Appearance and Culture 外表與文化

I’ve given a little bit of thought about outward appearance and culture recently. It is very much a part of American life and dialogue though we think of it in a very different way from Chinese. I have this observation and then I’ll say why I believe this. I believe that Americans don’t like to talk about physical differences, but they matter a lot. On the other hand, Chinese talk a lot about physical differences in ways that would not be acceptable in the West, but it does not matter as much to them.

Normally, people in the West, at least in the United States, avoid talking about race unless there is a specific reason to do so. We also do not talk about a person’s physical features: fat, thin, tall, short, etc. It is not proper and of course there is always the ever present chance of offending someone. Does it matter? Yes, a lot. Groups discriminate by race, but they usually refer to it as ‘culture’ or ‘identity.’ A person’s appearance is also very much an issue. The fat kid or the short kid will be very much of an outsider even though there may not be open teasing.

On the other hand, it seems that in Chinese culture, outer appearance is talked about a lot. People call each other nicknames based on appearance, “bean cake head, 燒餅頭” “fat fat 肥 肥,” etc. but it does not seem to matter as much as in American culture when it comes to social relations. We are still using our small tube of “White Man Toothpaste” 白人牙膏 we picked up last summer in Taiwan, which is often cited as evidence of deep seated racism, but I don’t think that’s the way it is meant. To climb out on a limb here, I had a Chinese friend from Singapore who told me that a cartoon character in the U.S. whose stereotypical features would definitely be offensive to Asian Americans, and was offensive to me, mattered not in the least to him because he felt that was not their intent. That was just outer appearance, so who cares.