Lately I have been faced with some new situations that I can only describe as Culture Shock.
Aside from the bathroom “situation,” I have prided myself thus far on coping with the differences in Chinese and American cultures. I can confidently say that I have, up until Chengdu, not had any experiences were I felt completely confused or frozen to the point where I did not know how to react to my surroundings. But then I met 林静 / Lin Jing.
At UVa, I have a “language partner” named Zhang Ru. She is a college professor from Nanchang, China, who took a year off to conduct research at UVa. Because her English is not that great, we meet once a week to practice speaking English for 30 minutes and Chinese for 30 minutes. We get along really well and both benefit from our weekly meetings. The last time we met back in May, she told me that if I make a stop to Chengdu this summer, I should definitely contact her niece, Lin Jing, who is an undergraduate at a Chengdu college.
I thought this was a great idea because any help traveling would be appreciated. We wrote each other some emails while I was in Shanghai, and in Xi’an we began to talk via cell phone. She enthusiastically agreed to help us three travelers by buying our train ticket from Chengdu to Kunming. (For this we are all extremely grateful because tickets departing from a city can only be bought in that city, and are only sold ten days in advance, often being sold out on that first day. We are so fortunate to know someone in Chengdu who could buy the ticket on the first day it was available.)
Things started to get fishy when she gave Cuisang a phone call while we were aboard the train en route to Chengdu. She said that her uncle would drive his car to pick us up from the train station and take us to the hostel. To me this sounded so inconvenient and truly unnecessary because we had read that the number of taxis in Chengdu –almost- matches Shanghai.
We accepted her kind offer, though, and were gratefully escorted to our hostel, at which point Lin Jing insisted on treating us for dinner. The next morning she paid for our bus tickets to Sanxingdui, in addition to the entrance ticket. When we rode a taxi from place to place, before we even know we were getting out (Lin Jing was in control of these things… we had no idea) she had already paid. And in the afternoon, she had set up an appointment for us to meet with a travel agency for the Jiuzhaigou trip—she scored us a cheap local price (which actually had its negative side effects, which I plan to describe in a later post). Finally, another dinner treated by Lin Jing. And I still wasn’t even completely positive about how to pronounce her name.
So, yeah. Wow! How nice of her, I guess? This stranger who has almost no connection with us whatsoever so readily pays for EVERYTHING, treats us like we are completely helpless and her number one responsibility. We tried to pay for things, or at least reimburse her for the many costs that she bore for us, but she wouldn’t have it. And to make things even more confusing for me, she spoke extremely fast so I was not even sure where or what we were doing, I just new that this stranger was treating us like kings.
You might think this would be great—free stuff, etc. But in reality I felt extremely uncomfortable. This amount of money she has spent on me now (three more meals, four more bus tickets, admittance ticket to Emei Shan, and other small treats that certainly add up) is really unbelievable. And we still barely know each other! I am so confused as to why she feels the need to book everything for us, to escort us around, to pay for meals. I truly do not know what to do about it… I am truly shocked to the point where I can’t even respond.
The best example was during one of our dinners together. The bill came and I quickly whipped out my wallet and cash and told the waitress to run with it. After this happened Lin Jing yelled and seemed to become angry. She insisted I take her money. I wasn’t sure what to do! I remember once in Rhode Island, one of Aunts gave me twenty dollars—just as a gift with no occasion. Because there was no reason for the gift, I told her I couldn’t accept, earning myself a scolding from my father later that night. So what do I do in this situation with Lin Jing? Should I follow the same cultural behavior as in America, and accept the money being offered? Or should I know that in reality she is happy that I paid for this meal, and it is assumed that she will pay for the next?
Cuisang, Peichuan, and I have talked about it a lot, because it makes all three of us uncomfortable, and Cuisang called his mother (who is from Hong Kong) to get her opinion on how to deal with “Chinese Hospitality”. Apparently this is completely normal—if a Chinese person has any sort of connection, however distant, it is his/her responsibility to be the best host possible, by paying and escorting. And the payback? The only thing we can do, according to Cuisang’s mother, is promise Lin Jing that we will host her if she ever comes to America.
But Lin Jing has no plans to come to America. And even if she did have them, that seems so far away for me. But there is no way to get around it. Though we try to pay for as many things as we can (and we are successful, we just tell Lin Jing “you pay next time, you pay next time”), she is definitely paying for more than half of our activities—and there are three of us!
This form of hospitality is something that still has me confused and uncomfortable. Perhaps it exists in America (I often hear of “southern hospitality”), but this really seems to be at a ridiculous level—even more so because we do not know her. And sometimes it interferes with reason—for example, we reached the summit of Emei Shan, and Lin Jing said we shouldn’t eat at the restaurant there because it would be very expensive. Even though I insisted that I would pay, she would not have it. So we ate instant noodles. Her treat. And yes, I am glad that I did not spend the 8 kuai on my dinner, but it wasn’t filling—for any of us.
