Stereotype 1 - Chinese people eat everything that moves.
Fact - Some food materials we use do seem frightening to most people (i.e. animal blood, animal guts, chicken feet, etc.), but some food materials have been part of traditional food style of the area that we live in. There are eight culinary traditions in China, and each culinary tradition is distinctly different from another. For example, Hunan style is spicy, while Zhejiang style is sweet. If you are interested in Chinese culinary traditions, click the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_cuisine
Stereotype 2 - China has only one ethnic group.
Fact - There are 56 officially recognized ethnic groups. The largest ethnic group is Han, with a population of over 1.18 billion (data of 2005).
Stereotype 3 - Chinese is the official language of China.
Fact - 'Chinese' is not a name of any language. The official language in China is mandarin. Besides mandarin, there are 129 different dialects in China. Some dialects are more popular, such as Kantonese, while others may be spoken by only one ethnic group which has only a little more than 2,000 people.
Stereotype 4 - Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world.
Fact - The grammar system of Chinese is quite simple when compared to other languages. There are 50,000 characters in Chinese, but learning 1,500 to 3,000 characters is sufficient to read newspapers and books.
Stereotype 5 - All Chinese are good at math.
Fact - A large group of Chinese students are excellent at math, but not all Chinese are math geniuses. I myself am TERRIBLE at math.
TO BE CONTINUED...
I agree with you. My math is really really terrible. It reminds me of eating chicken feet in dorm which scared my roomate who is from Russia. She thought I have probably eaten human beings, which did scared me!!!! I explained in vain and never eat that again in front of other people.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, chicken feet scare a lot of people. Liver or kidney, people are more okay with. I found that eating dried animal blood is something that most people fear. Maybe it reminds them of vampires.
DeleteA few years ago, I was put in the same situation, but reversed. I felt a personal need to respond to every single American stereotype that I was confronted about by Chinese people (I used to have a QQ account, and would get friend requests from all these people in China that I did not know... it was educational, at best, mentally taxing, at worst). The most difficult question I got asked was about children moving out of their parents' homes after they graduate from high school. From the way the question was worded, it was obvious that there was this belief that parents in the USA stopped supporting their children after age 18 and kicked them out of the house. At face value, I can understand how some parents' policy to not continue supporting their children in higher education can seem cruel. But it was difficult to argue that not all parents do that, some do, and although I can't argue in their favor, I can say with certainty that parents never do it out of malice. Of course, none of this got across in my message. The woman who asked was left unimpressed, most likely because I couldn't find a simple way to explain really complex concepts like that.
ReplyDeleteTo be succinct, I think I know how you feel, to some degree. And I find it encouraging that there are people like you who can bring down stereotypes in a more comprehensible way than I could. :-)
I am sorry that you had to experience these. I would like to think that they meant no malice, but their wording could be too direct. Also, this could be a good chance to suggest you that do not use QQ ever again. Like any social interaction tools, all kinds of people are there online. I guess it is just difficult for people to understand these things if they have not had the experience of living in the cultural environment. I have seen and heard how American and Chinese people feel about each other, and frankly, there still are a lot of misunderstandings. I try my best to bust as many stereotypes about Chinese people as possible, and hopefully more people could educate my people on American stereotypes.
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ReplyDeleteWell, we all have certain kinds of stereotypes about many things. I admit that I am one of them. Sometimes it helps me to understand other cultures and people. But, usually I think too much overgeneralizations create serious misunderstanding. Therefore, I also think cutrual education is indispensable part of language teaching.
ReplyDeleteAs you said, sometimes stereotypes come form overgeneralisation, even ignorance. Sadly most people have at least some stereotypes about people of other groups. That's why when I teach, I try to bring to my students some cultural vision of people other than themselves.
DeleteThe difficulty of learning a foreign language depends on where your native language
ReplyDeletestands as to level of difficulty. And if you speak a second language, to learn the third is easier. As for stereotypes, they existed, exist and always will exist, for any culture!