Truth and Trust: Chinese truths

There are plenty of circumstances in which Americans consider it okay, even desirable, not to tell the truth. (Take the age-old example of the Nazis coming to your door asking about the Jews you're hiding in your attic.) Still, on balance, Americans believe in telling the truth. Or, more to the point, Americans think of themselves as believing in telling the truth. It takes an extreme case to convince us that it's okay to "lie."

That's why I reacted the way I did to the situation I described yesterday. I just couldn't get my head around the truth being treated so cavalierly.

Over the years I've learned more and more about just how culturally relative, and slippery, "truth" is as a concept. It just doesn't do to say, "The Chinese aren't honest," and stop there. It's understandable that an American might react this way, but it doesn't even begin to tell the whole story, and it does nothing to further cooperation.

If you're interested in the most complete and insightful treatment I've seen of these questions, I invite you to read Susan Blum's masterful Lies That Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). Blum lists 16 "maxims" used by Chinese in considering how to treat the sharing of information. (For her, "Chinese" means urban Han Chinese — the type most Westerners interact with, especially in business settings.) These maxims often compete with "tell the truth," and include "guard information," "give and save face," "take relationships as primary," and "consider consequences." (p. 19).

A classic example of this last maxim occurred in a class I taught at Peking University (PKU), which included students from both PKU and Stanford. We were discussing a study of the English word lie, and I asked the students to give an example of a "white lie." A PKU student offered up telling your terminally ill father that he's in good health. The Stanford students and I were all stunned. The PKU students were nonchalant. I'd never seen the class so starkly divided along cultural lines.

The student's point was simply that the consequences of the "truth-telling" must be considered — in this case the emotional state of the father. Telling him the truth would mean all sorts of unpleasant emotions as he moved toward death. Much better to protect him. He's going to die anyway; might as well have him be at ease. To the PKU students the American insistence on truth-telling was painfully abstract.

I'm an American and as much as I puzzle over this I can't get past an intellectual understanding of this. In my gut it still doesn't seem right. I have moments where I get it viscerally, but they pass quickly.

Which is ultimately my point: many of the cultural differences Americans encounter in China hit you in the gut. It's on you to understand where that reaction comes from, and to deal with it in whatever ways work to keep your focus where it needs to be. I could get away with more as a 23-year-old teacher in Qiqihar than I could as a middle-aged director of a study abroad program. I'm glad I got to climb a gradual learning curve. Most of us don't have that luxury.