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6 Things Foreigners Often Get Wrong about Chinese People
Jun 28, 2011By Jessica Larson-Wang, eChinacities.com.jpg)
Photo: ernop
While foreigners are often a misunderstood bunch in China, we’re not immune to making assumptions and having prejudices of our own. Many foreigners harbour a lot of misconceptions about China and its people, from their lifestyle, to their culture, to their motivations for wanting to get to know you. Here we take a look at some of the ways that Chinese people are misunderstood by the foreigners who live here.
1) Chinese People Will Jump at the Chance to Live Abroad
Most of us have been warned about dating Chinese people who are just out for a green card, but the truth is that while some, perhaps even many Chinese people would love to go abroad, just as many are happy to stay in China. In fact, some men and women who date Chinese people may find, to their surprise, that their partner has no interest in living abroad and instead would rather have their foreign boyfriend or girlfriend to settle down in China! Many Chinese people are very comfortable here in their home country, and while they might enjoy visiting a foreign country, have no desire to emigrate.
2) Chinese Women Only Want Your Money
While more than one foreign man has been burned by a Chinese gold-digger, the truth is that many Chinese women look for the same qualities in a partner that foreign women do. While they may value a partner who is established and provide for a family, they are not gold diggers in the traditional sense. Chinese culture places a high value on a man’s ability to be the breadwinner, and so Chinese women tend to be attracted to men who have good jobs with decent salaries, but this is not due to greed. Most Chinese women also value personality traits such as kindness or a good sense of humour as highly as they value what’s in your pocketbook.
3) Chinese People Have Low Salaries
While it is true that in most of the 2nd and 3rd tier cities the salaries for the average Chinese office worker remain fairly low, the salaries for experienced professionals, especially in the big cities, can rival anything an English teacher can pull in. At a local Chinese private high school in Beijing, senior Chinese physics and chemistry teachers make 8000 RMB a month and senior engineers at some companies make upwards of 20,000 RMB a month. It can be dangerous to assume that every Chinese person you speak to will be in awe of your big foreign salary. China is growing and Chinese professionals with the right experience and sought after skills are making lots of money.
4) Chinese People Are Sheep
Anyone who has taught at a Chinese university and graded a stack of essays has probably felt a bit dismayed by what seems to be a lack of original thought and critical thinking skills among the population. But the truth is, China is full of creative thinkers, from writers to musicians to armchair philosophers who will tell you their view on life, the universe and everything else if you give them a chance. Beware of forming opinions on Chinese people as a whole based on group of students who are, after all, not quite fully formed yet as individuals and who are, furthermore, still in the public education system which does not place a high value on creativity or individuality. Just because the education system doesn’t value these things, however, doesn’t mean that they don’t exist in the society. China is full of interesting people with a lot to say.
5) Chinese People Are Rude
Most foreigners have complained about Chinese people’s inability to queue, spitting on the sidewalk, or small children taking a leak in the middle of the supermarket. In fact, if you polled the average Chinese person, they’re not fans of these things either. Most Chinese people would rather there be orderly lines, but unless everyone lines up, the people who do stand nicely in their place and wait for others will never make it to the front. And who enjoys walking down the sidewalk and stepping in a pile of human poo, or dodging loogies flying at your feet? Most educated people would not allow their children to use public areas as toilets, but they don’t feel it is their job to stop others either. Most Chinese people and foreigners feel the same way about the “lack of manners” you can sometimes see on display in China. The main difference is that most Chinese people are accustomed to it and don’t usually voice their displeasure as vocally as foreigners do.
6) Chinese People Just Want To Use You For English Practice
While it is true that in China you will run into “language leeches,” people who are only interested in practicing English with a foreign speaker, if you make the effort and learn some Chinese you’ll find that most people are just as happy to speak with you in Chinese as in English and that most people actually find it a relief not to have to recall their gao kao level English skills that they haven’t put to use for the past 10 years. And while some friends might start out simply wanting a foreign friend for language purposes, the people who are only interested in you for your English will quickly lose interest and the people who want to be your friend will stick with you regardless of what language you’re using to communicate.
Related links
8 Common Misconceptions About China Debunked
Six Probing Questions Chinese Ask Foreigners
The Inscrutable Chinese? Challenges to Understanding China
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7. Chinese people forgot about the attrocities that western countries did to them during the Opium Wars.
