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Q: Are Chinese people unable to infer things (to make logical or thematic connections)?
One of the crucial prerequisites of analysis (whether literary, political, sociological, psychological or otherwise) is the ability to understand implication; to infer things from the information we are given; to make connections in meaning; to deduce relationships between the textual and the real.
A Chinese teacher of Linguistics at my university told me that "satire" is a very difficult concept to translate into Chinese. Apparently, Chinese people simply can't make the connection between the fictional events in a story and the real-world situation that it implicates, because the characters and setting are different. His students will at very least need an explicit reference to China before they can see a relationship.
As Xinyuren mentioned in another topic, the strikingly obvious link between V for Vendetta and the authoritarian security state in China is perhaps not strikingly obvious to Chinese people. They just see an action movie with a violent clown. "Censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity" doesn't point to anything outside the movie they are watching.
The other day I was watching The Boy With the Striped Pyjamas with some young (early 20's) Chinese friends. At the end of the movie, the camera slowly zooms out from the closed door of the gas chamber. Mournful music. Silence.
Friends: "Hmmmm?" "Huh?" "What happened?"
Me: "Ah... they died"
Friend: "But they said 'it's just a shower' "
Me: "....."
Someone says "it's just a shower" so it literally must be just a shower. I am starting to understand how Chinese leaders are so successful.
Attempts to reference the political system or other aspects of reality must be entirely literal and fairly simple. Satire, subversiveness or irony aren't big things in Chinese literature I guess.
Can anyone refute, speculate about, confirm or further illustrate these musings?
I think I can dumb it down a little.
When talking to people I think they loose track of a conversation super easy. Lets say I am standing with a carrot in my hand. It can go like this
Me : This carrot sure is orange!
Other: Yes
Me : Do you like carrots?
Other : Yes
Me: Do you want to eat it?
Other: Huh
Replacing "carrot" with "it" makes a conversation go south.
(OK OK, maybe a bit of exxageration here)
Totally agree with you. What made me laugh most is how 1984 has been translated into Chinese and is available at most books stores in China. And yet if they could just open their minds they might see how scarily similar Orwell's 1984 is to communist China. Same with V for Vendetta where "governments should be afraid of the people" is the main theme of the film. Hello, China?! Anything to say after watching that film? No? Of course not.
With the gas chamber reference you made, to be fair they probably didn't study Nazi Germany. I'm sure there's a lot you would miss in Chinese movies simply because you don't have the cultural or historical understanding, so I don't think that's a very good example. I haven't seen the movie so who knows, maybe the music and scene makes it pretty obvious what's going on and you're friends are just stupid.
Samsara:
Hi Xunliang
I was just wondering about how much our cultural connection to the Holocaust would effect our understanding. All western people know what a gas chamber is, and know what happened to Jews during the Holocaust, so it may be unfair to expect the audience to figure it out, first time.
The movie does make it VERY clear though. The Jews are herded into the gas chamber. Then the doors are locked, and a soldier with a gas mask pours some chemicals in through a hatch in the roof. Then the lights go out, and you can hear the steam turn on, and the Jews panicking. Not much room for imagination.
The final shot is outside the gas chamber, which is now silent. All the Jews' prison uniforms are strewn about without anyone to wear them...
As to 1984 - Is it seriously available in Chinese? That's crazy.
xunliang:
Fair enough, I guessed it might be pretty obvious, plus the Chinese should know about it. Who knows.
I bought 1984 in Chinese for my girlfriend but I made the mistake of telling her that it's so much like China. I should have just let her read it and see what she said. I doubt she would have made the connection though. They certainly don't make the connection with V.
I guess they're just not taught to think that way. I'm glad you raised this question because I often think about it myself, especially with regards to V and 1984. When you see how much of foreign films are deleted or have the subtitles changed, it just goes to show how stupid the censors are when they let works with such obvious political undertones through, and how stupid the Chinese are for not noticing it.
Scandinavian:
I would agree, they should know about it. It is a significant part of world history, but then we should have a thread about the Chinese education system
xunliang:
We don't learn about the Sino-Japanese War in Britain. I'm sure most Chinese and Japanese would say that that was an important part of history. The Chinese should know about Nazi Germany, but it's easy to understand why they don't; they have their own history to learn, just as we have ours. I didn't learn anything about the Sino-Japanese war until I got to university, and that's only because I studied Chinese.
mattsm84:
How did you not learn about the Second Sino-Japan war in school? It was incredibly important to western history because it gets folded into what we think of as the Pacific War, which the UK and its colonies, protectorates, and dominions played a rather significant role in. I mean I get that it was happening to another group of people, but it'd be like not learning about the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
That said, maybe history curriculums in the US just tends to focus on the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the immediate aftermath because those things marked our assent into becoming a world power, and tend to get used as justifications for contemporary policy positions. As GB posses a lot more history than the US, I wonder if its just that you guys feel that there more constructive things to study.
