Chinese virtue

Chapter 8 Disregard for Standards
In the eyes of foreigners, Chinese people are almost identical, as if they were carved out of the same mold.They were always dressed in blue, and their eyes were glassy and dull.Two Chinese standing together look like two bean kernels in a pod, there is no difference.Of course, no matter how much Chinese people look alike, there are differences between them.Even the most unobservant traveler can see this with a little attention.It's interesting how people's accents differ even in two places that are very close together, and that difference is hard to explain.Over time, this difference will become more and more obvious, and later various dialects are formed.We often hear people solemnly say: "Although the Chinese use the same characters, there are regional differences in what they say, and sometimes the differences are very large." In addition, there are also great differences in customs and habits in different parts of China. This point can be proved by the Chinese proverb "the wind is different in ten miles, but the customs are different in a hundred miles".There are many other such cases.

The unification of measurement standards provides a comfortable living guarantee for Westerners, but China's measurement standards cannot do this.For a thing, as long as there is a double standard, Westerners will feel troubled, but the Chinese think it is nothing at all.In China, there are two standards for currency, weighing instruments, scales, etc., but the Chinese people think it is normal, so they will not raise any objections at all.Someone asked a meat pie seller how many cakes he could make every day, but the cake seller answered him with "one hundred catties of flour", without thinking about the exact relationship between this answer and the number of cakes.Someone asked a farmer how much a cow weighed. The number given by the farmer was obviously different from the real data.The man questioned that the farmer justified himself by not including the weight of the bones!Someone asked a staff member how tall he was, and the staff member stated that his height was much lower than his actual height. The staff member explained that he did not count the head.It turned out that this employee had served as a soldier, and when accepting the weight-bearing task assigned by the army, he only paid attention to the height of the clavicle related to the load, and did not include the head. This time is the same.Another countryman's measurement method is even more surprising. When someone asked how far his home was from the county seat, he insisted that it was ninety miles.Ask him again, and he admits he's wrong—he's talking about the distance of one round trip.In fact, his home is only 45 miles away from the county seat!
A typical example of inconsistent measurement standards is the measurement of copper coins.Copper coins are one of China's currencies. At that time, simple decimal methods were used for measurement.People generally think that a string of money is made of a hundred copper coins, but this is not the case.If you visit most of the 25 provinces, you will find that the number of copper coins in a string of coins is not the same everywhere.As for why this is so, no one can explain clearly.In theory, a string of money should contain 99 copper coins, but in fact there are only 98, 96, and 83 coins. The string of money in the capital of Shanxi Province has only 33 copper coins, and the eastern part of Zhili Province is even less. [-]!As for some other unknown places, maybe there will be even less.This is especially true for silver transactions. Except for coincidences, the "two" in any two places are not the same.

Even the "two" in the same place are different.When many outsiders encounter this situation, they don't understand what is going on.This difference caused great loss to many people (especially a large number of honest people), and only those who specialized in buying and selling silver were spared, so it was very distressing.The reasons why currencies are such a mess are self-explanatory, but let's just talk about the facts for now.

Various metrics in China are confusing.In different places, the size of "dou" is also different.The Chinese are used to resignation, so even if the government uses different standards of "fighting" when collecting taxes, there will be no troubles.If you switch to other ethnic groups, it may not be necessarily the case.In other countries, a pint is a pint and a pound is a pound.However, in China, the situation is different. A pint is no longer equal to a pint, and a pound is no longer equal to a pound.This confusion is widespread both in theory and in practice.In addition, it is not uncommon for standards to be set arbitrarily.Take the salt industry monopoly as an example, one catty is equal to 12 taels!

The buyer paid 16 taels for salt, but the salt he got was only 12 taels.This practice is not only public, it has become the default practice in the industry.It is said that this practice is not a fraud, but an "old rule" of salt trading that the people are familiar with.Similar inaccuracies are common in land surveying.One mu of land is considered one mu of land in one area, but it may only be counted as half an mu of land in another area.If a person happens to live on the boundary line of two areas with different acreage systems, then he has to prepare two sets of measuring tools in order to survive.