But this is the way hospitality works, according to my experience with Lin Jing. It is embarrassing for her, according to Cuisang, if we pay for too much. So I am trying my best to always be grateful and not frozen, and I constantly tell her that if she comes to America, I will take her all around Washington, DC.
The second area where I encountered Culture Shock was on the bus ride home from Jiuzhaigou. The ride was 9 hours long, and things got boring quickly, especially because reading is nearly impossible on the windy roads. The entire trip took four days, and for whatever reason up till this last day, we three had never spoken with the young girl sitting in the row in front of me. Now it’s time for a diagram:
The green seats are other passengers, and the black seats are Peichuan and Cuisang. During the last two hours of our return to Chengdu, the mother (red) began feeding questions to the daughter (yellow). This became very awkward, because the daughter would ask me a question, then turn to her mom and report back my answer. So I still am not quite clear what the mother even looks like, yet she knows a lot of information about my life.
Anyway, this is just an awkward detail about the situation. The questions started out harmless (all in Chinese): “How do you like China? How long have you been studying Chinese? What do you do when you don’t understand Chinese? Where do you live in America?” etc. I didn’t have any problem making conversation, though I did think it odd for the questions to be in such a relay.
But then the questions became very uncomfortable: “Do you want to marry a Chinese girl? So how much money did you spend a week in Shanghai? How much money do you spend now? How much money do you spend per week in America? Are you responsible for school tuition? Do you make money on your own? How much money do your parents make? How many rooms are in your house in America?”
Once again, I really did not know what to do in this situation. Things like income and the number of rooms in your house are just not topics that are discussed in America, especially with complete strangers. I am familiar with the stereotype of Americas—that they have lots of money and roll in wealth. And the questions were probably a product of curiosity about this stereotype. So should I answer honestly, and perhaps affirm her stereotype (though I wasn’t sure what would or wouldn’t be affirming that stereotype), or should I give extremely modest answers.
These questions made me so uncomfortable because I am fairly certain that this family would take my answers to be the standard for all American families, and that is really not fair. Also I just thought it was none of their business to know, but I wasn’t sure if I should tell them that flat out, or if that could cause some other bad consequence. Eventually I just started saying “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand your question”—a cheap way out, I know, but I really felt uncomfortable.
Apparently these types of questions are common (once again according to Cuisang). Something I was definitely unprepared for, though. I should probably just loosen up, and realize that people—Chinese, westerners, even myself—will make stereotypes and assumptions from limited information no matter what.
But I’m still not sure how to look at both of these situations… certainly different from any of my previous experiences, hah. This is the true challenge, I think, coping with these differences. We’ll see how I continue to do…
Aside from the bathroom “situation,” I have prided myself thus far on coping with the differences in Chinese and American cultures. I can confidently say that I have, up until Chengdu, not had any experiences were I felt completely confused or frozen to the point where I did not know how to react to my surroundings. But then I met 林静 / Lin Jing.
At UVa, I have a “language partner” named Zhang Ru. She is a college professor from Nanchang, China, who took a year off to conduct research at UVa. Because her English is not that great, we meet once a week to practice speaking English for 30 minutes and Chinese for 30 minutes. We get along really well and both benefit from our weekly meetings. The last time we met back in May, she told me that if I make a stop to Chengdu this summer, I should definitely contact her niece, Lin Jing, who is an undergraduate at a Chengdu college.
I thought this was a great idea because any help traveling would be appreciated. We wrote each other some emails while I was in Shanghai, and in Xi’an we began to talk via cell phone. She enthusiastically agreed to help us three travelers by buying our train ticket from Chengdu to Kunming. (For this we are all extremely grateful because tickets departing from a city can only be bought in that city, and are only sold ten days in advance, often being sold out on that first day. We are so fortunate to know someone in Chengdu who could buy the ticket on the first day it was available.)
Things started to get fishy when she gave Cuisang a phone call while we were aboard the train en route to Chengdu. She said that her uncle would drive his car to pick us up from the train station and take us to the hostel. To me this sounded so inconvenient and truly unnecessary because we had read that the number of taxis in Chengdu –almost- matches Shanghai.
We accepted her kind offer, though, and were gratefully escorted to our hostel, at which point Lin Jing insisted on treating us for dinner. The next morning she paid for our bus tickets to Sanxingdui, in addition to the entrance ticket. When we rode a taxi from place to place, before we even know we were getting out (Lin Jing was in control of these things… we had no idea) she had already paid. And in the afternoon, she had set up an appointment for us to meet with a travel agency for the Jiuzhaigou trip—she scored us a cheap local price (which actually had its negative side effects, which I plan to describe in a later post). Finally, another dinner treated by Lin Jing. And I still wasn’t even completely positive about how to pronounce her name.
So, yeah. Wow! How nice of her, I guess? This stranger who has almost no connection with us whatsoever so readily pays for EVERYTHING, treats us like we are completely helpless and her number one responsibility. We tried to pay for things, or at least reimburse her for the many costs that she bore for us, but she wouldn’t have it. And to make things even more confusing for me, she spoke extremely fast so I was not even sure where or what we were doing, I just new that this stranger was treating us like kings.
