Yi-Fu Tuan - Dear Colleague

June 21, 2005

Dear Colleague,

Well, I am back from China, which I visited for the first time after an absence of sixty-four years. Friends ask, "How was it? Was it good? Were there cultural shocks?" My answer has to be that it wasn't just good, it was transforming. I think I am now a different person. My view of the world, insofar as that world is a matter of physical and economic geography, remains the same. Changed is my view of social relations, culture, and self.

How shall I start? Perhaps I can say that the biggest cultural shock is a cliché--the cliché being that the Chinese show respect for the aged. I never quite bought that, perhaps because I have been in the West too long. Of course, I've heard all about filial piety and other displays of respect for the old, but I took them with more than a grain of salt. To me, the very fact that they were preached so often meant that they, in actuality, were deficient.

I have other reasons for skepticism. Hasn't Communism, and especially the Cultural Revolution, done away with that ancient virtue? And if Communism didn't totally succeed, isn't the current mad chase after wealth and luxury wholly detrimental to it? So imagine my surprise--my cultural shock--when I found respect for age in all sorts of people. My hosts naturally wanted me to be treated well. So how did they proceed to solicit that extra care on my behalf? Why they informed the cab driver, the doorman, the head waiter, the ticket collector, and so on, that they are in the presence of a very old man! They immediately showed extra deference. Amazing! When I first heard my hosts introducing me this way, I thought, "How peculiar! Won't it have worked better if I had been presented as the CEO of a fashionable footwear?" A few other examples of deference to age are in order. In China, I never traveled in a bus. I was always either in a university limousine or in a cab. But at the airport, I did get on a bus that transported passengers from the gateway to the waiting airplane. It was packed with people. When I entered, a well-dressed middle-aged man stood up to offer me his seat. One day, at dusk, I walked along a path by the lake. I was about to turn and mount a flight of steps when a man sitting on a park bench said, "Aged sir, do be careful!" Beijing Normal University provided me with a couple of student guides--one male, Chih Chen, and one female, I-Ou. We stopped at a restaurant for delicious meat buns. I saw that the driver, who sat democratically with us, had ordered garlic, which he ate with the bun. I remember doing something like that as a child, so I said I would like to try it. Chih Chen, to my left, peeled one for me. I ate it and found that I-Ou had peeled me another wedge. On our way to the Ming tombs, Chih Chen used his cell phone to call A-Xing to report on our progress. A-Xing must have told him that I needed rest after lunch. So, sitting in the back seat with this twenty-three year old grad, I was astonished when he said, "You might be more comfortable if you lean on me and rest your head on my shoulder."

Astonished! Which just goes to show how out of touch I am with Chinese culture. The male student looks totally Western, the cell phone is as indispensable to him as his ball-point pen, and he speaks fluent English. Yet he remains profoundly Chinese. "Culture," as Lee Hansen wisely says, "is not a matter of how one dresses, or even what one eats--these are matters for tourists. It may well be that the deepest layer of culture is manifest only when the superficialities of dress, food, housing style, etc., are the same."

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu