This is, according to China expert Janet Carmosky, one of the fundamental differences between China and the U.S.: the “domain of scarcity” in the U.S. is time; in China, it’s money.

In my experience the starkest example of the Chinese time-versus-money calculus is the behavior of Chinese drivers at certain points on toll expressways near urban centers. One such place is the Badaling Expressway in Beijing.

Driving north-northwest from the center of Beijing, the Badaling Expressway becomes a toll road right around the Fourth Ring Road. Just before the toll booth is an exit, where drivers can choose to travel on the frontage road and pay no tolls, or to stay on the main road and pay tolls. The first toll exit is about two and a half miles north of the toll booth. Exiting there requires a payment of five yuan, which is less than a dollar at the current exchange rate of 6.7.

In normal traffic the travel time from the toll booth to the exit is just under five minutes. Contrast this with the travel time along the toll-free frontage road covering the same stretch of the expressway. Late at night it might be five extra minutes. But during normal traffic it could easily take an hour or more to cover those 2.5 miles.

If we factor in living standard differences, it is not a stretch to say that to your average Beijing driver, 5 yuan is roughly equivalent to $5.00. In the U.S., how many people do you know who would not pay $5.00 to save an hour on the road?

This difference might partially explain the contrast between the American and Chinese emphases in responses to the rock band question. To an American, whatever religious or quasi-religious ideas she might have about life and talents, her sense of the preciousness of time is likely to compound the urgency even further: time is wasting, so Tom had better get on with his rock career. Money will come somehow, but time is running out. In the typical Chinese view, time will take care of itself somehow, but money must be struggled for and held onto.

The differences in American and Chinese interpretations do not and cannot boil down simply to the difference between “time is scarce” and “money is scarce.” Besides, both time and money are scarce in both cultures. And yet, seeing things through this lens helps, I think, understand better the moment-to-moment calculus of members of one culture versus the other.

Another way of looking at the differences in Chinese and American perspectives is one of pseudo-ethereal idealism versus hard-nosed pragmatism: the Americans, with their abundant resources, have the luxury of pursuing dreams, while the Chinese, with their enormous population and worn-out natural environment, must struggle for everything they can get. This too is an oversimplification, but also gets at something fundamental — something we will take a look at later.

Money is, of course, valued the world over, and I have yet to meet a person who would walk away from it in any quantity under anything but the oddest of circumstances. The difference, though, is in the singularity of focus on the need to acquire and conserve money.

China’s history is epic, and doesn’t lend itself to easy summarizing — except for one persistent theme over the past 3,000-plus years: it’s one disaster after another. If it’s not a devastating flood, then it’s an earthquake. If it’s not an earthquake, then it’s a drought, followed by a famine. Human beings, of course, can wreak plenty of havoc: internal rebellions and external wars have caused untold devastation over the centuries. Various parts of China have been invaded and occupied dozens of times. Natural disasters, human misrule, and hostile conquerors have conspired to make China a notoriously unstable society, persistently, century after century.

It is also easy to forget that just 50 years ago, 20–30 million people starved to death in China. Tens if not hundreds of millions of Chinese still remember this, and surely their children and their children’s children have been duly reminded.

On top of all this — and partly a cause of China’s woe over the centuries — when compared to the United States or Canada, China is relatively lacking in resources, most notably arable land. Vast swaths of China are taken up by mountains and deserts which make farming impossible.

Over time this has yielded a pervasive mindset, so pervasive that it could be called a cultural instinct: do what you must to get money, and, once you have money, keep as much of it as you can.

This focus shows up all over Chinese society, but perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the persistently high savings rate in Chinese households, which as of late 2010 has for years been holding steady at around 50%. It also shows up in the willingness of workers to switch jobs for even a modest increase in pay. And many, many other places, including negotiating.

In her classic, Negotiating China: Case Studies and Strategies[1], Carolyn Blackman begins by introducing readers who are unfamiliar with China to what she calls the “haggling society.” She tells personal stories of how far people would go, just in the local markets, to ensure that they didn’t spend any more money than they needed to:

When I lived as a Chinese person in a Chinese household, I watched the bargaining that went on around me every day. My landlady, Mrs. Zhou, bought her fruit from the fruit seller who pedaled his bike and tray past our place about 10 a.m. every day. They started by exchanging a few words of banter, then she began to pick up the fruit and have a good look at it. To my way of thinking, Mrs. Zhou was unbelievably thorough. She would examine just about every piece of fruit on the tray.

She would accuse the fruit seller of charging too much. She would say the bananas were too thin or the apples were not red enough.[2]

And so on, until, after much time and energy, a bargain would be struck. Sometimes things can get extreme:

Down the road at the free market I used to see the same kind of thing go on. A plump grandmother shopping for her extended family went to the pork stall and chose a piece of pork.…When the pork butcher told her the price, she disputed it hotly. She offered him much less, grabbed the pork and went to put it into her basket. The butcher…grabbed the other end of the pork. A tug-of-war began, the lady pulling on one end of the piece of meat, the butcher on the other, neither willing to let go, and each shouting prices and evidence to defend his own point of view. The battle only ended when they noticed that the other shoppers were helping themselves to the pieces of pork lying under the counter — and to some of the items in the woman’s shopping basket.[3]

While this example is a bit more slapstick than most, scenes like this, in which emotions between buyer and seller get heated, are common in Chinese marketplaces. Often it is self-conscious theater, but the point remains the same: don’t mess with someone’s money.

