On some level I have no right to complain about what I complained about in yesterday’s post. When I first went to China at 23, I was a roiling mess of self-righteous “concern” for China in its failure to be exactly like the U.S. It’s taken almost 20 years of learning for me to nuance [...]

In today’s online Wall Street Journal, this piece appeared. Reading it was an odd experience. The headline goes like this: “Obama, Hu Highlight Cooperation.” The first three paragraphs are right on point, with high-level summaries of the nature of Hu’s and Obama’s conversations. Then, suddenly, the fourth paragraph: Mr. Obama’s statement also pointedly noted the [...]

One way to think of universalism is that it’s just another cultural characteristic; that, just as “specific” is different from “diffuse,” “universalist” is different from “particularist.” That’s all well and good. The problem is that universalism has some mischief hidden inside that can cause serious trouble if we’re not aware of it. Here’s what I [...]

While we’re on the subject of Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s seven dimensions (in earlier posts we’ve looked at specific/diffuse and universalism/particularism), let’s have a look at another of these dimensions that’s relevant to topics addressed in the blog: internal versus external “locus of control.” In the authors’ words: Societies which conduct business have developed two major [...]

A few more research findings, to shed light on some other aspects of Chinese and American culture. 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 [...]

Today we turn to another great interpreter of China, anthropologist Fei Xiaotong. In his Classic From the Soil (乡土中国 Xiāngtǔ Zhōngguó), first published in Chinese in 1947, he writes of the “differential mode of association” in the Chinese cultural mindset. He contrasts this explicitly with a more Western, universalist mode, and ends up sketching the [...]

First things first: please read this piece by David Dayton. It’s a great read and extremely informative, plus it brings to life a number of themes addressed in this blog. Today, a bit more building on last week’s discussion of “individualism.” This time not my thoughts, but those of Lin Yutang, one of the most [...]

A few weeks ago I posted a series of pieces on Geert Hofstede’s five “dimensions” of culture. In my last three posts, the notions of universalism and particularism have come up. Today we’ll take a look at these two concepts in the context of the work of Dutchman Fons Trompenaars and his British colleague, Charles [...]

Yesterday and the day before we took a look at Chinese and American responses to scenarios about a fallen tree and a hypothetical rich person. Besides the lessons about the differences between abstract American moralism versus concrete Chinese practicality, there is, once again, also a lesson for us about oversimplifying.

First, yesterday I came across this article — a thoughtful discussion of some Chinese reactions to the Tonghua tragedy discussed last week in this blog. There is much worth commenting on, but I’m shirking the temptation in order to probe a little more deeply into a topic we began looking at yesterday: American moralism and [...]