The F Bomb

Nothing—not sex, not politics, not money issues—is more important to a relationship/marriage than communication. You might read somewhere that money issues are the single biggest reason for divorce, but dig down and you will find that it was not the money that caused the breakup but the inability to communicate about finances—and often anything else for that matter.

If good communication is a challenge in any relationship, cross-cultural dating and relationships confront  a special obstacle in this area, since the intercultural couple often operate from diametrically opposed communication strategies. These two communication styles can cause even more difficulty for a relationship than the two languages. If a couple speaks two different primary languages, the issue is out in the open, obvious, and accounted for; the couple can deal with it (or not) as they wish. But when it comes to communication styles, many couples do not even realize there is an issue. But as anyone who watches a horror movie discovers, what you don’t know can hurt you. Entering into a intercultural relationship without an understanding of these two communication styles and how they function can be as dangerous as entering the backcountry without a map.

The two communication styles universally recognized by cultural anthropologists are known as direct and indirect communication. The difference involves the amount of context, that is, innate and mostly unconscious understanding, one carries into a communication situation. Indirect communication relies less on words and more on nonverbal methods to convey meaning, while direct communication demands that the information required to provide meaning be clearly stated.

To give a simple example, imagine a dining situation among friends where it is someone’s turn to treat. In a high context culture, no mention would be made this fact before, during or after the meal. By contrast, someone in a low context culture might want to verify this fact by saying, “it’s my treat” beforehand while the person being treated will probably utter a “thanks for lunch” at the end of the meal.

One reason to avoid the direct statement in a low context culture is that it is often thought it is inelegant, rude or simply offensive to speak on certain things directly (in this case, because it is reminding the diner that he is being treated).

Chinese culture and most Asian cultures are what is known as high context cultures while generally speaking the West is a low context culture. I remember my introduction into the world of indirect communication. It came when I was a Peace Corps volunteer living with an older Chinese couple for two months during orientation in a complex where a number of other Peace Corps volunteers were situated as well.  Over breakfast one morning, the woman asked, out of the blue and for no apparent reason: “what is the time difference between America and China?” I explained to her about time zones (which don’t exist in China) and that this meant the difference could be anywhere from 12 to 15 hours, to which she replied, “Oh, I knew it must be a lot, because one of the volunteers was outside my window at 2 a.m. and talked for an hour. So I guessed it must be a very different time in America.” The light bulb went off; all of those Peace Corps lectures about culture and the difference between direct and indirect communication suddenly made sense. Here was indirect communication staring me in the face over my morning cornflakes. It was clear that this woman wanted me to convey to the volunteer that she had been kept up the night before by her conversation. But it would have been rude to make that request outright.

Over that summer, I was given a master course indirect communication at close contact, a study I continued to carry out over the course of my time in China. But it is a lesson I have had to learn again and again over the course of my relationship with Yong.

Case in point: Not exactly early in our relationship but before we were married, while we were driving, I recall, Yong asked, “Do Americans swear a lot?”

I opined on a book I had just read about the F bomb, the sometimes-blunt nature of American discourse, and the levels of society in which such language may or may not be acceptable. Her reply made clear she was interested in none of that. “Oh,” she replied. “I guessed it must be the case since you use that word a lot.” I have been on my good behavior since.

Another early instance. One morning after a particularly passionate session, Yong mentioned that my beard grew back very, very fast. Yes, it’s probably genetic, I said, the Italian ancestry. It took me a couple of more times to determine she was not interested in my ancestry but wanted to let me know that my morning beard was not very comfortable for her face.

There is a line in a John Prine song that goes, “A question ain’t really a question/if you know the answer too.” With indirect discourse, a question is often not a question but a declarative statement screaming at you in the face, and a statement may mean something very different from its obvious content.

To expect a partner raised in a culture of indirect communication to come right out and say what she means is as unrealistic as expecting a watermelon dropped from a rooftop to suddenly float upward.  While the Western partner may well be able to get away without learning Chinese, you will not be able to survive in a relationship without learning a second language, that of indirect communication. At least it doesn’t have tones.

