Ghostbustees

Last week I introduced Francis Hsu's framework and the notion of "Layer 3." Readers' comments on that post reminded me of something I read years ago by Chinese anthropologist Fei Xiaotong.

Fei, whom we heard from once before, spent academic year 1943-44 in the United States, during the closing phase of World War II. He observed that America is a "land without ghosts," which became the title of a collection of essays by Chinese visitors to the U.S. (Land Without Ghosts: Chinese Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present, ed. R. David Arkush and Leo O. Lee, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989). His own childhood, filled with ghosts, stood in stark contrast to ghostless America. He wrote:

How could a ghost gain a foothold in American cities? People move about like the tide, unable to form permanent ties with places, to say nothing of other people.…

Outside the family there is certainly much social intercourse, but dealings with people are always in terms of appointments. On my office desk is an appointment calendar marked in fifteen-minute intervals with a space for a person's name beside each. Apart from business there are various kinds of gatherings, but if you go to one you will find it is no more than social pleasantries: a few words with this person, a few words with that one — it is hard even to remember their names. I cannot say all Americans pass their lives like this. But I once asked a fairly close acquaintance how many friends he had whom he could drop in on at any time without a previous engagement. Counting on his fingers, he did not fill one hand.…

…[Americans'] movements are so easy and they have contacts with so many people, that there seldom comes about the kind of relationship I had with my grandmother, living interdependently for a long time, repeating the same scenes, so that these scenes came to seem an inalterable natural order. Always being on the move dilutes the ties between people and dissolves the ghosts.…

In a world without ghosts, life is free and easy. American eyes can gaze straight ahead. But still I think they lack something and I do not envy their lives. (pp. 179-181)

If we combine this with the notion, from last Friday's post, that culture goes extremely deep within us, we get a picture of Americans as thoroughly conditioned to form a certain kind of fleeting relationship with a great many individuals over a lifetime. We will naturally import these habits into our dealings with China, and this gets us into trouble.