Whatever you do as a Chinese, keep a poker face (喜怒不形于色). Because it’s not about experiencing emotions. It’s about not expressing them.
But in a society which glorifies non-verbal implications, there should be no need to express any emotion anyway.
In the Middle Kingdom, the most important things in life are usually implied, such as a parent’s love for their child. In a traditional family, very rarely is this directly communicated, for there be not the need.
Taking the concept to to a more or less natural conclusion, expressing too much emotion in China can be considered insincere or a sign of weakness.
Hence, the majority of children in China are on a hiding to nothing if considering showing any emotion. From a young age, the regime is established. Drilled into them is the ethos to fall in line. And that means remembering all their school lessons and hours of homework. Never should they question authority. Orders are to be followed without query, while thoughts are prescribed by their parents, grandparents and teachers.
It’s what Confucianism is all about; the greater good.
Chun Liu notes this well in the paper, “Chinese, Why Don’t You Show Your Anger? — A Comparative Study between Chinese and Americans in Expressing Anger” (2014). “When in conflict in personal communication, Chinese tend to sacrifice their own interests in order to satisfy the well-being of others. Consequently, they tend to restrain their anger”, Chun writes.
But bottling it all up inside chips away at the façade. Eventually though, it will be time for lift off.
Benoit married his Chinese girlfriend here in Nanjing back in 2009 and recently related to The Nanjinger one of his first experiences encountering extreme displays of emotion by the Chinese.
It was after he came back home one afternoon and had reason to sit on his mother in law’s bed.
She erupted.
And then stripped the entire bed and changed anew every last piece of material and anything stuffed thereon.
Being the sensitive foreigner, Benoit was quite upset that he had, in one foul swoop, been defined by his dirtiness.
But such rapid enragement is in fact pretty common in a society supposedly underpinned by harmony.
How many times have you seen a Chinese parent become angry with their child? On the street or the shopping mall escalator, all it takes is the minor misdemeanour of a child to turn parental care into a bad day with the Sergeant Major.
Then there are the major battles fought for parking spots. In western countries, we would just say, “Damn, she got the last space”. In China, there have been numerous reports of such situations resulting in fisticuffs, even here in our own Nanjing.
So that’s dealt with anger (and obviously there’s hoards of it). What about public displays of sorrow and grief in China?
These were witnessed in an arresting fashion in 2014, in the wake of the disappearance of flight MH370. With fully two thirds of its passengers Chinese and destination Beijing Capital Airport, as the news hit waiting families and friends, there was a hitherto unseen outpouring of grief. Hitherto in so far as it was broadcast on television worldwide.
The poker face was off.
But the other end of the emotional spectrum lies happiness. Plenty of that too in China.
Witness the average teenage girl’s overwhelming joy at her favourite band’s concert in Nanjing’s Olympic Stadium, and any garden variety office in China that sees its fair share of daily giggles among colleagues sharing jokes, observations on life and the hottest social media posts from the previous evening.
Then there are the foreigners visiting China who will invariably mention how local people are “so friendly”!
Come to think of it, there are generally more smiles to be found in China than on the dour faces of Europe. Especially these days.
With all these salient points as examples, emotion would appear to be an attribute worn quite proudly by many a Chinese.
But all this “toing and froing” stops us from asking the fundamental question.
Why the contradictions?
It boils down to uncertainty avoidance; our degree of tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity.
In a high-uncertainty culture, such as the USA, citizens are not good at dealing with ambiguity and unpredictability. In all their communication, they seek clarity and accuracy, exactly what the Chinese language was designed to avoid.
“When they [Americans] are angry, they are unlikely to pretend to be happy. There should be a clear distinction between liking and disliking”, writes Chun. “However, members of relatively, low-uncertainty-avoiding societies, such as China, are more comfortable with ambiguity, chaos and less resistant to unknown situations.”
Going forward, the lid of the emotional China pressure cooker may well remain on for now, but external influences will continue to constantly fiddle with its settings, seeking to elicit as much reaction as possible, a bit like that petulant child who earlier received the dressing down from their enlisted mother.