Some foreigners have done some research on the price of grain and cotton in China.However, these surveys are not entirely reliable, because the "jin" standard is not uniform.Similarly, it is impossible to accurately know the grain output per mu based on the existing statistical data, because the standard of "mu" is not uniform.Similar problems also commonly exist when measuring distance, which is familiar to any foreign traveler.When traveling on land, if you use "miles" to calculate the distance, you must first determine the size of the "miles".The Chinese use "li" to estimate distances, which is not unreasonable, but it is not precise and the standard is not uniform.As far as we know, all foreigners feel that the "li" in China is too long. The 120-mile road is as long as the [-]-mile country road and the [-]-mile mountain road.That is to say, when the Chinese calculate the distance, they are often not based on the actual distance, but on the difficulty of the road.

When this point is mentioned, the Chinese do not deny it.Therefore, when the Chinese say that the top of the mountain is ninety miles away, it may only mean that the top of the mountain is less than 45 miles away.The reason why the Chinese say this is that climbing to the top of a mountain takes as much effort as walking ninety miles on flat ground.Another special case is reflected in the measurement of a straight line, that is, the distance from point A to point B is not necessarily equal to the distance from point B to point A.In other words, the theorem of Euclid, the ancient Greek mathematician, that "equal quantities are equal to each other" does not apply to China.For another example, calculate a section of the most important highway in China based on milestones, and find that there are 180 miles from north to south, but 190 miles from south to north, no matter how many times you go back and forth or how carefully you follow the milestones To calculate, the result is the same, really puzzling.

A similar phenomenon is also reflected in another calculation. The theory that "the whole is equal to the sum of its parts" is no longer applicable in China, and this is especially evident when sailing on a river.

A foreign passenger asked how many miles were left to reach the destination, and the answer was forty miles.After careful analysis, the traveler realized that the forty miles was the result of adding two "eighteens", so he raised his own question, but the other party replied: "Is four 'nines' equal to four? Ten?" Really speechless!If this is the case, wouldn't three "eighteen" equal sixty?It is said that there is another case where a postman failed to run sixty miles within the stipulated time. In order to defend himself, he said that sixty miles was too long!His superior thought that his justification was reasonable, so he ordered someone to re-measure this section of road, and found that this section of road was indeed too long—83 miles long!From then on, people began to calculate the length of this section of road by 83 miles.

Those villages that are one to six miles away from the city will be named "Sanli Village".Another thing is also easy to notice: a section of road that is about one mile long, if houses are built on both sides, then this section of road will immediately become five miles long.If someone points out doubts, the villagers will assure him that they are right.

Everyone can make standards according to their own needs, so it is inevitable that this strange phenomenon will appear.The people who make the scales look for customers on the street, and then inlaid different scale stars on the scale beam according to the requirements of the customers.Therefore, any businessman has at least two kinds of scales——

They are used to buy and sell things respectively.If a businessman buys a scale, he will only buy an old scale and will not buy a new scale, because the standard of the new scale is not unique, but is determined by the special needs of the businessman.

The Chinese generally disregard precision, and this national characteristic is also reflected in the calculation of age.

Chinese people can easily calculate a person's age based on his zodiac sign.An old man who is said to be seven or eighty years old only turned 80 last year.In the eyes of the Chinese, a person who reaches the age of 70 is an old man who has reached the age of 70.If you want to figure out a person's age, there is a "constant" that has to be taken into account.Because, when Chinese people calculate their age, they often start from the New Year.The Chinese are accustomed to using "ten" as the unit of calculation, so calculations in many fields are inaccurate.For example, they are used to counting with vague concepts such as "ten or twenty", "dozens" and "dozens".Therefore, it is rare to encounter situations where accurate counts can be made in China.

When expressing approximate numbers, the Chinese even use numbers such as "hundreds", "thousands" and "tens of thousands", and they don't care about how to express such numbers more accurately.

I heard from an acquaintance that two people paid 170 yuan to go to the theater.After a while, the acquaintance said again: "Those two people spent [-] yuan, which is equivalent to two hundred yuan, don't you think?"

