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Chapter 3

Cultural Influences on Chinese Etiquette

Confucius still lives in the hearts and minds of most older Chinese, and the social values he taught remain the bedrock of mainstream Chinese society. The family is still the pre-eminent institution in China, and most individuals see their first duty as attending to their family’s welfare. Working family members still pool their resources for the economic gain of the entire family.

Within families, courtesy, sincerity, humility, loyalty, respect for parents, and obedience to superiors are still the quintessential essences of Chinese culture. The obligations children have to their core family groups do not end with marriage, and this has been one of the enduring strengths of the Chinese.

Another inherent weakness in Confucian philosophy is evidenced by the “nonstandard” kind of etiquette discussed in the previous chapter; the Confucian emphasis on harmony applies only to one’s inner circle of family, relatives, friends, guests, and so on, and not to people outside of it. However, this is one of the traditional cultural factors that is slowly but surely changing in today’s China. As people have become individualistic and more independent, they have also come to depend on a wide range of people outside their inner circles— including businesspeople and government officials, as well as other strangers and foreigners.

Naturally, older Chinese people are more likely to still believe in and follow traditional ways, while younger ones are more likely to be modern and trendy in the Western fashion. There are also significant culture gaps between those who live in the interior, rural regions of the country and those who live along the eastern seaboard in the larger cities.

There is no possibility that all of the characteristic mindsets and behaviors that have distinguished the Chinese people for five thousand years will disappear in the foreseeable future. They are reflected in integral parts of the various languages of China, and language is the primary carrier of culture. Furthermore, much of the culture is embedded in the educational system and, in particular, in the government bureaucracy.

But Chinese who were fully programmed in the traditional culture as youths are disappearing at a significant rate each year. Those who came of age during the reign of Mao Zedung (1949–1976) tend to be less traditional than those who came of age earlier. Those who came of age during the 1980s or later tend to be even less traditional with each passing year.

The following sections discuss some of the most important cultural factors that will continue to impact Chinese thinking and behavior for the foreseeable future.

The Yin-yang Principle

It is, I believe, impossible to fully understand Chinese behavior without comprehensive knowledge of the ancient yin-yang concept. The terms yin and yang are generally known around the world as relating to such opposites as hot-cold, sweet-sour, male-female, and positive-negative. But this understanding of them is incomplete.

The concept of yin and yang is, in fact, an explanation of the nature of the cosmos, the behavior of all organic and inorganic material in the universe, and the invisible energy that infuses the cosmos down to the level of quantum physics. Yin-yang incorporates the creation and extinction of all things in an unending cycle.

Looking just beneath the surface of Chinese behavior reveals that the yin-yang principle applies to relationships between males and females, between seniors and juniors, and between the government and the private sector. In fact, it applies to virtually all relationships and activities.

Chinese scholars and philosophers have been writing about yin and yang since around 1400 BC. Even before this they were acutely aware that yin-yang relationships were not fixed but rather in a constant state of flux, waxing and waning in inverse proportions between hot and cold, strong and weak, and young and old.

Traditional etiquette in China is built around keeping all of these yin-yang relationships in harmony. Having said this, modern China has by and large eschewed many traditional ways of thinking. While modern Chinese might sometimes tend to categorize things in terms of yin and yang, in daily life the need to balance yin and yang is thought of mostly in terms of the food that is eaten and the order in which the dishes are consumed, and China’s traditional medical and therapeutic practices. If anything, someone applying the principles of yin-yang might think that modern China is a country very much out of balance, with too much yang and not nearly enough yin.

China’s Dragon Culture

China has long had what could be called a dragon culture. Colorful images of Chinese dragons, creatures much more fanciful-looking than Western ones, are common throughout the country.

There are four kinds of dragons in Chinese mythology: celestial dragons that guard the heavens; spiritual dragons that are in charge of the weather, and can cause havoc when fighting or angered; earth dragons that rule the waters and live in seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds; and treasure dragons that are in charge of the precious minerals in the ground.

According to myth a celestial dragon brought the first emperor down from heaven to the Middle Kingdom, and thusly became the badge of the imperial family. The beds emperors slept on were called dragon beds, the ceremonial dresses they wore were known as dragon robes, and the throne they sat on was called the dragon seat.