Holidays

If all the year were playing holidays/To sport would be as tedious as to work.” --Shakespeare

The houses are outlined with blinking lights; representations of Santa and Baby Jesus are plopped into people’s front lawns; stores blare out “Silent Night,” “There’s no place like home for the holidays,” and my personal favorite “Grandma got run over by a reindeer.” It is Christmas time in America.

Every culture that I am aware of celebrates holidays. Anthropologists often compare culture to an iceberg, and place holidays along with cuisine in the tip of the iceberg. The implication might seem to be that these are only superficial elements of culture, and reveal nothing of the real nature of the thing, that just as 97% of the iceberg’s mass lies beneath the surface, invisible to the naked eye, so too in order to get at the essence of a culture we must look beyond the obvious elements of diet and ritual.

Such a depiction is itself superficial. Far from being irrelevant, surface appearances can serve as the pathway to a plethora of insights, if only we know how to interpret them. Sherlock Holmes can scan a host of seemingly superfluous details to unveil an entire personality. Just so, supposedly surface aspects of culture like holidays speak volumes about what a culture values. The emphasis on family and the return to home that serves as the central theme of the Chinese New Year contrasts sharply with the relationship with the Divine that dominates the Jewish parallel, Rosh Hashanah.  Each celebration is in its way is revelatory of the culture, and its significance is ignored at the peril of one who wants to understand the culture.

But if holidays are essential to understanding a culture, they invariably play a key role in the development of the individuals who are products of that culture. At an existential level, they provide meaning and significance to our journey through life just as certain landmarks, say, the Louvre and the Eifel Tower, provide a sense of structure and purpose to a trip to Paris. More intimately, they instill in us a set of intense feelings and emotional experiences which, because they are undergone before the age of reason, hold an especially strong grip on the personality.

And herein lies the problem. We seek a soulmate in order to share the moments of life. A glowing sunset, a funny movie, or a fine dinner become richer events when they can be experienced with someone special. The work promotion is a personal triumph but is so much more satisfying when it can be savored with someone who knows and cares about how much we have struggled. The same is true of life’s sadnesses. As the saying goes, a grief shared is half a grief, a joy shared is twice a joy. But can we really share the experience of a holiday with a partner from another culture?

I am skeptical. If Christmas were merely buying presents and singing carols, if mid-autumn festival were simply eating mooncakes, then there would be no problem in sharing the experience of the holidays, since those acts obviously can be replicated by willing partner. But a holiday is not merely the external ritual but the internal feeling it generates. And this feeling cannot simply be acquired the way you can acquire a piece of knowledge by reading about it but arrives only as a result of a lifetime of experiences.

I realized this last September as Yong and I sat in our front yard in Kenosha, a blanket spread out beneath a full moon sipping tea and consuming the closest thing we could find to mooncakes, which were round brownies from a local bakery. For me it was a nice event and a special time, but no different from the other times we had sat in the yard or in a park and picnicked. But for her, that night harkened back to memories from childhood—decades’ old memories of joyful times when the family gathered together and told stories and distant relatives many now departed were present, sweet never-to-be-repeated times which both connect her to her past and provide meaning to her present.

The night was suffused with such thoughts the way Christmas morning in Western culture is intermingled in my mind with a parallel set of experiences and emotional reactions: the opening of presents, the smell of baking cookies wafting from the kitchen, the crooning of Bing Crosby, and a sense of wholeness and harmony, of peace on earth good will towards men. And I could no more share that experience of mid-autumn festival, nor she my experience of Christmas morning, than a blind person can share a sunset with a sighted one.

This is not tragic. Tragic would have been never to have met the love of your life. This is merely an instance of the law of life which says you never gain but that you lose something—a law too obvious to require defense. In my case, having an intercultural partner is not only a refuge from a Western worldview I have grown weary of but also an ongoing invitation to a never ending process of discovery of an alternate way of seeing the world--a different set of traditions, values, and experiences. And if the price for that is an occasional disconnect on the existential impact of a few days of the year, well, it is a fee I happily submit.

