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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:34
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quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
Yesterday (almost like manna from heaven for the purposes of this essay), there was a fire in the apartment block across the street from mine. I ran upstairs to get my camera to document it.
someone else's misfortune was cause for their merriment.
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So when this expat saw a fire, he went home and took pictures of it so that he could then complain about the uncaring Chinese who don't help strangers.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
The fact that a café (named "Mei You", or "Don't have it" - mindseye) would bank on the prevalence of the phrase to draw in customers is an unflattering commentary on the unwillingness of many Chinese to help out their fellow humans.
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If you ever meet this guy, try to explain the concept of irony to him.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
Sorry,but the mentality described (i.e. ma mu - mindseye) was never prevalent in America. There may have been gangs, there may have been violence, but never the ma mu described above, never the crowd that would gather around an injured person and not offer to help.
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Move along folks, nothing to see here, move along.
Sound familiar
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
I'll never forget when my boss in Beijing during my first week on the job told me how in China, if a person was lying on the sidewalk bleeding just about everyone would walk right past him.
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Wait a second, do they walk by without looking, or do they all gather round to stare and laugh?
Or is that people in Beijing walk by without helping and the people in Shanghai stop and stare?
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Originally posted by mindseye
it is something unique to China
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Yup, always amazes me how people in North America stop and help every homeless person lying on the street. They to make sure the person's okay. They never stop to look at an accident or a fire. People are always willing to help the police solve crimes. If a parent is hitting a child, people automatically step in and stop the parent. Yup, it's definitely unique to China.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
and nearly every expat I have known in China has stories that validate this point. Usually many, many stories[/b], especially about the driving etiquette, which is where it comes out in a very scary way.
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So they have road rage in China too, eh?
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
In one such short story, entitled "Medicine", Lu depicted an execution scene of a woman, believed to be based on Qiu Jin, editor of the Chinese Women's Journal and one of the country's first feminist scholars, who was executed for a failed uprising. "Craning their necks as far as they would go, they looked like so many ducks, held and lifted by some invisible hand," Lu writes, equating his fellow countrymen with senseless waterfowl.
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A description of a century-old execution. Now when public executions were done in the west, no one ever to watch them.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
The People's people don't get involved. And generally, the People's people never say sorry for anything.[/b][/q]
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Man, that's what I love about all the expats here. Everyone of them is always polite, never bumping into anyone, always saying excuse me, never rude.
If someone gets hurt, the first person who helps is always an expat. If only the stupid locals would learn to be polite. 
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
Cai Keping, a columnist, wrote that the great curiosity among Chinese resulted from the nature of an agricultural society, with farmers usually living dull and uneventful lives without variation or entertainment.
He recalled that when he was a child, local villagers would flock onto the narrow road, sometimes with bowls and chop-sticks still in their hands, to watch passing trucks, which were mysterious to them.
"Such spectators revealed a mentality of lowliness and self-belittlement," he said. "The viewers had been accustomed to following blindly, yet were unaware of this. The syndrome is a major defect of the Chinese personality."
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Really? If you had never seen a truck, or if trucks were a rarity, why would watching it reveal "a mentality of lowliness and self-belittlement." Would it not reflect curiosity in things that are new. Cai's comments say more about his embarrasment of growing up in such a place then it does about the people there.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
"That is because, in a society where legal protection is not given to personal rights, indifference is always safe and has an attractive side to it difficult for Westerners to appreciate," (renowned writer Lin Yutang) wrote.
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And yet in societies where people have legal protections, people still don't want to get involved.
[QUOTE] Originally posted by mindseye
Chinese indifference can be difficult for Westerners. I watched recently, with a dozen or so others, as a woman and a child took a spill from a bike into the middle of the road... I’ve never felt comfortable with being the one who is first to prove their heroics, especially if the situation is minor. I feel embarrassed. And it seems like I’m embarrassing the other persons as well. [b]So I stood with the others and watched [/q]
Obviously there problem is that this writer grew up in a selfish culture where people don't have the legal protection.
Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.
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mindseye
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A Yankee living in Shanghai
Apr 1999
time: 13:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Tingkai
Doctors asking for to be paid. How shocking! Why can't they be humanitarians and work for free, like doctors in the United States and Canada |
Whoops, you misrepresented my argument again. Did I say doctors should work for free?
I'm not talking about pay - the patients have already paid the hospital up front for the surgery, and the hospital pays the doctor. One of my Chinese co-workers explained to me that the additional "red envelope money" was something you "should do" if you want to make sure the doctor "does a good job". The "red envelope money" was an amount rivaling the cost of the surgery already charged by the hospital. This is quite a different situation from deciding whether to pay the doctor at all.
quote:
Asking for in the ER! Well that never happens anywhere. If you walk into an ER in the US without insurance, will you get first class treatment. |
You might not get first-class treatment, but if you have a clear medical emergency, you get treatment. You will not typically be turned away. In many Chinese hospitals, you are in fact turned away if you don't have enough cash on you. Here is an article (written by a Hong Kong Chinese) about this situation, with an example and photo.
quote:
Giving what I would call lai see to a doctor is simply a cultural specific method of paying a bill. |
Culturally specific? I thought that was my argument. I thought your refrain was "this happens everywhere"?
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The fact that doctors ask to get paid does not mean they're only in it for the money. |
First off, it's not "pay", it's in addition to pay. It's something more like "protection money".
Secondly, I'm sure there are multiple motivations for becoming a doctor. However, you chose doctors as an example of workers who do not put personal gain before public welfare. In response, I pointed out that in fact doctors do sometimes do this, and gave examples: patients feel pressured by doctors to give them extra "red envelope" payments beyond what they already paid the hospital, and that ER doctors are known to turn away those in need of emergency assistance because they cannot put cash down. That's clearly putting personal profit ahead of public welfare.
I said nothing about not paying doctors at all. Again and again you misrepresent my arguments to suit your needs.
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Still, this proves that Chinese people do not necessarily put personal profit primarily over public welfare. |
You merely set up a straw man ("doctors are just asking for pay") and then knocked it down. Sorry, that's not much proof of anything.
quote:
(...)some become cops because they want to serve their community. They sign up to catch crooks for the betterment of the general welfare (...)
Still, this proves that Chinese people do not necessarily put personal profit primarily over public welfare. |
All it proves is that you can conjecture a theoretical exception. I'm not saying that every last act by every last Chinese places profit above public welfare. There are exceptions. However, it is so common, and it is so different in its extremity from most other cultures, that I believe it qualifies as a distinct characteristic of mainland culture. I have already provided a heap of observations from mainlanders and experienced foreigners alike, all attesting to the widespread observation of this phenomena. You citing a theoretical exception doesn’t really do anything to challenge that.
quote:
Where we differ (on the Shalan school tragedy) is that you seem willing to judge the people there based on incomplete, conflicting information.
(...)
In developing countries, this happens, unfortunately, all too often. Thousands die every year from floods. In Bangladesh it seems to happen on an annual basis.
Last November, 300 people died in floods in the Philippines. The floods and landslides were made worse by illegal logging. |
Sure the reports are conflicting -- and no wonder, local authorities are trying to quash the story. Police were intimidating and chasing down reporters. At least one news story was banned.
You offered some flimsy possible explanations for some of the details, and then fell back on your "it happens everywhere" refrain. I think if you go back to those stories of floods in the Philippines, you will find that it doesn’t happen everywhere like it did in Shalan, not often anyway. But in China, these kinds of events are not so uncommon at all.
You keep misrepresenting my argument as "these things only occur in China". I'm not arguing that, and never have. I am arguing that in China you commonly find extremes of indifference toward strangers that simply aren't common elsewhere.
