Tom is about to graduate from high school. He decides he doesn’t want to go to college, despite his parents’ wishes. Instead, he wants to join a rock band. What will the family members all say to one another? What will happen in the end? Who is right?

To overgeneralize: if you are an educated American, you probably have some sympathy for Tom, and you may even think he should go for it and forget his parents’ advice, even though you also think he will probably fail. You may think that he should pursue his dream; you may even think that he must pursue his dream, if he has truly been given a rare talent. You may believe that no matter what his parents say or do, they will not and cannot change Tom: he needs to learn lessons on his own, even if they are hard lessons, even if he suffers. His life is his to make, and the most valuable lessons are the ones learned through direct experience.

When I was a graduate student in linguistics doing research for my dissertation, I asked this question to several pairs of U.S.-born, native-English-speaking people. I also translated the question into Chinese and posed it to pairs of China-born, native-Chinese-speaking people. (The native dialects of the Chinese interviewees varied, but, being educated, all spoke Mandarin with great ease.) The summary I just offered of possible American views reflects a standard set of “cultural models” which my American interviewees turned to consistently in discussing this scenario.

Brief terminological aside: “cultural model” is a quasi-technical term used by scholars at the margins of linguistics, anthropology and psychology. Essentially it refers to an idealized notion of how the world works or should work. If I go to a restaurant and my server asks me to fill out a deposit slip or endorse a check, I will be surprised because the question violates my mental “model” of how restaurants should work. These models are called “cultural” because they are shared: I can reasonably expect my restaurant companions to be equally surprised about the server’s actions.

The cultural models that make up the “standard” Chinese view of the rock band question diverge sharply from the American cultural models. Before describing the “standard” Chinese view, though, I need to stop for a moment and address a concern that I hear every time I present my research. The concern is usually expressed as a statement like, “But that’s not how I think,” or “That’s not how it would go in my family.” My response is not to quote statistics, because I have none to offer. Instead, I say: Absolutely. No one person is going to follow the “standard” line entirely. I certainly don’t. The “standard” view I’m referring to is an approximation or aggregation, based on responses from interviewees, and, in the years since the research, on countless conversations with Americans and Chinese on the topic. The analysis will not stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny; no social science research ever can, no matter how many statistics are quoted. It is by nature inexact, because the subjects, human beings, are by nature inexact.

The “standard” Chinese view (I’ll now stop “scare-quoting” the term) differs radically from the standard American view. Tom — or, more properly, his Chinese alter ego Wang Er — has an opportunity to receive an education. Fewer things are more valuable than this opportunity, because in an overpopulated world, competition is intense, resources are scarce, and you need every edge you can get. Wang Er’s parents are absolutely right to insist that he go to college. Nothing is stopping Wang Er from pursuing music as a hobby. But his focus should be on studying hard and getting a solid, reputable job upon graduating. Not only will this set up Wang Er and his family with a strong economic foundation to guard against future calamity, but everyone will look good too and gain the respect of those around them.

The original Chinese Esquire series referenced in the Time piece is here (in Chinese only). It seems Chinese Esquire is using the power of dreams, along with fashion photography, to narrate a thoroughly modern Chinese man.

This kind of “modernity” highlights the shift, in certain young and “fashionable” circles in China, to a more future-based orientation. Dreams are by definition grounded in the future. The “pragmatic” aspects of Chinese culture in which we find resistance to dreams are, in contrast, based in the past: long and bitter experience has shown that the whims of the world can and do thwart the best of human intention and effort.

In an earlier post I wrote of Hoftede’s concept of “time orientation.” I mention it here because the drag of China’s deep past upon dreams can be formidable. And still we have the portraits in Chinese Esquire of China’s modern dreamers. No wonder so many Westerners return from China scratching their heads at the contradictions and the complexity. And while what I’m about to say is to some degree true of every place, and while I’m not nearly the first to say it, China defies all our efforts to put it into tidy boxes.

In case you’re thinking, “I’m not religious,” or “I’m not spiritual,” you’re still not off the hook. Sociologist Robert Bellah famously studied what he termed American Civil Religion: a set of religiously-based beliefs shared by Americans of all religious and non-religious stripes. These beliefs — about many things, including our duties toward our fellow humans, as well as the uniqueness of human life and the need to “express ourselves” and develop our talents — provide the energy behind much of the language used by the Americans in my research.

In America you don’t mess with someone’s dreams. Dreams may be impractical, far-fetched, pie-in-the-sky. But dismiss them and you’re in trouble.

“Dreams,” in the default case in Chinese culture, don’t carry the same charge — as evidenced in the Chinese discussion of the rock band question, discussed in yesterday’s post. One respondent referred to Wáng Èr’s music as a “hobby” (兴趣爱好) that he could pursue after college; another participant said — and stick with me here if you don’t read Chinese — 我觉得每一个人还是要follow自己的heart.” Do you see the English in there? I translate the sentence as: “I think every person should follow their own heart.” After being admonished by her partner for using English, she “translates” back into Chinese: “还是应该坚持自己的想法吧”: “[They] should maintain their opinions.” The flavor of dreams is completely missing without the English.

Now, I’m not claiming that the language of dreams in English “can’t be translated into Chinese.” There are much closer translations in Chinese for the language of dreams than the language chosen by this one participant. And I’m certainly not claiming that thinking in terms of dreams isn’t done in Chinese: if it weren’t, why would the respondent have said what she said, namely that every person should follow their heart?

What I find interesting about her approach, though, is that she felt pulled to use English, and that the first “translation” into Chinese that she thought of was that one, about maintaining opinions, which is so devoid of the spirit of following one’s heart.

Dreams are alive and well in China. I would argue that dreaming big dreams is as much a part of our humanity as anything. Still, default modes of thinking and reasoning about dreams in the U.S. and in China are strikingly different. And so we need, as always, to take care in what we assume our Chinese counterparts and partners are thinking.

One question asked of participants:

Tom is about to graduate from high school.  He decides he doesn’t want to go to college, despite his parents’ wishes.  Instead, he wants to join a rock band.  What will the family members all say to one another? What will happen in the end?  Who is right?

王二快要高中毕业了。虽然他的父母希望他上大学,但是他不想上大学,想组一个摇滚乐团。你觉得王二会怎么样和他的父母说?他的父母又会怎样反应? 最后他们会决定怎么做? 你会支持哪一边?

The Chinese and American responses differ sharply, with the Americans generally supportive of Tom despite his likely failure, and the Chinese in favor of the parents.

In their reasoning the Americans employ a cultural model I’ve called Follow Your Dreams: humans get one life; each human has unique talents; we are duty-bound to develop and express our talents; therefore Tom has a duty at least to try and be a rock star. One respondent offered up what became my favorite quote in the entire data set: “You have to do what you want to do.”

The Chinese focus more on the likely economic downsides of such an impractical venture. Wáng Èr (Tom’s Chinese alter-ego) can keep rock music as a hobby, but forget about it as a profession.

The question raises deep issues about what a human life is fundamentally about. Per usual, American assumptions that all humans inherently want, even need, to “follow their dreams” at the expense of everything else isn’t as universal or powerful as we might think. There is a lot of cross-cultural pull to following dreams; it just doesn’t rule the roost as decisively as Americans often assume it does.

More on this tomorrow.