But I do think holidays pose a challenge in cross cultural dating and marriage if they create unmet expectations, if you do not realize that you can no more truly experience the holiday of another culture than you can experience the inner life of the fan of a sports team by moving to the city and starting to cheer for that team.

In order to avoid these potential pitfalls, I recommend the following.

First, I would urge the Western partner to not put too much emphasis on the holidays, and especially not to expect too much of Christmas. You may have grown up with a set of rituals connected to this holiday; my advice would be to not to impose these on your intercultural partner lest either they or you become confused or disappointed by their inability to experience a holiday-like emotion during this time. This is easier to do if you are living in China, where the cultural cues are not going to be nearly as strong. But this policy of non-participation is essential if you happen to be living in the land where you are bombarded by constant reminders of how much happiness is available for you at this time of year if only you purchase the right product. Second, I would recommend you get up to speed on your partner’s holiday traditions. Even if you will not feel the emotional impact it is a gesture of good will that will not go unappreciated.

Stealing Flowers

So Yong wanted flowers. Usually this is one of her easier requests of her life in the West to fulfill. Certainly much easier than her request for “real” Chinese food, which requires a seventy-mile trip to Chicago’s Chinatown.

Unfortunately, things were not so simple here. The flowers she was coveting resided on public land, part of a display of wildflowers a local park had established. My response to her was the same one I offer to my students who request an extension on an assignment. What if everyone did it? If everyone simply turned in the assignment whenever they wished, it would make no sense to set a due date, no grading deadline would be possible, and class would be pure chaos. And if everyone who ventured by was attracted by the flower display grabbed a handful of flowers, there would soon be no more flowers for park visitors to enjoy.

Rule #1: Your wife is not one of your students.

It turns out, however, that my response to this request was not simply the product of a mind steeped in Kant’s categorical imperative. Rather, according to comparative culture research my desire to invoke the “what if everyone did it” standard is in fact a very typical Westerner response.

Consider the following scenario:

You are riding in a car driven by a close friend when he hits a pedestrian. There are no other witnesses and the pedestrian is bruised but not badly hurt. The speed limit in this part of town is 20 miles an hour, but you happen to notice that your friend was driving 35. His lawyer tells you that if you will testify under oath that your friend was driving 20, he will suffer no serious consequences. Would you testify that your friend was driving at 20?

96% of Americans said they would not, while only 34% of Venezualans said they would not.

According to Fons Trompenaars, Riding the Waves of Culture, America is what is known as a “universalist” culture. According to this worldview, “Certain absolutes apply across the board, regardless of circumstances or the particular situation. Wherever possible, you should try to apply the same rules to everyone in like situations. To be fair is to treat everyone alike and not make exceptions for family, friends, or members of your in-group.”

By contrast Venezuela (and China it turns out as well) is what is known as a “particularlist” culture. How you behave in a given situation depends on the circumstances. You treat family, friends, and your in-group the best you can, and you let the rest of the world take care of itself.

Despite being the product of a universalist culture, I have to say the particularists have a point.  Any westerner can see that there are few if any moral rules that do not admit of exception.  We all recognize that even the seemingly simple “do not lie” ought to be transcended if the Nazis are knocking at your door and asking if you have any Jews in your attic—not to mention the numerous white lies that we all indulge in.  Of course the westerner will respond that any exception we invoke must itself be a universalizable if it is to be moral.  I can justify breaking my promise to pick you up at the airport if a family emergency arises but this itself is a universal rule: only break your promises in case of emergency.  In fact the debate between the universalist and a particularist can probably go on indefinitely.  But it is probably a good idea to try to as much as possible to keep it out of mixed marriages.

Yong is no doubt right that the fate of this particular patch of wildflowers in no way hinges upon whether or not I decide to grab a handful.  But realizing this doesn’t make it any easier for me to act against a moral sentiment that has been drummed into me by the culture for most of my life.