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It's called a joke. |
Oh - you weren't there, but you know what they meant. Well, as an active participant in the conversations, I can assure you they weren't joking.
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Then provide your own quick summary. I based my comments on your initial quote and on what you have posted. It's a fair summary. |
Well, I'm not too surprised you think your summary of my arguments was fair.
Okay, here's my summary: Chinese indifference toward strangers, something widely noted by many foreigners and locals alike, is marked by extremes not commonly found in other cultures. Many foreigners, including myself, are saddened and dismayed by this. Many, including China's highest-acclaimed cultural critic, consider it a major cultural shortcoming.
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The sample size is small and unscientific. It a series of anecdotes based on what he wants to see. |
Oh, you know "what I want to see"? Believe me, I don't like to see it at all, and would far prefer not to. I think it's a conspicuous mar on a remarkable society.
I think my sample size is in fact pretty large for a personal observation. It's hundreds or thousands of incidents (depends on how trivial you want to get down to) that I have witnessed almost daily during a period of over four years.
But what about all the observations of the other writers I documented? What about their use of terms like "widely commented on by foreigners", "nearly every expat I have known in China has many stories that validate this point", "media around the country have carried many reports", "pervasive throughout the entire public space", "consistently tops Westerners’ biggest complaints about China"?
Why don't those don't count toward "sample size"? Because you don't like what they say?
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So of all your many friends, do you say that all of them care about profit first, and are rude to strangers, and they would never help out a stranger who is trouble. That they would watch a person drown rather than get wet. |
I haven’t seen them in some of these situations (e.g. drowning person), but I have seen some of this behavior in them (e.g. indifferent to strangers). Not often, though - I tend to be very picky about my friends, they are for the most part not typical locals.
quote:
That your friends are good people and you believe them to be decent human beings, some more decent than others, but decent nonetheless |
In fact I think most Chinese are good or decent people. However, there is a cultural norm about behavior towards strangers that leads them unquestioningly to behavior that is not common elsewhere in the world. Remember before when I said putting personal profit ahead of public welfare "was not even a question"? What I meant was that this question does not seem to even occur to most people. If it did, they would hopefully act differently. But since it's "normal" in China, and since they are largely unaware that it is not "normal" outside of China, I think many simply don't know any better. This is compounded by an educational system (and other factors) that fail to encourage questioning and critical thinking.
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In other words, take your statements and apply them to your friends. Are they really that uncaring? |
As I said before, in choosing friends I tend to look for exceptional people, however I do indeed sometimes see them do some of the things I wrote about. With people I do not carefully select to spend time with (e.g. neighbors, co-workers, students, etc) I see it much more often.
quote:
So what did those westerners do? I imagine that they charged in, took control, and save the injured person. |
Actually, that is usually the case if a westerner is present, at least to my experience. Just three weeks ago one of my co-workers (white Canadian guy) did just that when he saw a man collapse in a grand mal seizure. While he was trying to get something into the guy's mouth, he had to ask the Chinese standing around watching to call an ambulance. In the only injury situation I witnessed in which I was close enough to be of assistance (an old woman dumped her bike and landed on her head) I immediately ran over to help her.
Another time I gave up my seat on the subway to warn a man that he was brushing his coat up against a wall freshly covered in vomit (an earlier passenger had just thrown up there). Other passengers much nearer the man saw it as well, but just watched. They wouldn’t say a word. The man was, after all, a stranger.
Three weeks ago I stopped a thief I saw walking away with a girl's bag at McDonalds. No Chinese customers said a word. However, last Sunday the tables were turned, I needed the help. A pickpocket was following me for some distance, slowly working to open my bag. This was observed by at least ten or fifteen Chinese bystanders, not one of whom gave me even the slightest warning. Luckily, I felt the guy working the zipper, and rounded on him. It's hard to imagine ten or fifteen Americans watching a pickpocket at work without even a "Hey!".