You might think this would be great—free stuff, etc. But in reality I felt extremely uncomfortable. This amount of money she has spent on me now (three more meals, four more bus tickets, admittance ticket to Emei Shan, and other small treats that certainly add up) is really unbelievable. And we still barely know each other! I am so confused as to why she feels the need to book everything for us, to escort us around, to pay for meals. I truly do not know what to do about it… I am truly shocked to the point where I can’t even respond.
The best example was during one of our dinners together. The bill came and I quickly whipped out my wallet and cash and told the waitress to run with it. After this happened Lin Jing yelled and seemed to become angry. She insisted I take her money. I wasn’t sure what to do! I remember once in Rhode Island, one of Aunts gave me twenty dollars—just as a gift with no occasion. Because there was no reason for the gift, I told her I couldn’t accept, earning myself a scolding from my father later that night. So what do I do in this situation with Lin Jing? Should I follow the same cultural behavior as in America, and accept the money being offered? Or should I know that in reality she is happy that I paid for this meal, and it is assumed that she will pay for the next?
Cuisang, Peichuan, and I have talked about it a lot, because it makes all three of us uncomfortable, and Cuisang called his mother (who is from Hong Kong) to get her opinion on how to deal with “Chinese Hospitality”. Apparently this is completely normal—if a Chinese person has any sort of connection, however distant, it is his/her responsibility to be the best host possible, by paying and escorting. And the payback? The only thing we can do, according to Cuisang’s mother, is promise Lin Jing that we will host her if she ever comes to America.
But Lin Jing has no plans to come to America. And even if she did have them, that seems so far away for me. But there is no way to get around it. Though we try to pay for as many things as we can (and we are successful, we just tell Lin Jing “you pay next time, you pay next time”), she is definitely paying for more than half of our activities—and there are three of us!
This form of hospitality is something that still has me confused and uncomfortable. Perhaps it exists in America (I often hear of “southern hospitality”), but this really seems to be at a ridiculous level—even more so because we do not know her. And sometimes it interferes with reason—for example, we reached the summit of Emei Shan, and Lin Jing said we shouldn’t eat at the restaurant there because it would be very expensive. Even though I insisted that I would pay, she would not have it. So we ate instant noodles. Her treat. And yes, I am glad that I did not spend the 8 kuai on my dinner, but it wasn’t filling—for any of us.
But this is the way hospitality works, according to my experience with Lin Jing. It is embarrassing for her, according to Cuisang, if we pay for too much. So I am trying my best to always be grateful and not frozen, and I constantly tell her that if she comes to America, I will take her all around Washington, DC.
The second area where I encountered Culture Shock was on the bus ride home from Jiuzhaigou. The ride was 9 hours long, and things got boring quickly, especially because reading is nearly impossible on the windy roads. The entire trip took four days, and for whatever reason up till this last day, we three had never spoken with the young girl sitting in the row in front of me. Now it’s time for a diagram:
The green seats are other passengers, and the black seats are Peichuan and Cuisang. During the last two hours of our return to Chengdu, the mother (red) began feeding questions to the daughter (yellow). This became very awkward, because the daughter would ask me a question, then turn to her mom and report back my answer. So I still am not quite clear what the mother even looks like, yet she knows a lot of information about my life.
Anyway, this is just an awkward detail about the situation. The questions started out harmless (all in Chinese): “How do you like China? How long have you been studying Chinese? What do you do when you don’t understand Chinese? Where do you live in America?” etc. I didn’t have any problem making conversation, though I did think it odd for the questions to be in such a relay.
But then the questions became very uncomfortable: “Do you want to marry a Chinese girl? So how much money did you spend a week in Shanghai? How much money do you spend now? How much money do you spend per week in America? Are you responsible for school tuition? Do you make money on your own? How much money do your parents make? How many rooms are in your house in America?”
Once again, I really did not know what to do in this situation. Things like income and the number of rooms in your house are just not topics that are discussed in America, especially with complete strangers. I am familiar with the stereotype of Americas—that they have lots of money and roll in wealth. And the questions were probably a product of curiosity about this stereotype. So should I answer honestly, and perhaps affirm her stereotype (though I wasn’t sure what would or wouldn’t be affirming that stereotype), or should I give extremely modest answers.
These questions made me so uncomfortable because I am fairly certain that this family would take my answers to be the standard for all American families, and that is really not fair. Also I just thought it was none of their business to know, but I wasn’t sure if I should tell them that flat out, or if that could cause some other bad consequence. Eventually I just started saying “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand your question”—a cheap way out, I know, but I really felt uncomfortable.
Apparently these types of questions are common (once again according to Cuisang). Something I was definitely unprepared for, though. I should probably just loosen up, and realize that people—Chinese, westerners, even myself—will make stereotypes and assumptions from limited information no matter what.
But I’m still not sure how to look at both of these situations… certainly different from any of my previous experiences, hah. This is the true challenge, I think, coping with these differences. We’ll see how I continue to do…
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