Culture shock is often expected when you go abroad. The study abroad office will warn you about it. Whatever program you go to will talk about it during orientation. The simple message: Be tolerant, open minded and eager to learn. We’re not in Kansas anymore: although Kansas would be enough of a culture shock for some of us.
But what does culture shock mean? In the United States for example, it’s customary as well as obligatory (is there a difference between the two?) to say thank you to your waiter when they bring your food over or when someone opens the door for you. You’re impolite if you don’t (a sure sign of being unsophisticated and crude). In China, you don’t have to say thank you. You get a strange look if you do say thank you: in Chinese of course: to your waiter. After all, from his point of view, he’s just doing his job. He should be doing his job. It’s not as if he’s doing something nice or out of the ordinary. The presumption is in obeying the already given rules. This is not to say you shouldn’t say thank you or that giving thanks is offensive.
What it does suggest is that different cultures place different emphasis on different words. “Thank you,” when repeated enough, may be meaningless. We leave our words on the table with the tip at a restaurant, but at the very least, we say it. (You never tip in China, not in restaurants, bars or barbershops.) Consider how many ways you can say thank you. “Thanks,” “Thank you,” “I appreciate it,” “that’s very kind of you” and tipping of course. Twenty percent is suggested and you go up or down depending on whether or not you liked your waiter, right?
Well, there’s none of that in China. What there are, though, are different names for every member of your family depending on his or her relation to you. So, it’s a different character for grandmother on your mom’s side and grandmother on your dad’s side, pronounced wai puo as opposed to nai nai. It’s a different character for grandmother’s little brother’s granddaughter and your grandmother’s little sister’s granddaughter. It’s a dizzying task trying to memorize all of them even though they’re important. After all, no matter how distant someone is, family is family, right?
Chinese culture traditionally places a really strong emphasis on family as a source of social stability, personal values and priorities. You have an obligation to them by virtue of your birth (it’s irrelevant if you didn’t choose them) and that obligation usually comes ahead of personal whims and desires. Or rather, that obligation frames the terms of the latter. And you can see that reflected in the Chinese language, Mandarin.
Well, what about American language? To take a common topic, how many slang words and terms do we have for having sex? Not to say sex is bad: does anyone still believe that?: but that I think the more ways we have to describe something reflects something about our culture. In creating new ways to describe something, we express the importance we attach to it. We draw finer and finer distinctions within whatever we’re describing because we can see finer distinctions.
So, the real shock of encountering another culture isn’t just that they do things differently: like not saying thanks or not respecting your personal space (it’s hard in the Beijing subway). It’s that they think differently. Their language emphasizes different things and so they see things in a different light. The challenge of course is to learn their new language and eventually start thinking in it. It’s not blind acceptance (thankfully dog eating is being outlawed by the government here) or revulsion, but understanding.
