Grammar and Tones

This post needs a big disclaimer: Like so many of my other posts, this is just my very subjective and biased personal interpretation of the various conversations and experiences I have had in China, as well as with my wife and extended family. I’m not attempting to be objective or accurate, I’m just describing how my own mind made sense of the world and the people around me as I experienced them, and I’m making no attempt to be particularly nuanced, because I think the differences – and the different values in them – are much more interesting than the various shades of grey on the cultural and personal spectrum from East to West. In this post, and for the sake of this post, I see the world as black and white.

Black and white

I really do see the world in black and white. There is right and wrong, good and bad, darkness and light. Of course, I’m totally aware of the fact that many things are not quite as clear cut as they seem, but in general, my mind tries to put things into either one or the other category.

I think the dichotomy good and bad is universal in western culture. Much of Western culture is rooted in Christianity (and Judaism, which Christianity itself if based on). Walk into any museum anywhere in the western world and you will find paintings of heaven and hell, of angels and demons, of God and the devil. Be good and you will go to heaven, be bad and you will go to hell. There is no in-between, no grey.

Sure, I punched my neighbour in the face when he didn’t trim his hedge the way he should, but I also helped a blind man across the street the other day. I’ll probably go to floor 23 between hell and heaven.

This all sounds rather abstract and mythical. But I do believe that much of our thinking and intuition about everyday situations is highly influenced by this.

The boy who cried wolf

In German, we have a saying

Wer einmal lügt dem glaubt man nicht,
und wenn er auch die Wahrheit spricht.

which translates to “A liar is not believed even when he speaks the truth”. In English the phrase “to cry wolf” is probably a better translation, coming from the ancient Greek storyteller Aesop’s fable “The boy who cried wolf”: a story about a boy who repeatedly fools villagers by falsely claiming that a wolf is attacking village’s flock of sheep. When an actual wolf comes, the villagers don’t believe him and all the sheep are eaten by the wolf.

I believe a lot of Western relationships are built on this mantra: Is someone a liar or an upright person? Is someone a good or a bad person? Is someone a friend or an enemy?

The German saying goes further than Aesop’s fable: It says that if you even lie once, no one will believe you any more.

This might sound unreasonably harsh, but the flip side of the coin is that you can have a lot of trust in a “true friend”. Someone who has been honest and upright with you and has mutually supported each other, is considered so trustworthy that he would never even lie once, or more generally never let you down even once. This can be a very strong bond. Germans in particular have a reputation for not calling many people “friends” – most people are “acquaintances” to a German: people you know and you are friendly with, but people that you haven’t formed this strong bond with that you would expect them to never let you down even once. But once you have formed this bond and earned the trust, it will be a friendship for life.

Put to the test

There is another German saying

Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser

which translates to “Trust is good, control is better” (it is actually attributed to Lenin). In China, I often had the feeling that this was the overarching principle when it came to interpersonal relationships.

In China, there are lots of small things that indicate your friendship and loyalty. Each of them are rather sensible nice details and courtesies, such as:

• When someone invites you for dinner, you don’t decline, to show that you really value meeting that person.
• When someone sends you a text message, you respond immediately to show that you care about them.
• When someone eats a dinner with you offer the best piece of meat to them first. You also offer the last piece of meat to them.
• When someone wants to take a taxi home, you offer them a ride, even if their place is the opposite direction to yours.
• When someone wants to offer you a ride, you politely decline.
• When someone carries a suitcase, you offer to carry it for them.
• When someone offers to carry your suitcase, you politely decline.
• When someone politely declines you offering their suitcase, you gentle take it out of their hand and carry it anyways.

And the list goes on like this.

The thing is, to me these things felt more like a test. The relationship is seen as dynamic and might be changing every day.

Yesterday, you came to my dinner party and we had a very good time together. Last week, you took good care to make sure I safely got home after we met. But today, I sent you a message and I still haven’t received a reply. This must mean that you now hate me.

Of course it goes the other way round, too. If you have disappointed me many times in the past, but have now started to treat me well, than this means that you are now my friend again.

The basic idea seems to be that a friendship is one that is maintained every day again. Every interaction is an opportunity to make a renewed statement of your friendship.

But it can also be seen as a test. There is the last piece of meat on the table ad no one is eating it. If I eat it, I may have failed the test and my friend might conclude that I don’t really care about him at all and we are not really friends after all. If I urge him to eat the last piece of meat, I may have passed the test, and my friend concludes that we are, in fact, still friends.

As I said, I’m not making any attempt at objectivity in this post, I’m just describing my own felt experience.

To me it felt, like you are constantly put to the test, and you need to prove your loyalty every day. You will never have a “true friend” – one that is always there for you no matter what, and one that I do not need to doubt his loyalty. You will only ever have a “true friend every day” – one that shows is friendship in every single interaction you have, and that you show your friendship every day again.

For better or worse

This extends to marriages. In China, it is very common that the husband will pay all his income into the wife’s account. Part of the reason is that China doesn’t have jointly owned bank accounts, but a more important reason is that “if the husband had money, he would use it to cheat”. This is not showing a lot of trust in my opinion, but rather control.

But in the Chinese mindset, I guess it makes sense. Just because the groom has always been loyal and faithful to you, doesn’t mean he will do so in the future. Traditionally, Chinese weddings don’t have the western type of vows with “for better or worse, till death do us part”. The western assumption is that with these vows, there can be absolute trust and confidence that these vows will never be broken. Of course the divorce statistics say otherwise, but this is the assumption. Chinese don’t believe in the concept that there are good people and bad people, faithful husbands and unfaithful husbands. There are just people. And husbands.

The environment influences how people behave. A guy with a lot of cash at hand might one day go to pay for a “massage”. A guy without cash won’t. A guy that has been faithful for many years, hasn’t been so because he “is a faithful person” but because there haven’t been opportunities that were worth the risk.

From a Western perspective, Chinese relationships can seem rather transactional: you continuously proof and re-proof your investment into a relationship. From a Chinese perspective, I guess, Western relationships can seem rather uncaring: how can you claim that you care about someone if half of the time you don’t actually care?

For intercultural friendships and relationships this can be a constant point of frustration. We may know about the cultural differences, but having grown up in the respective cultures for decades, we cannot feel the these cultural differences. I will always feel that I’m being put to the test by my wife or in-laws, and my wife will always feel like there are days when all of a sudden I or her in-laws don’t love her anymore (just to change back the next day). The beauty of grammar and tones, of intercultural relationships and friendships, is to acknowledge that these feelings are there, but to use our knowledge of the cultural differences to look past them.