Interesting Tidbit

While reading our lesson text the other day the American students came across an interesting paragraph explaining why Chinese youth will give up their seat to an elderly person on the bus, but Americans will not. The next day in class we talked about this with our teacher who explained the Chinese tradition of respecting the elderly and caring for the young. Our teacher explained how important it was for the Chinese to take care of the elderly, but when we told her that in the United States people also give up their seats on the bus/subway she was shocked. She said Chinese people know how important equality is to Americans, so they were under the impression that American youth do not surrender their seats to pregnant women or those older than them because they believe they are equals. We tried to explain how equality in the States usually refers to the equality between men and women or the equality between different races or religions, however we still have something called courtesy which usually applies in the situation she was talking about. It was a really interesting moment when two cultures came together and talked about misunderstandings and cultural norms. I was so intrigued because the Chinese (at least our teacher) completely misinterpreted how we apply the concept of equality in our everyday lives. Oh, and a little side note: the Chinese have two words that mean "to respect" one of them has a stronger connotation that is only used when you are talking about respecting the elderly, teachers, or national leaders. The word used to respect your friends and peers is completely different.