July 11: Lise

I have a lovely young woman teaching my one-on-one class at IUP. She is probably in her early 20s, unmarried, grew up in Beijing I think? and attended one of the better schools in the country for language related education: Beijing Language and Culture University. In addition to helping me practice the hundreds of new vocabulary words I encounter ever week, she and I talk about all kinds of “real-life in China today” topics that I otherwise might never get a chance to explore. Our conversations have already opened my eyes to a number of issues I wasn’t really aware of before. In particular, I begin to realize the variety of cultures that co-exist in the society around me. We all hear talk of the differences in material lifestyle between cities and the countryside in China, particularly as related to uneven economic development. The cultural differences between city and country people are less visible, but I think at least as significant. My teacher has commented for example that the tendency to prefer girls over boys is especially prevalent in the countryside, among rural populations. The whole traditional social structure that reinforces that tendency (girls marry and move out of their childhood homes into the sphere of the husbands’ family, leaving their own parents without a younger generation to care for them in their old age or even after death) is much less strong in the city among educated and more wealthy people.

China has a large number of “minority” populations. In addition to the “Han” people who constitute the majority (or the largest minority?) there are the obvious ones to outsiders, like Tibetans, Mongolians, the Uighurs of the northwestern territory called Xinjiang, etc. Those people often look significantly different from the Han people, speak a different language than Chinese, practice different religions, eat different foods (which we love exploring!) and generally seem like totally different cultures. Then there are other majorities, less obviously different from the Han from an outsider perspective. Still, when you travel to the southwest, or other provinces, you see people dressed in different styles of regional costume or wearing particular kinds of jewelry in outward signs of their particular ethnic identity. These people, like the Hui, the Miao and others are visible as a different culture when dressed in their traditional costume, and it isn’t surprising to think of them as practicing slightly different customs in that context. What I’ve found surprising to realize is that in modern China, Hui people and Han people and other minorities may all be living side by side in a Beijing apartment building, and to my eyes they are mostly indistinguishable, but behind closed doors what they eat, how they celebrate birthdays, and all kinds of other habits of daily life are different from each other. For example, my teacher is a minority, and occasionally mentions how her particular customs are different from Han people. Or if I ask about some cultural practice, like celebrating birthdays, she’ll explain that some people do it one way, while others do it entirely differently. Most people in Beijing these days count age the same way we do in the US, and celebrate their birthdays according to the same calendar we use, while other people – especially those from smaller towns or the countryside -- celebrate their birthdays on their birthdate as reckoned by the lunar calendar, so the date of their birthday celebration migrates according to the Gregorian calendar.

It doesn’t seem particularly insightful to state that “Chinese Culture” is in fact hard to pin down because of the size and variety of the population, but I am being reminded of the degree to which I have sometimes had a very simplistic understanding of “Chinese Culture.” Not to mention a very academic understanding – one that is only distantly related to actual Chinese life in the modern world. I am constantly seeking points of connection between what I’ve learned and studied about China in the past and Chinese culture today, and generally frustrated in that aspiration.