A couple has lived in China for several years and is planning to return home.Before leaving, their Chinese friends gave them two paintings.These two exquisite paintings were not actually given to the couple, but to their old mother.The couple's father has passed away, and only the two mothers who are the same age are still alive.One of the paintings is written with the blessing words "Fortune is like the long flowing water of the East China Sea, and the longevity is not as old as the Nanshan Mountains", and a line of small characters - indicating that it is for a 70-year-old man.The same blessing is also written on another painting, but the small characters next to it indicate that the recipient is a 60-year-old man.The couple accepted the gifts on behalf of their respective mothers, and then praised the two paintings.Then, one of them finally plucked up the courage to ask the person who gave the painting his own question.He said: "You know that the two mothers are of the same age, but when writing the ages of the two mothers, why can you write one as 70 years old and the other as 60 years old?" The age on both paintings is written as '70 years old', isn't that too uncreative?"

The habit of imprecise is deeply ingrained in China and interferes with people's lives.A man who wanted legal help told me that his home was in the country.Through his narration, I could clearly tell that he lived in the outskirts of the city, so I asked him again, and the result was exactly the same as I judged.Upon further investigation, I discovered that the family had moved out of the country nineteen generations ago!So, I asked him, "Don't you think you are from the city?" He replied frankly, "Our family does live in the city now, but our hometown is in the countryside. This cannot be changed."

A man pointed to an ancient temple in their village and said to me proudly: "I built this temple!" After some investigation, I found that this ancient temple was built in the Ming Dynasty, more than 300 years ago , and he didn't know where it was then.

One of the obstacles when learning Chinese is not knowing how to distinguish between so many similar things.Chinese people are used to assumptions, and this way of thinking is very unaccustomed to us.Westerners strive for precision in everything.The Chinese not only don't understand this, but think it's a quirk.A rural person neither knows nor wants to know how many families there are in their village.People from other countries may be willing to find out about this.However, for the Chinese, this point is like a mystery.They can only say a rough number, such as "hundreds", "several hundred" or "many homes", but it is impossible to say an accurate number.

The Chinese are imprecise not only in counting, but also in writing and even in print.Flip through any cheap book published in China and you will find many typos.Sometimes, the misuse of a word can lead to more complex meanings.The reason for this kind of error is that saving trouble is only secondary, and not paying attention to precision in daily life is the most important.This sloppiness is even more pronounced in ordinary correspondence, where homophones are often misused.The reason why this kind of error occurs is not only because people are not very educated, but because people are too careless.

It is also evident from the address on the envelope that Chinese people do not pay attention to precision.When Chinese people write letters, they usually write big and black words on the envelope, such as "from my father", "from my mother", "from my great-uncle", "from my virtuous brother". The exact name of the "adult" is not clearly stated at all.

Chinese people generally pay attention to practicality, but they don't care about names at all, which is really surprising.It is a common phenomenon in China that a person has two common names at the same time.What is even more puzzling is that most people have several names, including real names, characters, and scientific names.Speaking of the scientific name, it is completely different from other names, and it is only used when taking the imperial examination, which is really curious.Because of this, foreigners often mistakenly think that they are two or even three people even though they are the same Chinese.The name of the village is also uncertain, and a village usually has two or three names that can be commonly used with each other.Even if people find that the name of the village is misused, they can make the two names interchangeable, such as using the correct name in formal occasions, and using the misused name in normal times, and in some places even use the misused name as a common name. Decorate the correct name.

One of the misfortunes of being Chinese is the lack of a precision that can only be gained by studying chemical formulas.The earliest chemists in China once mixed tens of grains and several tens of grains of two things together, so that the two things reacted and caused serious consequences.As long as the Chinese put their minds to precision, they can do things as well as other peoples, or even better than other peoples-and they are fully capable of this, because they are born with patience.However, as far as the current situation is concerned, they are still unable to do this, because they do not yet know what precision is, let alone pursue precision.From this judgment, the following two conclusions can be deduced: First, we must take this national characteristic of the Chinese into consideration when examining Chinese history.In other words, there are many statistical data in China that have not been accurately calculated, so we cannot trust them, or we will be fooled; second, we cannot trust the results of China's "population survey".Generally speaking, the whole is less than or equal to the parts, but in China, this theory does not hold.With regard to the results of China's "population survey", we may come to such a conclusion as long as we scrutinize: "This is really a mystery!" This is how the U.S. Supreme Court was judged after realizing the "irresistible uncertainty of the law."

(End of this chapter)