Honor/Shame and the Community World View

The punishment for dishonor is excommunication. It may be easier to understand the strength of that threat when one better understands the community/holistic world view that exists in Chinese culture (and all other asian cultures in general) and how it differs from western cultures, where personal liberty and autonomy get a lot of moral emphasis.

The concept of community is not explicitly taught, but then it doesn't need to be, as the concept of community is reinforced in daily behavior, starting with how we greet one another in Chinese. The word/term used to greet one another also specifies whether you are younger or older than the person you are greeting. With immediate family, it also identifies grandparents, aunts and uncles as being maternal or fraternal and in the cases of aunts and uncles, also identifies if the aunt/uncle is older or younger than your parent. The point of all this is to show how this reinforces the idea that one is part of something better than themselves and how one needs to know exactly where they belong within the community at any given moment. Another example of this is when strangers are introduce themselves: when you asked for your name - you provide your family surname, not your given name. You represent your family.

Another way this is reinforced is in behavior at a formal meal. Chinese meals are served 'family style' in that all the dishes are placed in the middle of the table and then transferred to individual plates. But one NEVER serves themselves; they place food onto the plates or into the bowls of those seated around them. As a consequence, you may not choose the best morsel for yourself, and if you do get it, it is a consequence of how the community looks out for each other.

So there was a conflict of paradigms going on 24/7 growing up any time we interacted outside the community, which for me growing up in a largely lower middle class Catholic suburb was pretty much any time I stepped outside the house once my family moved out of the inner city. But I digress.

This difference in world view is also reflected in how there are no direct translations for certain concepts and ideas between English and Chinese. The concept of privacy in Chinese is nebulous, the term does translate, but there's also the sense that this privacy is desired only for the sake of doing something illicit or improper. This came out one day when my father opened mail addressed to me. I'm not sure who was more indignant: me or my father at my being offended since I lived under his roof.
Another phrase that doesn't translate; 'don't take it personally'. EVERYTHING is personal - and as a consequence, a potential source of shame. If I were to misbehave as a child, it would reflect on child-rearing abilities of my parents.

I have to go back to an incident that occurred while I was still living at E 33rd. Actually, that's going to happen a lot now that I've broached the topic of culture differences. This incident involves a time when I went over to play at one of my Chinese neighbor homes. The mom had made three ears of corn and asked me if I wanted one. I was maybe 7 at the time, and I said yes. So I ate an ear, my friend Ralph got an ear, and the mother and big sister each split an ear. When I told my mother about it, she made it clear that I had been wrong to accept because there wasn't enough to go around. The message of shame had been received loud and clear - from that moment forward I never accepted anything offered to me when I visited another Chinese family - and every time I did, the host would comment positively on what a (good) polite child I was. And the message I'd learned was that it was bad to want things that I as a kid should have wanted. 

Looking back at my childhood pictures I noticed that up until the age of 6-7 I was a happy kid, and that there was always a smile on my face. Around the age of eight, all the pictures I can find of me show me with a sad countenance. I now ponder for the first time if these two things are somehow tied together.