How many more examples would you like? Do you want the one about the western tourists saving the motorist in a Tibetan road accident while Chinese drivers refused to assist unless someone paid them?
quote:
Have you never been on a highway where there's a car accident. What do people do? They slow down and gawk to see what's happening. Maybe they'll pull over and go take a real close look. |
Um yeah, if there's already emergency workers there. If not, I think people usually help. I'll give you some examples from my own life.
One time driving home from work I rounded a corner and came upon a man bleeding in the street. I was the first to arrive. I blocked the street with my car, got a blanket from my trunk, and wrapped him in it. Just then two other bystanders rushed up to help, and told me they had just called the police. (Turned out the guy had been in a gang brawl, and had a bottle broke over his head). Another time, when a woman was mugged right in front of my flat, my roomates and I immediately ran out, picked her up, brought her inside and called the police. This is not at all unusual behavior in the west, at least not from my experience living in the US.
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If some one falls and hurts themselves on a city street, people stop to stare. |
Like I keep saying, this phenomena can certainly happen in other places, just not to the extremes you commonly find in China.
Be honest, have you ever seen a crowd of two hundred westerners gathered around a prone injured person, with no one lifting a finger? I never saw that once during my 41 years in the US. I have seen it multiple times during my 4.5 years in China.
But as a real-life counter example, one time in San Francisco (1990s) I had a problem with my contact, and squatted in a downtown office building doorway to attend to it. A woman immediately approached me and asked me if I was all right or needed help. I never forgot that.
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Or how about homeless people on the street. People will walk by, averting their eyes, ignoring what they see. |
Sorry, but homeless and beggars are a very different situation from a generic stranger in trouble.
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What you describe happening in China, happens everywhere. |
And again.
And one last time I remind you, I never claimed it happens only in China. I claimed that it commonly happens to a greater extreme in China than elsewhere. And I've backed it up with many other experienced observers who have made the same claim. Leave that strawman alone, for heaven's sake!
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I haven't read Lu Xun's writing so I won't comment on them. |
That was quite a dodge! China's own pre-imminent social critic echoes my claim, but you "won't comment" on that. I think I can see why you might not want to. 
quote:
To use your analogy, what I am saying is that you can't describe the contents of a bag based on a limited sample. Hell, there might be something other then glass beads in the bag. |
To keep up the analogy, I have pulled quite a number of beads from the bag which were significantly greener than any I've seen from any other bag. I have documented that it is widely reported that others have found the same thing. I have documented that the bead manufacturer's QA expert (Lu Xun) says the beads are greener than most.
Your response seems to boil down to a repetition of:
(1) "I can think of a possible non-green bead, so therefore the beads aren't green."
(2) "Greenish beads are found in other places"
(3) "No matter how many beads you or anyone looked at it's not enough, so therefore the beads are not green."
(4) "You are a racist bead-hater."
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So when this expat saw a fire, he went home and took pictures of it so that he could then complain about the uncaring Chinese who don't help strangers. |
So you don't dispute he witnessed just what he claimed?
quote:
Move along folks, nothing to see here, move along.
Sound familiar
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As for the rest of the comments from other experienced China observers, foreigner and local, who echoed just what I said, you casually dismiss them with "move along, sounds familiar" (along with, of course the inevitable "it happens in your country, too" strawman).
Well, I'm sorry, but just because you don't like the witnesses' testimony doesn’t mean it magically doesn’t count. Your snarky comments about the authors don't do anything to discount their claims.
For all your writing you've done nothing to show that what I claim doesn’t actually exist, especially after I provided a pile of documented observations from resident foreigners and Chinese supporting my claim. You have provided no other explanation for what a large group of experienced observers have witnessed in many situations.
...
Well, unless you have any further "arguments" to offer, it looks like your charge of being a "hate-blinded racist" doesn’t stand on much more than a strawman, a scattering of misrepresentations, and a simple dismissal of all other witnesses' accounts that inconveniently supports my claim.
