Chinese virtue

Chapter 35 Lack of Integrity (2)
Many Westerners living in China have a deep understanding of the hypocritical gift-giving purposes of the Chinese.We also know very well about such things.Once, the Chinese in a certain small village invited several foreigners to watch a play in order to show their respect. Knowing the reason, these foreigners planned to host a banquet for these villagers.But the villagers turned down the foreigners' invitation, and instead expressed to the foreigners that they asked for a donation to the village, even less. They wanted to build a common house for the villagers.The foreigners followed the villagers' ideas.As a result, more than a dozen villages also sent representatives to invite foreigners to watch the show, and said that they were very moved by the foreigners' contribution to the disaster and famine.With the previous experience, foreigners decisively rejected the invitations of these villages.The representatives of these villages were greatly surprised. Everyone's expression showed sadness, but after hesitating for a while, they still asked for donations, and the reason was also for the construction of public facilities.But he just mentioned it casually, and didn't say anything else.

Not only foreigners will be favored by such "etiquette", but some wealthy Chinese will also be like this. When there is something worth celebrating in their family, neighbors will come to congratulate with gifts, such as buying gifts for their children. Some toys, clothes and so on.Then the host hosts a banquet to thank those who came to express their congratulations. This kind of reciprocity is very common in China.Even foreigners who don't know China the least will think of a very incisive Chinese motto at this time: "Eat your own, and you will cry; eat other people's, and you will sweat." Even if you are unhappy, you can't show it. You can only reluctantly welcome everyone who comes to "Congratulations" with a smile, otherwise you will lose face. Compared with the food, face is more important.

The above-mentioned situations all illustrate one thing, that is, many behaviors of Chinese people are done to save "face".When employed by foreigners, the Chinese will always show great importance to etiquette, but it is just an insincere politeness.To make this clear, it is only necessary to compare the behavior of the Chinese in public with their behavior in private.There is such an example, a Chinese gentleman who is employed by a foreigner pays great attention to etiquette. When he is at the owner's house, his behavior is almost impeccable, but if he meets the owner on the street, he will pretend not to know him.Because if he greeted his master, others would see that he was living with foreigners.Although those around him already knew this, on the surface or in public, he still would not admit it.When some Chinese people walk into a room, they only salute Chinese people and ignore foreigners at all. This kind of thing is very common.Sometimes, a Chinese gentleman will praise his foreign students, saying that he accepts the language very quickly, with accurate pronunciation and excellent listening skills.But in private, the gentleman and other colleagues would laugh at the student's weird pronunciation.It can be said that Mr. Chinese determines the standard of students' Chinese pronunciation, which is a matter of course.

Some Chinese people always promise verbally, but actually do nothing.This is another manifestation of the hypocrisy and superficiality of Chinese politeness.If a Chinese person agrees to help you but does nothing in the end, we don’t need to be too disappointed, because this is a very common thing. When a Chinese person promises to help you, his face will be saved. As for whether he has the ability Help, or whether he will help you, he will not think about it.If you have a dispute with the innkeeper about money when staying in the inn, your coachman will come over to help you advance part of the money, but in fact the money was originally yours.Even if it belongs to the coachman himself, he will ask you for the money back after the incident.If you argue with him, saying that he made the cushion on his own initiative, he will refute you and say, "If you go to a funeral alone, should you bury it in the ground with the coffin of the deceased?"

Although the Chinese are very duplicity, there are also some people who are very humble, although many people's humility is just for others to see.There are a lot of gentlemen who don't fully understand when they say unpleasant things, but people understand what he means, but they don't want to explain clearly.But even such a literati would yell and utter unspeakable words when they were in a hurry.

The humility of some Chinese is hypocritical, and their sympathy is also hypocritical.

The Chinese are always talking a lot of empty words to express their hypocritical sympathy, and we can't make any judgments about this behavior, because the Chinese have no wealth enough to maintain sympathy.When Chinese people treat the dead, they can say some empty and hypocritical expressions of sympathy, and at the same time show a gloating expression.This is more depressing than false sympathy.

Petel once mentioned a thing: after the disaster, a Sichuan native saw a dead body being bitten by two wild dogs while stretching. He was not only indifferent but also laughed.Mr. Midiller also once told us that his Chinese teacher often said that his friend's death was very ridiculous.If a child unfortunately dies, the parents will gradually become numb due to excessive grief.But there is a fundamental difference between the numbness of grief and the kind of numbness that goes against human nature.

As we mentioned before, China and the West have had trade exchanges hundreds of years ago. During these hundreds of years, Chinese businessmen have always had a good reputation and are very reputable.Here are some examples to prove that this is not just talking.Mr. Cameron, the manager of HSBC Bank, once said when he left Shanghai: "In terms of business quality, the Chinese are very good, not at all inferior to our Western business groups. Chinese bankers and businessmen can quickly make People create trust, I have ample evidence to prove this. In the past 25 years, the Chinese have negotiated some large-scale business transactions with HSBC, but they have never done business, even if the amount is hundreds of millions of taels. breach of contract. Of course, there are exceptions to everything, but so far I have not found it.” Three years after Mr. Cameron finished speaking, an unexpected thing happened. A Chinese in Hong Kong The comprador suffered a lot from the bank and was still able to earn 100 million profits for the bank every year even though his strength was greatly reduced.Undoubtedly, this incident is the best example to confirm Mr. Cameron's views.

In China, whether wholesalers and retailers have the same business methods, we do not know.

But we should think about this question carefully, because only in this way can we understand the Chinese people more fully.The various advantages of the Chinese people mentioned before may be due to their "responsibility". This feature is very appreciated by Westerners, and it is also very worthy of our study.

Some Chinese lack integrity, and this can be seen in their business activities.Whenever doing business with the Chinese, the Westerners always ask the Chinese to show their integrity, because only in this way can the Westerners receive due commercial protection in the transaction between the two parties.But after long-term observation, the results are undoubtedly very disappointing.The biggest example of Chinese people's lack of integrity is precisely in their business activities.

There was once a brilliant scholar who wrote a paper.The argument in it is very interesting. He said that two Chinese people do business by deceiving each other. If the deception is successful, the business will be completed.The relationship between the two is, as the Chinese saying goes, the "iron brush" meets the "copper basin".I think it is most appropriate to describe their relationship with Jacob and Laban in the Bible.In our opinion, teaching a child to trade is almost ruining his life.Many stores in China have signs such as "Genuine goods at a fair price, no deception for children and elders".But in fact, there are fake names, fake rulers, all kinds of fake goods, and even fake money everywhere.These phenomena have long been commonplace in China.

(End of this chapter)