Cutting Out the Small Talk

Perhaps it comes with the harsh testing culture in China that people tend to be less private and more blunt, forthright, and obvious about their opinions. Or perhaps the testing culture is merely an effect. However, it is rather hard to deny a significant difference between Chinese and American social interactions–more specifically, in the aspects of compliments, comparison, and criticism.

I claim immediate bias as an American-born Chinese (ABC), someone who looks into Chinese culture with an appraising eye but having never been completely immersed in it. Despite this bias, based on personal experience and friends’ experiences, I find certain situations quite commonplace and daresay iconic of social interactions among native Chinese parents or students. Grade comparison, above all, seems to reign supreme. According to some Chinese Duke international students, up until middle school, rankings for test scores were posted publicly, available for the entire class to see. Comparison between classmates is quite a vocal, ruthless affair (well, as ruthless as middle school students can get).

This vocalness, which some might consider an intrusion of privacy, extends beyond simply school and test comparisons. A Chinese friend recalled an incident in which she went to China to visit relatives and was met with commentary on her perceived weight gain. It is true that Chinese people can come off as blunt and sometimes insensitive, but the same can be said of nearly all groups of people. The difference lies in the degree of acceptability of this bluntness. For close friends in China, being blunt is simply being honest. Meanwhile, among westerners, friends almost always take careful pains not to comment on anything that could be remotely insulting to another friend (at least not to their face).

The reasons for this difference could stem from a number of factors. For one, Chinese people are very economical. From the frugality of customers to the demanding nature of vendors to the efficiency of the Chinese government, there seems to be little time to waste. That sense of efficiency translates quite well in Chinese language. Instead of asking, “Can I have a small coffee?”, a Chinese person might say, “Small coffee.” Words such as “thank you” are often regarded as extraneous and are left out in the name of saving time. In cities with many vendors attempting to sell numerous products, customers respond with bú yào (不要), directly translated to mean “don’t want” rather than the typical western response along the lines of, “I’m sorry, I’m not looking for that right now, maybe later.”[1]

But it is not always simply a matter of efficiency. In many cases, these extraneous words can actually create distance between people. Thus cutting to the crux of the message and eliminating pleasantries actually perpetuates a sense of closeness between people. Conversely, the use of mundane pleasantries entails that formalities are necessary between people. This kind of “small talk” has been linked with lower levels of happiness than that derived from substantive conversations.[2]

Knowing the reasoning behind it does not, of course, soften the blow of any comment on one’s weight gain or inferior academic scores to so-and-so relative, but it does provide some insight into the way Chinese people behave. While in America such comments may be considered rude, in China, they are normal and in some cases, expressions of familiarity.

It is not as though westerners are the paradigm of courteousness and kindness. Rather, American society places great emphasis on censoring out impoliteness when it comes to social interactions. Anything negative, it would seem, should simply never come to light at all. This does not stop anyone from talking behind the back of the subject, but it does prevent injury to the person’s ego while also providing an outlet for others to gossip. 

American culture centers around egoism, the central entity to identity and personality.[3] Ego is not an inherently bad thing, but in a country that believes so strongly in individual rights, privacy, speech, etc., egos have grown to accommodate these beliefs. The current political environment–from the 2016 presidential campaign to the resurgence of deeply rooted racial conflicts–embodies the American’s ego precisely. Insult leads to self-defense leads to insult leads to non-productivity. In the desperate need to preserve one’s own pride and infallible ideals, opposing arguments are written off as preposterous and irrelevant. It would seem that to consider another’s ideas is to admit some sort of self defeat. Egoism may be encouraged from childhood in America, children are motivated by positive reinforcement; perhaps their egos are too delicate to take a hit at such a young age? Whatever the reason for it may be, the individual is valued above all else in the West.

Which is precisely why someone like me finds China such a jarring place to be in, where people do not seem to care about the potential effects of their words on others’ egos. Such vocalizations imply a certain familiarity that most western egos cannot stand. How indeed can some stranger judge someone on intelligence or appearance without actually getting to know them? The better question, how can they not? No matter how much self-importance or how many written out rights are attached to an individual, it is only natural for people to make judgments. The difference is that in China, people are more accustomed to and willing to divulge these judgments directly, especially among closer relatives. And perhaps it might make all the difference–if only we were also able to face brazen insults and blunt remarks without skidding around for our pride’s sake.
 
 
References 
[1]Fallows, Deborah. Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language. New York: Walker, 2011. Print. 
[2]Moyer, Melinda Wenner. "Skip the Small Talk: Meaningful Conversations Linked to Happier People." Scientific American. Scientific American, 24 June 2010. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
[3]Tommy Nitis. Ego differentiation: Eastern and western perspectives. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1989, Volume 49, Number 4, p. 339

Lucy Zhang is a freshman at Duke University.