Stereotyping Chinese as spitters is easy
- By Wang Yong
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, October 17, 2014
Spitting, screaming and littering in public seem to be so patently characteristic of Chinese that many people may recall "absence of public spirit" — a phrase American missionary Arthur Henderson Smith (1845-1932) used to describe Chinese as he knew them in 1890.
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Take spitting, screaming and littering in public, for example. Indeed, some (one may say many) Chinese often do these, but do all Chinese act this way? |
In his thought-provoking book "Chinese Characteristics" (published in 1890), he mainly talked about lack of attention to or care about maintenance of roads on the part of either the government or the public in China at that time. He also talked about street vendors' occupation of public space and about rank-and-files' disinterest in politics.
'Profound indifference'
Instead of acknowledging those problems as temporary, the renowned missionary claimed "there is the best reason to think that, whatever the dynasty might happen to be, the feeling of the mass of the nation would be the same as it is now — a feeling of profound indifference."
If he lived today, he would have no problem attributing spitting, screaming and littering in public to "a feeling of profound indifference" that he believed to be patently Chinese, although lack of attention to or care about road maintenance has proven a page turned over.
It's easy to label one people or one nation as such and such, just because some members of the people or the nation have behaved as such and such. Labeling is dangerous for two reasons: It mistakes a tree for a forest, and it doesn't focus on problem solving.
Take spitting, screaming and littering in public, for example. Indeed, some (one may say many) Chinese often do these, but do all Chinese act this way? Have we tried patiently to solve these problems except for pointing a finger at the wrongdoers? Too often I have heard my fellow countrymen and foreigners accusing these wrongdoers as hopelessly shameful. But, accusation always errs on the side of bias and accusation alone — as many onlookers are fond of — doesn't help solve a problem.
On September 29, I received a phone call from a Taiwanese reader who now lives in the United States, who complained for about one hour how deplorable and despicable Chinese on the mainland are for their "absence of public spirit." He complained about Chinese mainlanders screaming and spitting in public, about their refusal to give a seat to the elderly, about environmental pollution.
For about one hour, I listened patiently, chipping in now and then with soft words of condolence. In the end, the gentleman nicely said to me: "Thank you for not having hung up my phone." I would have hung up the gentleman's phone if I lacked empathy or sympathy toward a reader.
I explained to him, in soft tone, that the problems he discovered were temporary and thus would solve themselves over time. For instance, I said, rapid urbanization on a large scale has brought myriad peasants into the city, who would take time to change their habit of speaking loudly in public. You seldom see educated Shanghainese screaming in public. As for giving a seat to the elderly, I assured the reader that on my way to and from work, I see young people giving seats to elderly passengers on subways and buses everyday. On pollution, I said this is indeed a sad situation but China is tackling it.
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