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Q: What ironic contradictions exist between Chinese and western cultures?
Example 1: The Chinese are not known for being extrovert whereas Americans are, and yet a Chinese man is far more likely to sit in a crowded net-bar and sing loudly and unselfconsciously to whichever tune is playing on his head-phones than is his American counterpart.
Example 2: Westerners and the Chinese often look at each other as dirty, the reason being that China's plumbing system is not top-notch, vermin abound and yet the Chinese counter this by being extremely cleanly in their everyday life (think KFC plastic gloves, and the non finger licking habits at Chinese barbecues), whereas westerners enjoy a higher level of general hygiene and so are able to enjoy such pleasures as licking barbecue juices off their palms.
So what other contradictions have you come across between westerners and the Chinese?
Generally, we like Chinese food in our own countries, but not in China.
Just about everyday I'm reading about how many countries consider China an economic and growing military threat. However, having lived here for a good while, I've come to the conclusion that these folks are about as threatening as a basset hound on Quaaludes.
nevermind:
Yup, I tell my friends they couldn't run a doughnut shop.
Many western nationals believe that China is a communist country with anti-capitalist sentiments. China also likes to give that impression, though we that live here know the stark reality!
Chinese, extremely clean ?? omg dude, stop or u will give people a heart-attack!
have u ever been in China ????
but I guess when u blow snot out of your nose and rub hand on shirt, that's a type of clean. (Not)
Gaohao:
Been here the best part of ten years mate. You never questioned why so many people wear plastic gloves in KFC? Or why the Chinese don't lick their fingers when they eat? In their personal habits they 'are' more cleanly on the whole, they have to be.
gregoryneal1:
well, u must live in a very different place than I do, because the things I see on a daily basis look like India or somewhere. lol
i know a few places where the little stream running thru the community is used as the communal landfill. The street corners are covered in trash. Slop, urine, feces in the gutter... lol... Hey man, u must live in a nice place, but I can assure you that for the most part, the worker-bee's of china live like pigs. Have u ever been in an apartment for laborers? Five or six guys in a small room sleeping on the floor.. trash, left-over food waste, cigs, beer bottles covering the area that is not occupied by their mats... Do I even need to mention public toilets? Or defecating on the streets..? Teeth rotting out of their heads,,, young people with breath like rotted food. Picking noses on bus and gf digging in their ears... Hey, u can defend your position all u want. But observation suggests they have a poor concept of hygiene.
Yeah, some wear plastic gloves when eating. and wash chopsticks that are sealed already... 
Gaohao:
The points you mentioned, trash piles, inadequate public toilets, squalid living conditions, etc, are products of struggling economics, they don't reflect directly upon an individual's personal hygiene.
My point is that in my experience, poor families compensate for these conditions by being cleanly to a greater degree than is generally observed in the west except by some obsessive compulsives. I've not lived amongst China's super-rich, i've lived amongst China's average Joe's. Average Joe's who have rats running around outside their doors, and unless they clean up after themselves, cockroaches in the kitchen, and I have found, for this exact reason, that when you go into their homes they are more often than not, almost obsessively polished and tidy.
gregoryneal1:
Yeah, I hear you. I have been in several Chinese upper middle-class homes and they were kept very neat. And the people I know also have a high degree of personal hygiene.
I see what you are talking about now.
I also been in many working-class homes in Thailand (Isan). Basically neat as a pin! except the outdoor loo. 
i want Whitening cream vs. i need to tan..
Gaohao:
Haha, that's 'cause in China white skin means you have cash and don't have to work in the fields. In the west brown skin means you have cash and can holiday in a warm climate.
China needed to transliterate the word "logic" in their own language.....this explain everything else.
China claims to be a communist country with a so-called socialist market economy, while in fact it's just an nationalist oligarchy with a capitalist attitude.
China's motto is do what I do wrong, but don't do what I do right.
PS: Did you hear about this Chinese couple interviewed on a Chinese TV that after a couple of months they got married they went to the hospital to check for pregnancy. Then the doctor informed the woman that she was still a virgin. The couple said that the man just mast* and hoped his wife would get pregnant. Careful women, in China you can get pregnant without sex....the white matter can just flow out and reach you wherever you are ..............In case for some dumbies...the story is real, my comment on the story is not 
crimochina:
hahahahaha sex ed in the great middle kingdom at it's best. even lower animals can figure it out by themselves.
siyingyuan:
hmmm. I wonder why Chinese people now days don't even believe Chinese TV any more, especially CCTV news.
Chinese TV has totally lost its credit.
China with 5000 years of history,still pi ing ,spit ,no social skills what we learned in say 200 or less years
Gaohao:
It seems that refined behaviour like not spitting, etc, is directly related to a places economic situation. If you're struggling to make ends meet, as many still are in China, worrying whether you offend someone by spitting on the street just isn't - that - important.
A friend was talking about how all the expensive real estate is built by the poor workers. Then he looked up the word and said "exploited" and said that that is what capitalism is.
I wondered if he made the connection between "exploited" and other forms of gov
I'd like to know how we in the west somehow got the idea that we are lazy and Chinese people are hard workers.
Gaohao:
Because the school kids average an extra ten or twenty hours of study time a week and workers average 12 hours a day with only four days off a month? My wife's mother worked thirty five years without a day off. Sixteen hour days. By comparison, yeh, we seem pretty lazy.
nevermind:
Maybe you do, but what I've noticed is they work sixteen hours a day because they aren't doing any work. There's a difference between being AT work and doing work. This is a nation of 1.4 billion, if they're so hard-wroking why is it still mostly so behind the rest of the world?
As well, if you look at GDPs US cities that are 1/10 the size of chinese ones have twice the output of them. Could it be all the sleeping at desks?
As well, my father worked 16 hours a day all my life and at home in Canada I worked three jobs at one point... and I'm not the only one I know who has done this.
You my also wonder how many are so ignorant if they're putting in all this extra school time.. oh yeah...cause they're just AT school on QQ and pissing around. If you take in to account homework, plus the fact we all get jobs in the west at 15, we're pretty hard workers.Gaohao:
Nope, they're working for their money my friend, I can assure you. Just go on any building site and ask yourself if your average middle-aged mother back in the west would be a likely sight there, shovelling cement and carrying hods of bricks, then try and say they don't know about hard graft. Or stick your head round the door of one of the many sweatshops in and around China and take a look at those lazy good for nothings.
As for the students, if you think they're all relaxing the day away on qq instead of studying, I can only assume you've never worked in a Chinese state school.
Can't really comment on China's growth in terms of world economics, but it doesn't seem quite as simple as 'they aren't doing any work,' Is that the problem throughout the third world too, that 'they aren't doing any work'? Doesn't the strength of a country's currency come into the equation here? I mean, if you're working for the Canadian dollar and i'm working for Chinese yuan and we both want to compete against each other on the same world stage, I will naturally have to work much harder than you because your currency is more powerful than mine. Seems obvious.
nevermind:
Really? Is that how economics work in your world?
China's human labour pool is so cheap that it doesn't matter how lazy they are on the job because they can hire 4 people to do the job that 1 person would do in the west.
I've never seen anyone but men on construction sites here, and I've certainly never seen them working hard on these sites. I see 2 guys carrying a 3 pound bucket of water and guys shoveling loads of dirt the size of my fist on the end of a spade.
Have you seen how crappy the buildings here are? Unfinished, doorknobs on crooked, etc... that's laziness. I don't know what you've been doing in CHina in your time, but I suppose you haven't been watching the Fu Wu Yuan's, clerks, office people etc... and their napping on the job. I only taught a short time here, but the kids were not hard workers by any means, and I hear a lot of the same from other teachers.
Not one of the people I worked with during my time in China would last a week in a western firm.
MissA:
The idea that 'sitting at your desk for endless hours = working hard' really got on my tits while I was lin China
Gaohao:
Not after a slanging match here, and i'm not trying to be China's 'yes' man either, i'm just enjoying the discussion, but I 'was' very surprised to hear you say you'd never seen a woman on a building site, i've seen so many of them. I first visited China 10 years ago but have lived here full time since 2005 in Guangzhou, Liuzhou, Guilin, Beihai and most recently Nanning, and i've seen plenty of women working on building sites and nothing different in terms of the behaviour of the workers here to that of my own fellow workers when I worked on site back in London. I've also seen no signs of the laziness you spoke of in schools. None at all. Are you a professional teacher with lots of experience or were you just winging it for a period as a means to support yourself while in China? Not knocking you if the latter is the case but if it is it may explain something of what you experienced in the classrooms.