So we’re at a standstill, or so it seems.  And while I could explain all this to her ,I somehow don’t think that’s going  make in any better. At such times I invariably recall the Chinese concept of the middle way, and attempt to find some compromise between extremes, in this case, between universalist and a particularist point of view.

So I bend down, make sure no one is looking, pluck out a single flower, and say let’s go.

Medicine

Yong and I are at the doctor’s office. She has had some worrying symptoms lately. Indeed, the fact that we are here is some indication of the severity of the problem. The Chinese medical model does not dictate running to the doctor’s office at the first sign of a cough or occurrence of a broken fingernail. Instead there exists a list of foods you should or shouldn’t eat depending upon your specific condition as well as a host of concoctions to ingest to assist in the healing process.

If Yong at the doctor’s office is one surprise, I am soon treated to a second one. In response to the doctor’s questioning about the onset and progression of the symptoms, Yong declares that she has already taken a dose of levofloxacin, an antibiotic.

The doctor’s mouth drops open. She looks at Yong like a librarian at a patron who has just started talking in something besides a hushed tone, like a policeman staring at someone he’s just pulled over who informs him she did not know ‘red’ meant ‘stop’. Like you look at someone who has just violated one of the fundamental rules of the social order: you don’t speak in a normal tone at the library, you don’t run red lights at will, and you don’t just start yourself on a dose of antibiotics.

The doctor is not especially thrilled with me either, since the antibiotics were ones I was recently given for some overseas travel. But it is to Yong her wrath is directed and she begins to lecture her on the dangers of the activity she has just undertaken. Beyond the threat that antibiotic overuse poses to society, the doctor informs Yong that because she has ingested an antibiotic any diagnostic tests will be of limited value.  The doctor continues her lecture. Antibiotics are dangerous, she warns. You can’t just take them like candy. I see Yong nodding her head the way she has nodded her head at me when we have had similar conversations about Western medicine, and I know this means that nothing is getting through.

In one sense, I admire Yong’s disregard of the doctor’s advice. Western culture in general and Americans in particular tend to ascribe to doctors an almost god-like status and remunerate them accordingly. In much of the rest of the world, and certainly in the culture of China, this is not the case. Doctors are respected and admired. But divinity is not accorded to them, nor is their pay the astronomical, off-the-charts, mind bending salary most doctors in America receive. As a result, the cost of medical services in China is dramatically less. 

Because of her opinion of doctors, Yong views their treatment regimens less like commands from a mountain top and more like suggestions from a friend.  A well-intentioned and admittedly well-informed friend. But not a friend who possesses any secret insight or special training that qualifies them to be the final word on a subject. She is as likely to follow the advice as not.

And this is where the problem arises. On the one hand, I want her to receive the best treatment possible. For me, this means she should follow the advice of the best trained doctors in the world, doctors who graduate from top-ranked medical schools, who did internships at world renowned hospitals, and who are accredited by the appropriate bodies. On the other hand, I also respect her autonomy, the ultimate control she has over the decisions impacting her body. So what to do when her view of medicine says to let the body take its course and the view I ascribe to says to take the physician recommended treatment?

I suspect this conflict--the conflict that can arise from differing views of medicine--is an issue that interculturally mixed marriages confront in a higher proportion than marriages within a culture. Unless the marriage involves one member being an Amish or a Christian Scientist (and these groups tend pretty much to intermarry), an American husband and wife will have no compunction about following their doctors’ advice.

From Marcus Welby MD to House, Americans have been fed a constant diet television shows espousing physicians’ diagnostic brilliance, technical mastery, and near God-like command over life and death. When this isn’t the case, when an intercultural couple disagree about this issue, it can be as consequential as the problems that arise for Western couples who have different religious views and or discordant political orientations.

Unfortunately, I have to end it here because I don’t have any solutions to propose. The moral of the story—if there is any--is that in an intercultural marriage there are some issues you can see coming—like where to live and what to eat—and some—like this one—that will catch you by surprise. In any case, if there is one thing an intercultural marriage is not, it is this: it is not predictable.