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Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: Showing emotion and face?
I'm not entirely sure how this works, but I've heard from people that over-expressiveness, be it anger, happiness or sadness is necessarily a loss of face for Chinese.
I find that a little hard to believe. Is it wrong to be exuberant?
It depends on the situation. I've dated Chinese guys who were really afraid to show their feelings towards me in front of their friends. When they were sad they'd just bottle it up too.They just acted macho and cool. Other times, I've seen friends lie so as not to lose face which confused me because I thought they should just be honest.
I see people getting unnecessarily angry on the subway every day so I would say that fits of anger don't count as losing face. Maybe their trying to make their victim lose face. It definitely does affect the way people behave but sometimes it's not very obvious.
It is because if everyone is being emotionless and you have that you're smirking or giggling around while flapping your wrist out of excitement, you're gonna stand out in the crowd. A lot of Chinese people are discrete and reserved, so as a minority, those that are very expressive will draw moar attention, everyone will look at them. The happy-go-hihihi person will feel as if people are looking at him/her like he/she's a clown, and that wouldn't be far from the truth.
Sometimes in the subway, a lot of people are looking at me, like i'm an alien. I'm not even that expressive, alhough sometimes i talk to myself. At the beginning i felt intimidated but now it's me who don't pay attention to them. I even snort or scratch my buttocks sometimes because i even forget there are people around me!