As for the work pool you spoke of, it's true, minimum wage allows employers to overstaff at minimum personal expense. So what else whould you expect of someone earning a dollar an hour in a supermarket than to shirk their duties at every available opportunity? It's no different in the west.
Your earlier point about the US GDP being a reflection of how much harder they work and how much better they're doing is another one that I believe to be self deceptive. I heard an interesting point of view recently which stated that a country's GDP is more reflective of industrial inefficiency and social degradation than genuine well-being and growth. For example in 2009 the US health care services accounted for 17.3% of its GDP (2.5 trillion dollars), and yet that percentage represents sick people, so ironically it would be favourable for the number of sick people to rise if the country wished to appear prosperous. Similarly it is more favourable for goods to be less than perfect if one wishes for repeat business, ie. it's better for a particular item such as a computer to have a short shelf life, otherwise the rate of cyclical consumption falls, again reflecting poorly upon the GDP.
Mostly out of my depth in the argument of economics though, it is NOT my field of expertise by any stretch of the imagination. Like I say, just here for the discussion.
nevermind:
If you break down the GDP to simply cities it is a good indicator of the how hard the work force in those cities work. People like to say Americans are lazy and bust their balls, but if you really think about the difference between workers there that you see everyday and workers here... I'd say they're working harder in the USA. The reasons why such as low wages....etc... don't matter when we're just talking about the simple issue of if they work hard or not. I taught for two months between regular jobs here and that's the point it was no different than home. As for work in the office jobs I had I found the Chinese staff to be incredibly lazy and as Miss A said sleeping at their desks, screwing around on QQ...etc. None of them would last in a western firm. Funnily enough, my wife said she has seen Chinese people on Chinese expat website from Canada ridcule other Chinese and saying they all only work for chinese businesses in Canada precisely cause they can't keep up with the work demands of local ones. It has her worried if she can.
I think there's alot of bullshit spread about how the Chinese are hard workers, and I know I'm not the only one.
Gaohao:
I reckon this argument could go on, but all i'm really saying is that I don't see a difference in the work ethic here. None at all. Maybe they're all bums here and I just haven't noticed, but i'm certain I would have. Seems to me China has the same mixture of people as one finds anywhere else, good and bad, hard-working and otherwise.
1. Westerners do not split their babies paints exposing the baby privates.chinese do it(disgusting)
2. Westerners cover their mouth when coughing or sneezing where as Chinese let it loose into the air putting everyone around at risk of being infected.(Terrible)
3. Westerners do not eat fried dragonfly at a formal dinner as I was presented with a bowl full during a luncheon of a very important ceremony in China.
4. Westerners will take a gift straightly if they need it but Chinese will pretend to say no; knowing they want it.
5. westerner will not comment on your appearance seven days a week where as Chinese do that (just annoying)
6. As a dinner guest in a foreigner home, everyone will not pretend to show you hypocritical love my shoving everything on your plate,they will give you some breathing space to choose for yourself what you want to eat or simply tell you try this and once. Chinese often do this.
7. So much more of the ironic contradictions.
Gaohao:
Not really the kind of thing I was asking about actually, these are more personal gripes you've listed. Sounds like you haven't really taken to life in China.
I know what you mean about the split pants though, my kid's half Chinese and I have flatly refused to ever let him wear them. I'm sure that there must be some kids out there who suddenly hit a day when they look around and are struck with some level of self-awareness that tells them "Shit! My arse is hanging out of my pants!"
The gift thing you mentioned is actually Chinese modesty, not wishing to appear greedy. Hmm, saying that takes me back to handing out free gifts at a Christmas celebration. It was like a feeding frenzy. They could have done with exercising a little of that Chinese modesty then actually. The putting food on your plate thing gets on my nerves too but it's actually meant well. The Chinese assume you will be modest and leave the best bits, so if you are a guest they will give them straight to you.GuilinRaf:
Good list, though I dont quite agree with 4 and 6. I have had this h appen in the west too.
