Dreams: No laughing matter

To Americans, our life dreams are no less than a spiritual matter. Because they represent the highest aspirations of a sacred human life, dreams themselves are sacred.

In case you’re thinking, “I’m not religious,” or “I’m not spiritual,” you’re still not off the hook. Sociologist Robert Bellah famously studied what he termed American Civil Religion: a set of religiously-based beliefs shared by Americans of all religious and non-religious stripes. These beliefs — about many things, including our duties toward our fellow humans, as well as the uniqueness of human life and the need to “express ourselves” and develop our talents — provide the energy behind much of the language used by the Americans in my research.

In America you don’t mess with someone’s dreams.

Dreams may be impractical, far-fetched, pie-in-the-sky. But dismiss them and you’re in trouble.“Dreams,” in the default case in Chinese culture, don’t carry the same charge — as evidenced in the Chinese discussion of the rock band question, discussed in yesterday’s post. One respondent referred to Wáng Èr’s music as a “hobby” (兴趣爱好) that he could pursue after college; another participant said — and stick with me here if you don’t read Chinese — 我觉得每一个人还是要follow自己的heart.” Do you see the English in there? I translate the sentence as: “I think every person should follow their own heart.” After being admonished by her partner for using English, she “translates” back into Chinese: “还是应该坚持自己的想法吧”: “[They] should maintain their opinions.” The flavor of dreams is completely missing without the English.

Now, I’m not claiming that the language of dreams in English “can’t be translated into Chinese.” There are much closer translations in Chinese for the language of dreams than the language chosen by this one participant. And I’m certainly not claiming that thinking in terms of dreams isn’t done in Chinese: if it weren’t, why would the respondent have said what she said, namely that every person should follow their heart?

What I find interesting about her approach, though, is that she felt pulled to use English, and that the first “translation” into Chinese that she thought of was that one, about maintaining opinions, which is so devoid of the spirit of following one’s heart.

Dreams are alive and well in China. I would argue that dreaming big dreams is as much a part of our humanity as anything. Still, default modes of thinking and reasoning about dreams in the U.S. and in China are strikingly different. And so we need, as always, to take care in what we assume our Chinese counterparts and partners are thinking.