MissA:
The communist takeover of China is hugely historically important, but I was taught SFA about it in school. What we judge as important enough to teach changes enormously from country to country.
Some do. My wife loves satire, and often visits satrical Chinese websites so she can laugh her ass off.
Here's a very classic conversation between me & my fellow Chinese colleagues:
Chinese teacher: I called you yesterday morning but you didn't answer the phone.
Me: Yes, I was in the middle of the class.
Ch. Teacher: I called you the day before yesterday & you didn't answer either.
Me: What time did you call?
Ch. teacher: Around 9 a.m.
Me: I'm teaching every morning, so don't call me in the morning.
Ch. T. : Teaching?
Me: Yeah, That's why you invited me to come to this school.
Ch. T. But I called you yesterday???
Creative or lateral thinking has been discouraged here for a long time, this is why teachers need to guide and lead their students so very much. I remember teaching the song 'Row row row your boat' to a class of kids once and in the middle of it the Chinese teacher helping with the class turned to me, looking very confused, and said "But I don't understand, life is not a dream." She just couldn't get her head round the somewhat abstract nature of the verse.
Scandinavian:
wait... what, is life not a dream..... so I am awake now?
Try playing the game "20 Questions" with college students. They just can't do it, even if the rules are explained and the game is played in Chinese.
Amonk:
I tried. they werent very good... it took 12 questions to guess dog. but not terrible after u gave suggestions on how to form questions closer to 50/50 divisions
I often think the way kids are not allowed to do ANYTHING themselves leads to this.
Honestly, my friend was sick so I went to a friends kindergarten for a day to teach for a couple hours, the kids are 6, now, my mum teaches the same age back in the UK and I've seen the huge difference, for example:
Whilst playing a game, a boy falls over. In the UK he will get up and carry on. This kid sat there staring at the teacher, WAITING for her to ask if he's ok so he can get some sympathy.
I said 'make a circle with your chairs'. Honestly, even when I said it in Chinese, they look dumfounded, like they couldn't do it. In the end the teacher had to move them each. What annoyed me was that in the UK if the kids start to see the teacher creating a circle of size 'x', they in turn move their chairs to complete it. The chinese kids COULD NOT understand, and had to wait for each individual chair to be moved.
I played 'duck duck goose' and honestly, I asked the best 4-5 to play first and figured that the rest would work it out after seeing it done 5-6 times. Nope. Children in the UK can grasp something from doing, or seeing it done, but here, they just look dumb. I asked one kid to go, and he was like 'What do I do?'[in Chinese] even though he'd just watched his classmates play the game for 10 minutes.
There's more, like how the kids are sheep. One kid goes to the toilet, and suddenly half the class went.
Also, I taught them 'pink', and honestly, even though they repeated it 20 times, after 2 minutes they'd forgotten.
xinyuren:
What you experienced is still indirectly a result of the school system. Even before they get their brains wiped in primary school, their parents (who were taught under the same system) preps them for their mindless career. This is why it will be extremely difficult for China to change on their own. How can you produce wolves with sheep teachers and parents?
MissA:
Interesting - in my experience it was a nightmare the first time I tried to get each class to move chairs into a circle but after the first time they were really quick.
It took all my kids less time to pick up duck, duck, goose than you're describing. The way I'd always do it was to simply start playing - first my Chinese TA would chase me, then I'd chase here, then she'd chase me and then the smarter kids were asking to be picked. By the time you choose the smarter kids the slower ones had also more or less caught on. All having to go to the toilet together is a pain in the arse - I had to have a rule, only ONE kid outside the classroom at a time. Otherwise one hand would go up, then the class would depopulate.
GuilinRaf:
My first year teaching. They had to write a short essay about the Olympics that were going to be held in summer.
FIVE students plagiarized the same article. Since the article was using language much more advanced than what they could grasp, I knew it was plagiarized the first time i heard it. The repetitions confirmed it.
From the very first one, I stated to ask him about vocabulary ("What does that word mean? What do you mean you dont know, you wrote the essay, right?"). I asked the SAME words, and even though they saw their classmate being grilled, NONE of them though of looking up the words in their dictionaries, even when they noticed that i was asking them, one by one......
They just fell like sheep,one after the other, kind of like the frog placed in cold water which is slowly being brought to a boil.
happywanderer:
The vast majority are taught by the media, schooling, and family to take everything at face value without consideration. From the earliest age to the highest level of education, creativity and imagination are stifled and everything is about rote learning, obedience, and giving face to your "betters". I salute your attempt to re-educate people to think for themselves and wish you the greatest success but this is not a trifling challenge. I suggest you reflect on this matter further and request an audience with your local true-seer. But ultimately, after much reflection, you will realize there is no other path and the spoon does most definitely not bend. You are just a variable in an equation and your existence is meaningless - teach your lessons and know that obedience is the only answer. You are number 6!
