt a grievous blow to the popular appreciation of art, history, and so forth, something the Party has attempted to rectify a few times without, I think, really putting their heart into it.
(China Guy, is the Forbidden City now more or less open, or are the most impressive halls still dusty and locked away from tourists? Last time I visited the City in 2001 or 2002 I noticed most buildings were closed to visitors and appeared to be collecting vast quantities of dust).
Some of the traditional foods of any culture will probably not be palatable to someone, but overall Chinese cuisines tend to be quite delicious, if you stay away from the garbage. Of course, in most of China people are willing and able to eat anything that crawls, walks, runs, slithers, swims, or moves at all, including rat, dog, monkeys, and civet (the sale of civets was banned for epidemiological reasons a couple years ago, which is a step forward), but generally speaking the food is fine as long as you stick with animals you would want to eat.
Asian cuisines can be spectacularly good. My favourites are probably Thai and a collection of dishes from multiple Chinese cuisines (ranging from the Uyghur Moslems, who make some of the best lamb in the universe, to the Southern provinces’ mastery of seafood), minus stuff I find revolting such as abalone, chicken feet, etc. I always get asked this, so yes, snake is actually quite good. And it does taste a bit like chicken.
Regarding smell: with proper hygiene, I have noticed no distinct smell whatsoever on Chinese, and, in fact (everything else, such as showers, being equal) the Chinese are physically less odorous than most other peoples. Apparently, some Chinese find that the Western diet rich in dairy products (most Chinese can’t handle much in the way of dairy) results in Westerners with an unpleasant body odour, but I don’t have much information about that and I’ve never been told I smell. Obviously, since I’ve been gobbling down dairy products all my life, I can’t smell any dairy odours on me, but it would be interesting to know how severe the problem is from the Chinese perspective (no luck yet on discussions I’ve had).
Kung Hei Fat Choi, as they say around here.
I made my first visit last June. Most of it is not open to the public. Doing a lot of renovation at this time.
Interesting – I asked when I was in the Forbidden City (it was actually 2000 or 2001, so 4 or 5 years ago) and they told me the same thing. But I didn’t see a shred of renovation at that time, just a thick layer of dust and filth accumulating everywhere. They let visitors wander freely on the grounds, but the majority of buildings – even the large pagoda-style buildings with huge doorless gates – were closed off.
I peeked inside past the barriers (of course) and I saw a lot of dusty riches, but no work in progress whatsoever. It definitely struck me as a case of the Party struggling to come to grips with the magnificence and opulence of pre-Communist China.
Just wanted to say thanks for the replies. It’s a touchy question to ask without being insulting.
I think the long-term lack of exposure to western culture, as opposed to say, the Japanese experience is a contributing factor for some of the things I’ve described.
FWIW, I also noticed that some Chinese seem to be aware of some of “our” aversions. There are 2 Chinese in my office and they both brush and floss regularly in the bathroom. NO Americans do that.
There’s still a big throat-clearing thing with them though.
in re: the photo of that baby. It was like a one-piece suit with snaps along the crotch. He was laying there with the snaps open. I had the sense that the guy was showing me that he had a son.