Book Review: Encountering the Chinese

I was walking through my universities Office of Instructional Assessment (a fancy title for the place that helps and ensures that university classes are being taught decently and that the older teachers know how to use the fancy lights box called the computer) in order to meet with my advisor for the Certificate in College Teaching. While I was waiting for my advisor to be ready, I saw this massive pile of books, all on the subject of teaching and right on top was a small white book called “Encountering the Chinese”. Now as I taught in China, currently had Chinese students and had just accepted another teaching position in China, I was really excited to read it. I was awkwardly trying to take a picture of the book, a man came out of an office and informed me that the entire pile was being tossed in the trash. As you can imagine, I walked out of the office an hour later with a bag heavily laden with books. That little white book was the first one I decided to read and I am very happy I did.

This book, in all honesty, is a bit dated. The book was published in 1999 and I could see many differences in my experience and those in the books. However, the basic information was solid and actually explained many of the strange experiences I had. The book is broken up into two main sections: Advice for Americans Interacting with the Chinese and Advice for American Living and Working in the PRC (China). Both parts were useful, but much of it I already knew and wasn’t much of a surprise. However, if I had picked up the book in my early days of Chinese research it would have been extremely useful. One area that was particularly of use for me was the portion on Chinese friendship. In my early months in China, I went to a local cafe to try and do some work and also order some bottled water for my apartment. I was having a lot of difficulty with this task due to the language barrier and to my relief, the server who spoke some English helped me. We chatted for a while as best we could with each having about a hundred words of each other’s’ language. I thanked her and left a while later. The next day, at six in the morning, I was awoken by a knock on my apartment door. To my surprise the girl was there and holding a puppy. She came in uninvited and told me that since we were friends, she wanted me to give her puppy an English name. Properly confused, I gave her several choices and tried to get her to leave. However, she did not want to and instead wanted us to spend the day together. Some of you might wonder why this was so weird for me, but I am very much an introvert and I don’t like unplanned things, especially with people I don’t know. Finally, I pretended my boss called and told her I needed to get ready for work. The section on Chinese/American friendships solved this question about why this girl thought this would be appropriate for me. Apparently, in China, friendships take a long time to form and there is a great deal of formality on both sides. It is only when two people become established friends is formality eschewed and favors are granted. Also, the Chinese have a very different idea about personal space and time between friends. By my being very casual and also giving her the opportunity to help me, she thought we had skipped past all the formality and became friends and therefore she felt welcome to come to my house and demand attention.

Overall, for an old China hand, this book may be an interesting read but for a newbie it will offer extremely useful advice.

Wenzhong, H., & Grove, C. L. (1999). Encountering the Chinese: A Guide for Americans. The InterAct Series. Intercultural Press, Inc., PO Box 700, Yarmouth, ME 04096