Student question and answer.
A student recently e-mailed me an interesting question, and I got kind of carried away answering it. Here’s what she wrote:
Dear Mary,
I am your student of Class at 8:00 on Tuesday.I want to say something with you .
Yesterday, I saw you in the mess hall.When you were near the door ,I saw you went to the table, picked up a clothes on the ground and put it on the chair.At that moment,there were some people eating around , but I wondered why didn¡¯t they do that like you .I have some friends who are studying in the U.S.All of them said that they thought Americans are very nice and helpful,they will help everyone who have some problems. Now I want to know why Americans can be so nice?You have been in China for 7 years,I think that you may know people in China sometimes are selfish.Do you think it is related with religions?
Best wishes!
I answered:
Dear Angel,
That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure how to answer it. Of course, not all Americans are willing to help other people, and not all Americans are raised in the same way. But in general, I think:
a.) When you’re little, your parents often try to get you to behave by asking you how you think your behavior would make other people feel. For instance, if you wanted to take another child’s toy, your mother might say to you, “How would Jimmy feel if you took his toy away? How would you feel if someone took your toy away?” Or, if you say something mean to someone, she’d ask you, “How would you feel if someone spoke to you that way?” I think that affects us as adults. I remember I thought I would feel really upset if I’d dropped my sweater and it was either lost permanently or ruined. I thought about how the sweater might have been expensive for the person who bought it, and how disappointed the person would be that it was lost. So, I picked it up and put it on the chair so it would be easier to find.
b.) It might have something to do with religion. For example, in Christianity, people are often told if they do good things, God will reward them when they die. Even if they don’t receive any reward for what they do now, they will in the next life. I think that often influences people to at least try to do good things. It’s interesting to me that in Judaism (which several million Americans believe in), there is a big emphasis on doing good deeds, but they don’t believe you will be rewarded for it in the future. You should just do good deeds on principle, or to make the world a better place. That impresses me because the people are just doing good deeds without any expectation of a reward.
c.) A lot of Americans believe “what goes around comes around.” Or people even say they believe in karma. This is a concept in Hinduism and Buddhism that says that if you do good things now, you will be rewarded in the future, and if you do bad things now, bad things will happen to you in the future. In Hinduism, this has something to do with being rewarded after you die, but Americans think of it being rewarded (or punished) in this life. For example, an American might believe that if you didn’t warn someone they were leaving their wallet behind, later on they would lose their own wallet. (Even though Hinduism and Buddhism aren’t so common in America, they were really popular amongst youths in the 60’s and 70’s, so some of their ideas have entered our mainstream culture.)
d.) Oh — here’s another reason related to religion. In the kind of Christianity called Catholicism, there are two kinds of sins: Sins of commission, and sins of omisssion. Sins of commission are bad things you do, like stealing something. But, you can also sin by NOT doing something you SHOULD do. That’s a sin of omission. Let’s say I had the chance to help someone by retrieving their lost sweater, and I didn’t do it. I’d be committing a sin of omission. This kind of belief is good in that it pushes you to help people more often, but bad in that it leads you to feel guilty often!
There’s also the interesting question: When Chinese people don’t help others, why is it they don’t help? I’d say that often in the West, girls are taught to put others before themselves. It’s not ladylike to be demanding, to want to be first in line, etc. However, China has a lot more people, and if you didn’t think of putting yourself first, maybe you couldn’t get what you need. If you let people get on the bus before you, for example, maybe there wouldn’t be any room for you to get on. Also, in the past, when China was poorer, there wasn’t always enough food or resources to go around, so people who put others first could end up with nothing. So, people, both boys and girls, have been taught to take care of themselves first. I think it’s related to the population problem and to poverty in the past.
Of course, I’ve had a lot of really good experiences with Chinese people helping me, like when I got lost in Guangzhou railway station and a gong an took me to my train herself. I’ve also seen other people be very kind. When I was in Shenzhen, there was a poor family that ran a little restaurant. Some Japanese students used to go there, and when they noticed they hadn’t seen one girl for a long time and found out it was because she’d been feeling ill, they went to the foreign students’ dormitory and took her to the hospital themselves! They even paid the registration fee for her! This is despite the fact that may Chinese people still don’t like Japanese.
What do you think of my answers? Thank you for sending me such an interesting question!
Have a good holiday,
MFC