remmy goes to shanghai

so let me start with a bit of a weather update for those who haven’t heard. we’ve had snow off and on for the last week. now to really explain this, let me say that the week before last a woman said to me, “well this is the most snow we’ve had in a winter in a long time.” and at that point i bust out laughing because 2 weeks ago we’d had nothing more than flurries on 4 different occasions. and by flurries, i mean big, fat, wet snowflakes that melted looooong before they ever touched the ground. so a “lot” of snow meant…it happened 4 times instead of 1 or 2.

now 1 week later, we’ve had maybe as much as an inch…but that could be a stretch…of actual snow…like it touched the ground and remained there all day and overnight. and from what i’m told…this is the most snow they have had in shanghai in 17 years! so while beijing and other parts of china regularly get dumped on…an inch or two in shanghai is news indeed!

so with that out of the way…on to the topic at hand. i actually had a question from kim…which is amazing…first that people actually ever read this! (thanks kim!) but that i got a real question. i’ll say i don’t know that i can really answer the question in any way that gives it justice but i’ll talk a bit about the things i’ve observed about communication here.

should i begin by regaling you with my increasing chinese language skills?

wo xi huan kan dian ying – i like to watch movies.
ni xi huan kan dian ying ma? – do you like to watch movies?
ni shao bu shao kan dian ying ma? – would you like to watch a movie?

what can i say…i focus on the really important nuances of the language!

so….the east vs. west communication…well there are definitely barriers and they are myriad….and truthfully…i’m still learning so much that i know i will barely scrape the surface, but here’s some things that i have seen.

there’s the obvious example of the issue of saying no to things. i’ve written blogs about that. it’s what they would call “saving face”. it is considered very rude to cause someone to lose face, so you NEVER back someone into a corner. this can be very strange to a westerner, especially americans, who, even among many europeans, are considered very forward and agressive in the way we speak or communicate. so you know, americans tend to speak their minds. we tend to value open, honest communication…a sort of…putting all your cards on the table. and, in fact, i would go so far as to say that in the american culture there is a level of respect that is given to someone that seems more open and able to speak their mind…though, of course, we would hope to do so with some amount of tact. however, in the chinese culture it seems that ignoring the elephant in the room so to speak can be more appropriate than acknowledging it. i’ll give an example from my recent experience.

we ordered some t-shirts for 180 and in the order we asked for 10 large shirts, 5 xl, and 5 xxl. when the shipment came, i did a count and we had 15 large and 5 xxl, but no xl. seems they gave us more of the large. so i was talking to a friend and saying that i thought we would try to see if the large shirts they sent us would work for the people who needed the shirts. if so, then i figured i would just tell the company, “hey you messed up and sent us the wrong thing…but it’s no problem…we were able to use what you sent so we will save you time and money and not make you send us 5 shirts.” i was told that this would NOT be the appropriate response. i was told that there were several issues at stake here. first, telling them they messed up so they don’t do it for next time will not prevent it from happening next time. but that, in fact, the only way to really prevent it would be to make them fix it…even if you didn’t need the shirts. second, telling them but not allowing them to fix the mistake would basically be causing them to “lose face” because i’m backing them into a corner and saying you messed up but you can’t make it right. so i was told, my options were to either 1. live with the shirts as they were and not say anything ever…even to the point of not being able to bring it up later…even if they realized they messed up. i had to acknowledge right away or not at all. or 2. tell them they messed up, right away, and then have them fix it.

seems simple enough once you know the rules…but would be i think pretty counter to the typical american mindset of…i don’t want to waste money by fixing a problem that doesn’t need to be fixed…but i still want to learn from the situation to improve for next time. not so here.

of course, as someone who works in a church, i’m often left thinking about the spiritual implications of a particular mindset. of course, i know there are no shortage of failings in the american mindset and please know that i’m not trying to say that american culture is better or more godly…but just trying to make observations about the chinese culture which is all new to me. but when i look at a cultural mindset and context that says, “hey if something is wrong…don’t tell me unless it can be changed.” i think you find there are large areas of the population that can easily become callous. i will talk about this in other contexts later…but, for instance, when looking at some social injustices that in some sense have no real forseeable solution. like the poor, the hungry, the homeless etc. these are a group that seem to never diminish no matter how many you might try to help. so in this cultural mindset it would be easy to say…i can’t fix this problem therefore it does not exist to me. of course, we know that the bible says clearly that we are to help the poor while there is scripture that clearly says that “the poor you will always have with you.” so it presents and interesting cultural and spiritual clash i think.

certainly the subject of communication between two vastly different cultures could go on for days so i’ll just share one more area that has been a sort of funny interaction for me lately. but i’m sure i’ll come back to this topic many times in coming blogs…it’s pretty inevitable really.

