Surface similarities hide huge cultural differences

Editor's note: Dr. Terry Kriesel of Puget Island will be teaching this school year in a Taiwanese seminary. We invited him to share his observations of life in T aiwan on an occasional basis. Here is his latest dispatch:

We have a choice of two English newspapers in Taiwan (both just translations of the Chinese language newspapers). This morning I walked five minutes to my nearest 7-11 and picked one up.

I can also get a cup of coffee at the nearest Starbucks which is a 15 minute walk from my place. On the front page of this morning’s paper there were four big stories on things happening in the U.S. and only two stories about Taiwan events. The U.S. stories were about the recent college shootings, the U.S. spy law, Bernanke and the Fed, and climate change. The inside pages boast “Annie’s Mailbox”, “Peanuts” other cartoons, and editorials about Obama, Clinton, and McCain. The next page features the recent Suns and Mavericks game. The back page advertises Italian restaurants and several Outback Steakhouses. An ad on the last page shows summer scholarships in Taiwan for Taiwanese students at colleges in the U.S., trying to lure them back to Taiwan to work. From the looks of it, Taiwan is just an extension of American culture and policies.

If you assumed that you would be wrong. On another page of the paper there was a discussion of a court’s ruling that a six month old child could be held responsible for his parent’s debts (they had both died in an auto accident). I asked a Taiwanese friend about that and he said, “Yes, children have to pay their parent’s debts if the parents do not pay them.” How do you think that would go over in the U.S.?

A teacher here told me that for many years when she started teaching she brought her paycheck to her parents who were elderly and then worked a second whole job at nights to support herself. She said this proudly. Social security was just started here a few years ago. So yes, some things look familiar. But underneath where families and societies live the unseen things are sometimes very different.

I guess having your children give their entire paycheck to you in your old age is one solution to the problem of surviving in old age. I doubt that my children would be overjoyed if they were told by a court that they had to pay any debts I left behind. Societies seem to find their own sometimes very different ways to deal with common human problems.

I had been here about a month when another professor said to me , “Terry, you are very honest.” At first I took that as a compliment. After another couple of more months here I began to realize that it might not be a compliment. Chinese do not criticize directly. You have to figure it out. If you look at the picture at the top of this page you see how typical Chinese live. In apartments! All of them! If we don’t like our neighbors in the U.S. we can avoid them. We have more room! They are stuck in living very close to all their neighbors. Maybe it makes sense to be more polite and less direct when you cannot avoid meeting that person every single day. So cultural differences abound under the surface. But maybe they have an important purpose in that society.