[2] Blackman, p. 5.

[3] Blackman, p. 6.

A starkly different picture is painted by the Chinese data. This matter-of-fact statement encapsulates the essence of the predominant Chinese view, articulated by the pseudonymed Mr. Song:

I think that these days in Chinese society, ninety-five percent of parents would not want Wang Er to do this. Because it is common for Chinese parents to hope for their children to get into a famous university, and then in the future get a creditable job.

That’s really it: the famous university and the creditable job give both face and income. Later on Song supplements his thinking with this:

I think I would support his parents. Because in fact after he has finished college he can still have all sorts of interests and hobbies to be developed in all sorts of ways. But I think knowledge level is an important aspect in determining humanity’s quality. So it is no problem for him to form this rock band after finishing college, after he has the definite ability to analyze problems and solve problems. Then he can once again consider this idea of his.

The message is clear: what is important is to focus on building problem-solving skills. Yes, Wang Er wants to play rock music, but his “hobby” can wait.

The Chinese picture isn’t quite that simple, though. There is room for individual uniqueness, as Song elaborates later:

There are many paths to becoming a useful person. It’s not at all necessary that you go to college, and then get a master’s degree and then a Ph.D. This is a common route for people to become a useful person. But I think one should consider each person separately. If a person is truly suited to scholarship, or if a person can truly make contributions to academia, or if afterwards he can do research, or do some kind of practical work, do engineering work, and can attain a lot of development at this, I think he should go to college.

But if a person isn’t all that suited to studying, but he has some other hobbies and interests, plus he can develop these aspects well, I think it’s not necessary for him to take the difficult path of taking college entrance examinations. In fact every person, in their life’s development, has many choices. He can choose a path that is suitable to his development. That is, the expression of his life’s value isn’t at all manifested in his level of erudition, or how high his position is, or how much wealth he has. I think in this sort of development situation he can really manifest his value.

There’s a lot to ponder in Song’s words. A few key points:

• “Becoming a useful person”: the Chinese term is chéngcái, literally “become wood,” as in the kind of wood that can be used for building. An alternative definition given in a standard Chinese–English dictionary is “grow into useful timber.” Note the emphasis on practical usage, and the focus on playing a role in the world. This contrasts starkly with the American prominence of human desire and passion.
• Focus on “suitability”: It’s about finding work that is suited to one’s talents. This is a fact about the world, or about a mesh between the world and the person. It is emphatically not about what a person wants or “dreams” about.
• Focus on “value”: Similarly, “value” being “expressed” is fundamentally different from dreams being followed.

I have dubbed this cultural model Suitable Path, to contrast with the American Life Path model.

As I transcribed and read the Chinese and American responses to the interview questions (because they didn’t really register as I was listening during the interviews), I reacted strongly at times as an American, my academic “objectivity” helpless against my human pride. No responses caused a stronger reaction in me than the responses to the rock band question.

I recall letting Song’s words sink in, and feeling the “responsible scholar” in me fade to the background as I began to stew. To my American mind, Song’s words seemed so cold, calculated, distant. Lacking in human feeling. Just plain wrong. Which is a testament to the power cultural models hold over humans. Our cultural models are not abstract hypotheses; they are truths.

What is the truth that I was so desperately holding onto here? I think the key is in how the word waste is used by several of the American interviewees. I touched on this above. Here are Sarah’s words again:

I think he’s right too, because if his parents force him to go to college, and he ended up going to college instead of joining the rock band, he wouldn’t try hard, he wouldn’t study, he wouldn’t do any of that, because that’s not where he wants to be, so it’d be a waste of his time and of the parents’ money and of just…it’d be a waste of everything.

The word also shows up in Helen and Lynn’s response, just after the piece quoted above, repeated here:

(Lynn) I think he should do it. ‘Cause I mean, you’re only one life, right? Do what you want.

(Helen) And also, if he really wants to join the rock band, but he doesn’t want to go to college, then if he’s being forced to go to college, he’s not gonna like do well, and he’s not gonna take it seriously. It’s gonna be a waste.

A waste of what, exactly? Helen doesn’t say. Probably time and money. But also, I think, more deeply and fundamentally, a waste of Tom’s life.

Whenever we’re talking about waste, we’re talking about resources, which are by definition limited. Where resources are involved, there is scarcity. And it is in the realm of scarcity that we can see most clearly how the American and Chinese models differ most fundamentally.

What we see in the American responses is the scarcity of human life, and inside of this the scarcity of the opportunity to use one’s God-given talents. “Only one life.” Not two. Because we only have one life, we “have to do” what we want to do, because if we don’t do it this go-round, we’re out of luck.

