The graphic in today’s ChinesePod lesson upset some users. It was dogs in a cage and the lesson was about dog meat and animal rights. A few users said the photo made them want to unsubscribe. We eventually changed the photo and the lesson intro. I won’t go into great details. But it did make me think about sensitivity and what it means in China.

Generally speaking, we are a lot cruder about every issue that Anglo Saxon countries (excuse the generalisation) are sensitive about: race, religion, sexuality, weight, income, animal (and human) rights. By that measure, everyone in China is like Bill Maher. The term political correctness is not even part of the mainstream lexicon. I once rode a taxi with 2 friends, a white woman and her African American husband. After they got off the car, the driver asked me if the woman was really poor. I asked why and he said why else would she marry an African American? That was an extreme case of ignorance I have to say. Most people would not go that far. But at the same time, if you were in the car, you would agree that the driver’s question came out of genuine curiosity rather than ill intentions.

If we are talking about a world with 2 superpowers (if that is ever possible) or one with China being the superpower, a lot needs to be done for both sides to understand or at least be aware of each other’s thinking to avoid a ‘clash of civilisations’.

Anyone in a cross-cultural relationship is confronted with cultural clashes on a regular basis. One of the most constant issues I deal with is my relationship with my parents. At 27, I am still living with them. And I somehow manage to have a wealth of things to chat to them about. In terms of decisions in life, they are an important consideration for me, and vice versa. However, this might seem almost pathological to a Westerner.

I don’t think it is simply that the parent-child bond is weaker in the West as it manifests in different ways. Parents and children take pride in independence whereas in China, traditional family bonds are further accentuated by the one child policy, often resulting in a codependent relationship. We are closely involved in each other’s lives and often feel each other’s happiness and quality of life is our responsibility.

If you want to see how powerful this bond is, just ask anyone what kind of person they want to marry. And expect the answer to include ‘孝顺爸妈/xiao4 shun4 ba4 ma1/respect and love (their own and my) parents.’ The fact is in China, you are not just marrying the person you are marrying.

Certain places, people and accents are the target of national mockery. In China, Shanghai is notorious for looking down on and making fun of everyone else. They are all 乡下人/xiang1 xia4 ren2/ country bumpkins. But now, almost 1/3 of residents in Shanghai are not native. I suspect hardcore Shanghai natives will be rolling in their graves. But the demographic change has significantly changed native’s attitudes. But I think there is still a tinge of the old attitude deeply rooted in our hearts, mine included. My experience below is a vivid example of it.

Ever since I began to set up my own business, I have been flooded by calls from people posing as staff from the Bureau of Tax, the Bureau of Commerce and so on. (I wrote on a blog post about it here). But what stands out from the experience is I consciously used accent as a barometer of whether one is a cheat or not. The danger of doing that is I nearly got duped by a man speaking standard Putonghua. In the past, when I received calls from heavily accented people, I normally hung up right away. But this time, I talked for 5 minutes with him, asking him the nitty gritty of tax regulations.

On a related note, when I was choosing agents to handle my business registration application, I made my choice based on two factors:1) the quality of the office; 2) where the people come from. I finally chose an agent whose entire staff is from Shanghai. My rationale was a cost benefit analysis from the agent’s point of view. Would it be worthwhile for them to take all of the clients’ money and ran away? (They make a bit of money (RMB 500) on each case. ) My conclusion was that for people from Shanghai, their deep community roots make it not worthy to do it. Even if they did run away, it would be a lot easier for local police to track and arrest them. But if the agent is not from Shanghai, they can run to whereever they want. The local police probably won’t really bother to fully investigate crimes on this scale. So I made my decison. And I got everything done without nasty surprises.

Three of my friends are getting married on the same day next month. I would have loved to wedding hop (albeit sounding a bit unseemly), but they happen to be in three different parts of the world. But they do have one thing in common: they are all Chinese. This happy clash of weddings are especially prominent in Chinese culture. A user on ChinesePod was intrigued when he got two invitations and begged to know why.  

Here enters the emperor’s calendar (a.k.a the yellow calendar) or 皇历（黄历）/huang2 li4.  It’s a traditional calendar which has extensive information on how lucky and unlucky each day is, what one should and shouldn’t do on that day. It’s the lunar calender with fortune telling features if you will.  That’s what most Chinese base their decision on when choosing the wedding date. While many do not entirely believe in the validaty of the 黄历, they see it as an auspicious tradition that doesn’t hurt to keep. 

But a lucky day is not all. You don’t want to get married in the melting heat nor freezing cold no matter how lucky the day is. You want spring or fall, which narrows down your selection much like the process of refining your google search. That’s not all. You want the weekend in order to make it easy for your guests. Now, you see how we’ve gone from 365 days to a handful ones which meet all of the criteria. The art of the wedding date.