Any westerner who gets confronted about western imperialism quickly denies all the facts and moves straight away to the topic of the Japanese in Nanjing. They think that Chinese people have forgotten that western nations have put Chinese people to their knees by threat of weapons and treated them like dogs.
Chinese people didn't forget
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Yeah, and your countries history is so squeaky clean and pure right....its called WAR things that are inhuman do happen, and you bringing up something that happened ages ago is not warranted either, be it western atrocities or Asian...as you singled out Japan in your text. Time to move on.
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agree with Miles. It was ages ago and it was war. IT′s time to let go, do you see foreign ppl going around complaining about World War One or Two all the time and blaming other nations in this or that? I don't think so, it's very chinese tendency. Wanna talk about genocide and crimes, how about cultural revolution in China or june of 1989 in tiananmen square for a change?
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Don't want anyone to twist my word, i live in China and i love China, i don't see the reason to point fingures and blame modern ppl from any country ( foreigners or chinese) in something that happened long time ago. let's not bring hate and offenses from past to the future.
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The World has changed and so should your mentality. We should move to a more global way of thinking.
Those people you mention are long gone, their children are not responsible for what happened.
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I am from a country that can be considered "western" because I am caucasian. It is not UK ( with the opium war ). It is simple called Romania- some of you know it , some of you never heard about- if you take a look at the world map, it is not so easy to be even seen. What about me - am I guilty about opium war atrocities? or is somebody from Greece, Spain, Finland, Hungary and so on? "Western People" is pretty general saying. Even if somebody is from UK, I doubt he is guilty of anything regarding the opium war atrocities - he did not live that time so . . . . Should I complain about turks, mongols, germans, russians,americans, hungarians, italians, and so on for things that happened in the teritory where I live now tenths or hundreds of years ago?
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The current generation benefited from their great grandfather's outrageous and cruel ways to make a dime by selling opium. Or they continue to benefit in Australia, New Zealand or USA from their great grandfather robbing the land of the indigenous people and subjected them to 2nd. class citizen
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I think as a westerner that chinese cannt, should not, forget their past history and the murdereous colonialist from germany usa, italy france, belgium and uk, who stole , assassinated, raped, abuse chinese who were your forefathers. No. Americans and the others have inflicted so much pain to this country that is very generous of the chinese people to even allow them into China. Ther only people until today who attack, murder,. rape , steal , lie, torture other human beings, are the same ones as in the Boer′s and opium wars.
American learn from your past mistakes otherwise you will pay the price some day. Long life to China.
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I would say that you were born, raised or had a lot of western influence in your life because I have lived in China for over 7 years and have never heard a genuine Chinese person speak like that. Yes, the atrocities the British committed over several hundred years far outweigh what the Japanese did but like everyone else here is saying, grow up and think about this country’s future and what you could do to help it, instead of whining about the past.
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misha... I find your reasoning overwhelming and devoid of all subjections...wish other commentators here can learn from you. keep that up..
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8. Chinese People are Tight.
Most chinese people are cheap.
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But you do know north American poeple are cheaper,tighter,don't you?
why don't you show us what kind of low life you got? hanging out with the wrong guy?too bad!
I love chinese people,proud of that I got some chinese friends around.
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most foreigner are cheap, even they go out with girl , they also need going dutch!
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OK Julia, when you have been out with a foreigner, how many times did YOU pay the Bill? Relationships are a two way street, including money, and men should not have to pay for everything, and don't give me that lame "our culture" BS excuse.
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"Most foreigners are cheap". Most foreigners think of their life in China as temporary. Unless they are working for a foreign company, their salary, (although much higher than their Chinese counterparts) is just above minimum wage when converted to their national currency. Minimum wage income back home is just like minimum wage here; eternal poverty.
Also, many foreigners are unaware of the "rules of showing generosity" in China. For example, if a western woman allows a man to pay for dinner, it is often assumed she is interested in him in a romantic way. Accepting an offer to "go dutch" is a way to show there's no pressure. What's more, to not accept an offer of generosity can be seen as being disrespectful, regardless of the status of the people involved.
Fighting over paying the bill, or sneaking off to pay the bill are uncomfortable areas for most foreigners. They often don't know the rules and don't know where to draw the line. So not engaging in this is the safest thing to do. If Chinese people allow foreigners to be generous on their terms, I'm sure they will discover foreigners to be quite generous. If they aren't they are probably desperate lowlifes, who are in China because they were run out of their homeland.