so one area of a sort of communication clash is when you are trying to teach language or words in a culture context where such things don’t actually exist. anyone who is in china for even 5 min. will quickly find that there is a somewhat insatiable hunger by many here to learn english. the young want to learn it themselves and the old want their children to learn it. the desire for education and learning is most definitely a huge cultural foundation in china and there is a very solid understanding among the people here that they must learn english if china is to continue to grow in political and economic power (or so i would think). so what i’ve found is that all chinese seem to become students when an american is in the room and all americans become instant english teachers, willingly or unwillingly. and so in practicing the craft of speaking and teaching english at various times you learn that the basis of knowledge and understanding has a huge baring on how easy or difficult it is to teach certain words…because words carry with them concepts and meaning (duh).

so for me, this clash has come to bare in my own house. i have a new roommate who has been staying with me for about 3 weeks now and she speaks a limited amount of english. and by limited i mean, she can understand many basic things i say and can say many basic things back but has a hard time with much more than that (but this is of course light years beyond my mandarin skills so who am i to judge?). in any case, emily (this is her english name), has been asking me to teach her to cook various things. partly because she wants to try the american food, partly because she wants to learn how to cook the way americans do, and partly, i think, to learn some new english words. so one thing that the chinese do not use is ovens. an oven is a completely western way of cooking. 100% no ovens in chinese cooking. in fact, most housing here does not come with an oven unless you specially request it and even then they are expensive and really only available in ex-pat housing. i live in a pretty local housing complex so my apt. has no oven. but as shanghai becomes increasingly westernized you can find many supplements for things like an oven at the local grocery store. so i went out and picked up a fairly large (biggest i could find) toaster oven for the counter top. so it’s about the size of 1/2 a cookie sheet. of course, this means there are lots of things i can’t cook…but there are creative ways around some things so i can still do a good bit of baking.

so i decided i would teach emily how to bake brownies. easy enough and she wanted me to teach her a dessert so i thought that would be a good place to start. so we mixed everything up and got it ready for the oven. then i showed her the oven. i spent about 5 or 10 min. trying to explain an oven…how it cooks, what it does etc. i’m not sure she really got much more than it’s hot. so we put the brownies in and i showed her the timer and how to read the instructions on the box etc. after they were in, i went back to the box to try to explain that it’s usually best to put the brownies in for the shortest time offered and then leave them longer if needed rather than choosing a longer time and having them burn. and i found, to my surprise, that i had a hard time explaining the word “burn”. i found that it’s hard to help someone understand what it means to burn food in an oven when they have no concept of what an oven is or what it does. i suppose in this case, the only way to learn is to do.

but i found that whole exchange interesting because i think that there are many times in the communication between someone of an eastern mindset and someone of a western mindset where communication can be really difficult because the basic knowledge of some concepts just doesn’t exist. in china this is true of many things…especially when it comes to matters of god and religion. in america we take for granted the ideas we have as a nation about god and faith. whether a person chooses to believe in god or not they still have a basic understanding of these things. in china most of the time concpets of god and religion are vague or non-existent. and at times, it’s easy to forget that communism in this country has literally created a generation of people who have grown up in an atheistic society. in talking with a friend form the u.k. today, it seems that this type of communication barrier is even beginning to creep up in europe where as this “chap” told me; he was trying to speak to a kid about god outside church one sunday and so he asked him if he knew who jesus was. and the kid, in complete seriousness said, ummmm…wait jesus? what football team does he play on? is he from south america? literally believing that jesus was a south american soccer player of some kind. sounds crazy…but we find that here in china that reality is even stronger and begins to show its effects in many areas of life here…reaching far beyond just communication. but i won’t get into that now.

so what ever happened with the brownies you ask? well funny you should mention it! i had been worried they might burn because i’m still trying to figure out the toaster oven and the whole celcius conversion thing. so i had told emily that hopefully they wouldn’t burn…that hopefully that would taste good. while we waited we went back to watching the office which i had been doing for a few days catching up on most all of the show that i never got to watch in the states. emily often watched with me but i never knew if she really understood or even if it was at all funny to her. but she would watch and take notes (we watch with the subtitles in chinese so she can read along as needed). from time to time she would repeat a word in english and look at me to see if she’d said it right. i would repeat it back and then she’d say it again and then we’d focus back on the show. i noticed that particular night that emily had turned on the office before i came home from work all on her own and i chuckled to myself thinking maybe she really did like the show. and i remember thinking it strange because the episode she was watching was one i was sure we’d seen before.

in any case, we kept on watching while i worked on some stuff for 180. and then the oven bell chimed and we went in and pulled out the brownies. they looked good. they smelled good and we just had to wait for them to cool. we waited and waited. and then finally i dished some up. and yes….they were deeeeelish! so i take mine back in to the living room to relax on the couch and finish the episode of the office that was playing. we emily comes up to me and says in a jumble that i barely understood…. “wedeeedit!” and i said…what? she said, “wedeeedit!” still i didn’t understand so i asked her to say it really slowly (usually i can understand her very well so i was confused). so she said again, “weeee deeed it!” then i got it. “oooooh…we DID it!” ha ha. “yeah,” i said, “we did it! the brownies are good.” and then i promise you not 2 seconds later michael scott and dwight schrute are talking on the tv and they hug and they laugh and they jump up and down and they yell

“WE DID IT!”

apparently, emily had been learning some english from dwight and michael when i was at work that day!