On top of this, it isn’t just our life that is rare and precious, but also our talents themselves, for they are given to us. We have been entrusted with them. How often in our lives are we entrusted, literally, with a precious gift? When we are, how do we treat it? I had occasion recently to see the kind of energy that can be created around this kind of scarcity.

While on a long trip to China, my eight-year-old daughter found what she thought was the perfect gift for a close six-year-old friend back home: a small, round, perfect jade cup. When she finally witnessed him open the gift, the small room, with our two families of four, was filled with wonder at the simple beauty of the object, and at the love with which it had been chosen and was being given. And then horror, as my daughter’s friend dropped the cup and a chip disappeared from the rim. Thankfully everyone held it together and nobody got angry, but the disappointment on everyone’s face was obvious, and the collective (if silent) groan that went up sucked the celebratory air right out of the room — for a few seconds, at least while everyone recovered.

The magic came from the scarcity of the gift, and from the beauty of entrusting another with something so precious. A special gift, given in trust, is the rarest of all. Our human talents, from the standard American viewpoint I have been sketching, are nothing if not these.

In the last “book” post, I introduced “cultural models” in the context of a discussion about whether a hypothetical “Tom” should join a rock band or go to college. Here we’ll look at some actual linguistic data. An excerpt from the Americans (names changed):

(Jill) And who is right? I think Tom is right, because an education is a good thing in my opinion, but it’s Tom’s life, and if he wants to join a rock band then I think that’s his choice. We need to have some rock band people.

(Sarah) I think he’s right too, because if his parents force him to go to college, and he ended up going to college instead of joining the rock band, he wouldn’t try hard, he wouldn’t study, he wouldn’t do any of that, because that’s not where he wants to be, so it’d be a waste of his time and of the parents’ money and of just…it’d be a waste of everything ’cause like he won’t be trying hard because he doesn’t want to be there, so it’d be better for him to do what he wants to do, because then he’ll put in a lot of effort to do what he wants to do. And if he wants to be a rock star, then he’s gonna try really hard, and he’s gonna be happy doing what he’s doing, instead of listening to his parents and being miserable.

Several cultural models show up here:

• “Pursuit of Happiness” — Do what makes you happy.
• “Follow Your Dreams” — Closely related, but with a different emphasis: Whatever you love most, are most passionate about, that is what you should do with your life.
• “You Can’t Change Me” — People are who they are, and they will do what interests them. Especially young people. Trying to force people to do things they don’t want to do will have the opposite result.

These three cultural models together paint a clear picture of what is to be done: Tom should give the rock band thing a serious try. This is most forcefully expressed in Sarah’s use of waste. We use the word waste when we are conscious of the limits of our resources. What is the resource here? She mentions time and money, probably the most precious and carefully accounted-for resources there are. And she makes the case that Tom doing what his parents want, instead of what he wants, would be a waste of these resources. There’s much more to this “waste,” though, which I’ll save for another post.

Hidden beneath the surface of these three cultural models is the powerful idea that there is a particular “life path” each of us is meant to follow. Often in linguistic and anthropological studies, the deepest, most influential cultural models are the ones that are hardest to find evidence for, precisely because they underlie such a vast expanse of shared cognitive space in a culture. The Life Path model is no different: it is so deeply assumed that each of us has such a path that it is rarely stated. The clearest articulation comes in the following exchange:

(Joe) I have a friend who did exactly this. His parents wanted him to go to college, and the family members at first were like, don’t do it, don’t do it, and they were all angry about it, and then they speak badly of the idea to one another, they think it’s bad, but eventually, they’ve resolved it with saying, well, this is what he wants to do, he’ll learn or he won’t, but this is his path.

(Bill) I think that’s right too. Conventionally, you know, it’s not a safe thing to do if you want to be financially secure all your life or something, but if that’s not your big important thing…

(Joe) …which it shouldn’t be…

(Bill) Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. But then I think you should just…I think you should pursue what you’re interested in.

This exchange weaves together Life Path, Pursuit of Happiness, Follow Your Dreams, and another key American cultural model, Live and Learn.

Let’s look more closely at the statement, “He’ll learn or he won’t, but this is his path.” The but serves its usual role of prioritizing: the fact that this is his path is more important than the question of whether or not he’ll learn — which says a lot about the importance of Life Path, since, in these educated circles, learning is thought of as extremely important. What makes Life Path here even more important?

Bill and Joe’s exchange leaves some things to the imagination. Lurking behind their reasoning is a “dirty little secret” that would make high-minded, educated, avowedly secular liberals cringe: human life is holy. God is there, behind all the trappings of “higher” reasoning.

Sociologist Robert Bellah deserves much of the credit for bringing this to our attention. He 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, including Joe’s privileging of Life Path over learning.

In case you’re thinking, “I’m not religious,” or “I’m not spiritual,” you’re not off the hook. These beliefs go to the core of who Americans are. If you subscribe to the notion that we each have dreams and talents, and that there are ways in which our talents are “supposed” to be used, and if you feel we “owe” it to ourselves (and maybe to others) to pursue our dreams, and if you think God has nothing to do with this, then I invite you to ponder: according to whom are we “supposed” to use our talents? To whom do we really “owe” the pursuit of our dreams?

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.