Olympics give China "face"

China always puts on a great celebration. No matter what the occasion, you can always count on glorious fireworks and unrivaled pageantry. The Olympics opening was just another example of what the Chinese can accomplish.

The mindset there is that everyone must work together for the good of the country. The unparalleled pomp and circumstances give China “face” with the rest of the world. Anyone who would detract from that -- say the migrant workers who were asked to leave Beijing for the duration of the Olympics or the workers in the nearby pollution-producing factories which had shutdown for the month of August -- understands and makes way so the country looks good.

Americans can’t really get the concept of “face” because we totally buy into individual rights. If we don’t agree with the majority, we can speak up, no matter who it embarrasses or what the consequences. Consider the heckler at the Obama rally on Wednesday. He claimed his “rights” to disrupt a political event to make his point. (That he also claimed press “rights” while demonstrating political bias could make another column.)

According to Wikipedia, “Face refers to two separate concepts in Chinese social relations.). . . . Lian is the confidence of society in a person's moral character, while mianzi represents social perceptions of a person's prestige. For a person to maintain face is important with Chinese social relations because face translates into power and influence and affects goodwill. A loss of lian would result in a loss of trust within a social network, while a loss of mianzi would likely result in a loss of authority. To illustrate the difference, gossiping about someone stealing from a cash register would cause a loss of lian but not mianzi. Repeatedly interrupting one's boss as he is trying to speak may cause the boss a loss of mianzi but not lian.”

In China, as the old saying goes, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Children are taught not to make waves. When we lived in that country during the mid-80s, we had some leeway because the Chinese knew we were foreigners who didn’t know any better. Our wonderful friends tried to teach us the social rules while bending some other rules to give us the best possible view of the country.

The Hankow sports school an hour away from our home was preparing champions. Everyone was expected to be very serious about the training. Fu Mingxia, a diver training there at that time, has since won four Olympic gold medals (one in Barcelona in 1992, two in 1996, and one in 2000). The coaches were Asian games champions.

The Chinese knew our daughter had been a competitive swimmer since she was tiny, so at the age of 9, she was permitted to train there several days a week. She and I made the trip into the city and back by taxi on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and we stayed at the school on Saturday nights so she could practice both weekend days. It was a big honor for her and required school officials to put themselves out on our behalf. We understood that we had to cooperate as much as possible to continue the deal.

We quickly saw that the coaches had different discipline methods than American coaches. For example, when the children misbehaved by giggling or talking when they weren’t supposed to, her coach hit them over the head with a foam kickboard.

The coach and I exchanged English for Chinese lessons and, after we had become friends, I teased him about his methods: “Big strong man hits small children.” Bewildered, he asked, “How do American coaches do it?”

Sometimes they make the kids “sit out” an exercise or two on the side of the pool, I told him.

The next time our daughter and one of her Chinese girlfriends giggled at the wrong time, the coach first looked over at me, then told the girls to sit at the end of the pool while the others swam laps. The other child started sobbing at the shame of being singled out so publicly. She had lost face (lian).

After one lap, the coach relented and told them to get back into the pool. “I couldn’t do it,” he told me afterwards. “It was too cruel.”

At that, we compromised. Since the smack was what the other children expected, he continued to whack them with the kickboard (it was light enough not to hurt anyone), but he had our daughter sit out a couple of laps if she misbehaved. That way, he didn’t lose mianzi and the children, lian.

In the Olympics context, the glorious opening ceremony gives the nation lian, while any mention of the Tiananmen protests of 1989 or the Tibetan separatist movement could affect mianzi.

In an American context, demonstrators might seize the moment and strike while the iron is hot. What could be more effective in getting something accomplished than demonstrating while the whole world is watching? In a Chinese context, however, doing so could mean the demonstrators would face dire consequences when the foreign television cameras leave.