I won't hold my breath for an apology for the racism charge, but you can still surprise me if you like.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:34
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A quick google search shows that Lu Xun died in 1936. He wrote about imperial and republican China. The society he described no longer exists. Citing him to back up your observations of China today would be like saying there was terrible racism in the US in the 30s, so therefore there must be terrible racism today. It's absurd.
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Tingkai
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To find the Northwest Passage
Aug 2001
time: 13:34
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quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
I'm not talking about pay - the patients have already paid the hospital up front for the surgery, and the hospital pays the doctor. One of my Chinese co-workers explained to me that the additional "red envelope money" was something you "should do" if you want to make sure the doctor "does a good job". The "red envelope money" was an amount rivaling the cost of the surgery already charged by the hospital. This is quite a different situation from deciding whether to pay the doctor at all.
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This is a simple concept, try to follow it. Different societies sometimes have different methods for paying people. In Hong Kong, restaurants almost always have an automatic service charge. The service charge is not extortion; it's part of the bill. You have to pay it.
The situation with Chinese hospitals is one of the problems cause by the shift to market forces. Yes, it would be much better if China provided free medicare completely covered by medical insurance. But the problem is not caused by a greedy culture, but rather capitalism.
And people being turned away from hospitals occurs in the US for the same reason:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/n.../dump-n07.shtml
527 hospitals that refused to take care of peopel who did not have insurance.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
quote:
Giving what I would call lai see to a doctor is simply a cultural specific method of paying a bill. |
Culturally specific? I thought that was my argument. I thought your refrain was "this happens everywhere"?
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Come on, you're not that stupid. Lai see is a specific Chinese tradition just like giving Christmas gifts is a Christian tradition.
You do know that at Chinese New Years it is a traditions for married people to give lai see to children and single people.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
That's clearly putting personal profit ahead of public welfare.
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Earth to Mindseye. China is a market economy. If you don't get paid, you don't eat. Just because a person wants to get paid for their work doesn't mean they greedy.
And if you say that anyone who demands to get paid for their work is putting personal profit ahead of public welfare then that is true for every person in the world who is earning a pay check and your statemen becomes nonsense.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
You offered some flimsy possible explanations for some of the details,
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Flimsy. Those are very reasonable explanations for how people might behave in a crisis, much more reasonable than your unsubstantiated theory.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
Okay, here's my summary: Chinese indifference toward strangers, something widely noted by many foreigners and locals alike, is marked by extremes not commonly found in other cultures. Many foreigners, including myself, are saddened and dismayed by this. Many, including China's highest-acclaimed cultural critic, consider it a major cultural shortcoming.
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Yes, se my previous post. You're citing a man who has been dead for 80 years.
And yes, you will see a lot more ignorant people in China because there are a lot more people in China. If there is an accident in the U.S., maybe 10 people will watch. An accident in China, there will be hundreds of people gawking at it because the population density is so much higher.
It doesn't mean that Chinese people are worse on average.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
I think my sample size is in fact pretty large for a personal observation.
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I'm not even going to try to explain the simple concept of the difference between scientific observation and ramdon anecdotes.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
But what about all the observations of the other writers I documented?
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Hello, they're doing the same thing you're doing so their research is flawed for the same reason.
What's truly idiotic are those people you quoted who complain about Chinese indifference and then do the same thing they're complaining about.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
I think many simply don't know any better.
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Well, how can they compare to such a civilized saint like yourself. We are not worthy. Please oh great man will you show us ignorant people the way.
Random acts of kindness in China
A friend was in Shanghai and left his Leica camera in a taxi. The taxi driver took off, came back, found him at his hotel, returned the camera and refused to accept a reward.
My shoelaces often come undone. Doesn't bother me because I never trip on them. In China, dozens of times I had people come up to me and point to tell me my shoelaces are undone.
People who show me directions and then walk with me until I get where I'm going, or in the general direction.