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Yes, I agree with Tattered-tales.a lots of westerns look rich but not generous as they pretendt o be .Just for an example,our supplier from UK pay visits to us in China every 3 months for marketing.we pay the lunch and dinner for them each time until a Hongkong people from the same company come out and treat us a dinner cause he knows Chinese culture well.
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It is not good to generalize and create hate among countries-nationalities. Most people in the world we are the same. When economy is good and extra money (rich) people tend to be more generous, when money is tight people try to save. People who get ‘easy’ corrupted money spend a lot of money (easy comes easy goes). People who are not rich try to save for the future, children education, family, etc. It is the same everywhere in the world. Basic financial planning , when that does not happen people get huge impossible debts for many years (house, car, etc.), like in western countries. Being extremely stingy is bad too.
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Tony,
Your first statement is quite true - "most Chinese people are tight", from a financial aspect that is... Perhaps this is due to the fact that ,most of them do make less money than their foreign counterparts and therefore are relatively "tighter".
They are also "tight" with each other from a relational perspective (perhaps this is what is meant by the concept of "guanxi"?
I guess you are right on both counts regarding this.
However, in due respect, from a financial aspect, I do believe you have erred when you mentioned that "most Chinese people are cheap". The Chinese people are some of the most generous people I have encountered...
True generosity is not an outward display of action or absence of action. True generosity is an internalized attitude that one lives by... and that I believe the most Chinese people have heaps of. This type of attitude has been cultivated through many years and passed on through many generations; from mother to daughter, from father to son...
Having said that, on a wider scale of things, China is in the midst of great socio-economic changes and upheavals. Culture and China's moral fiber itself is not spared. They are being tested now like perhaps no other period in China long history... Interesting times indeed lies ahead...
I do hope that the China of the 2030's or 2040's (when the post 1980s/1990s generation comes to the forefront of leadership) shall be able to retain the similar brand of philosophy and attitude that is still thriving in the China I see today... the China that I have gradually grown to love, respect and understand a little bit more in the past 21 months or so that I have been here...
A Malaysian
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Tony, I’m not quite sure where this comment is coming from but in my experience paying the first dinner with a friend in China is impossible, paying for the second dinner is a major struggle and paying for the third outing is 50/50 and after that I am able to put my hand in my pocket without them holding on to it and saying no.
If on the other hand you are referring to the way that they try to save money then you are gravely mistaken as this is not a Chinese habit but an older generation worldwide habit that my parents and grandparents have/had. Just like in many other countries the younger generations don’t have this habit.
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Chinese People are Cheap? Ahhhh where do you live? When its time to party, they know how to spend. They just don't do it every day..
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9) Chinese people think westerners are not hypocrites
The majority of westerners who come to China, especially whites, will appear extremely friendly and charming towards Chinese people. When they gather with other westerners alone, they start criticizing Chinese people and being cynical and spiteful behind their back.
They think Chinese people are unaware of that.
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I never socialise with westerners. I am i n China and met 3 times westerners on the street trying to have a chat and begining with the complains.. so i avoid them totally. what do these people stil stay here? because if i was not happy here, i would left long ago
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And do you think Chinese people don't complain about in western countries? Of course they do! There are two sides to this coin.
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It's not that we're "complaining behind their backs"... it's that we are not complaining to their faces. Let's face it, by Western standards, the daily life if China-even with their much touted "5000 years of culture" is absurdly rude, crude and uncivilized. What we call "common sense" and "common courtesy" does not exist here IN THE SAME WAY WE ARE ACCUSTOMED TO. If I want to be able to remain friendly with my Chinese friends and colleagues, I need to vent about the stupid, rude, childish behaviors that affect me every day. I don't think complaining TO Chinese people ABOUT Chinese people is the way to maintain that friendship and camraderie.
We don't "fake" being polite and friendly, it is genuine. But there are good and bad things in any society and we have to deal with the bad, in our own way, to appeciate the good.
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The Chinese think they are "cultured", but yes, they are mostly rude , ignorant, selfish, incompetent, and uncivilised. Greedy also eg Shanghai, Beijing. Too bad they have learned nothing in those "5000 years of history".
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