A couple of time I've forgotten my umbrella at a restaurant and one of the staff will chase after me to give it back to me.
I've never been injured in China so I can't speak to that.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
quote:
If some one falls and hurts themselves on a city street, people stop to stare. |
Like I keep saying, this phenomena can certainly happen in other places, just not to the extremes you commonly find in China.
Be honest, have you ever seen a crowd of two hundred westerners gathered around a prone injured person, with no one lifting a finger?
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See comment about population density.
I go back to Toronto and the streets that I used to think we're crowded seem empty now. People are out and about in the streets far more in Asia than in North America.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
quote:
Or how about homeless people on the street. People will walk by, averting their eyes, ignoring what they see. |
Sorry, but homeless and beggars are a very different situation from a generic stranger in trouble.
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Homeless people are people, and I can't belive I have to say that. They can be in need of help like anyone else.
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
To keep up the analogy, I have pulled quite a number of beads from the bag which were significantly greener than any I've seen from any other bag. I have documented that it is widely reported that others have found the same thing. I have documented that the bead manufacturer's QA expert (Lu Xun) says the beads are greener than most.
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Repeating myself is getting tiring.
As any scientist will tell you, if you based your theories on anecdotes, the danger is that you will only pick out the green beads (to use this analogy) while not remembering the other coloured beads that you see. You will be looking for green beads and remembering the ones you find.
You are also looking at one part of the bag called Shanghai. That may be different, or might not be, than a smaller city like Xian or a rural area. For example, in Shanghai I saw people wearing pyjamas on the steet during the day. I have never seen that anywhere else in China (which doesn't exclude the possibility that this is a national fashion trend).
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
quote:
So when this expat saw a fire, he went home and took pictures of it so that he could then complain about the uncaring Chinese who don't help strangers. |
So you don't dispute he witnessed just what he claimed?
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Hello, hello, anyone home. He's doing the exact same thing that he complains the Chinese are doing!
quote:
Originally posted by mindseye
For all your writing you've done nothing to show that what I claim doesn’t actually exist
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I don't deny it exists. In fact, I have said repeated that this type of behaviour is common in all society.
What I dispute is any claim that it is unique to China. What I challenge is any concept that this behaviour is naturally a part of Chinese culture. And what I question is the extent of this behaviour. Your convinced it is extreme, yet you provide no proof of its extent. I can provide you with dozens of examples of people behaving badly in Canada, but that doesn't mean it is right to assume that this behaviour is common or committed by a vast majority of the people.
This is basic logic. If you see a bunch of black cats, that doesn't prove that the majority of cats are black, no matter how many times you see black cats, no matter how many times you take photos of black cats, and no matter how many newspapers articles you have about black cats.
The only way to estimate the percentage of black cats is to start counting all cats. And even then, the results are only valid for a specific area. So if you study cats in Toronto, the results are not valid for Vancouver.
Now do I have to explain how this applies to studying habits of people in China? I suspect I do.
If you want to study how people behave in Shanghai, then you need to pick a sample, document "good" behaviour, "bad" behaviour and neutral behaviour. You have to do that among the same group of people, not a constantly changing sample that filters out one behaviour or another. You then need to do the same test in another country to provide a benchmark. For example, if your study finds that 90% of Chinese are saints and 90% of Americans are saints then you can't say that Chinese culture produces saints.
You have an unsubstantiated belief that Chinese behave terribly. You see a crowd and you see a homogenous horde of selfish people. You even say your friends are selfish at times.
I have an unsubstantiated belief that Chinese people are
people like you and me. The crowd is made up of individuals, some good, some bads, just like anywhere else. Most of the people I have met while travelling and living in different countries have on average, been decent people.
I argue with everyone here, but the vast majority of people here are quite intelligent and have interesting perspectives, yes, including you.
But then that's probably because I prefer to look for the good in people.
You prefer to see the negatives.
And at this point, why don't we agree to disagree.
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21-06-2005 21:53
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