Listening
In Chengdu. Chinese people have a big problem, and that is that they don’t listen; they’ve got preconceptions about so much and are convinced that they are well-educated simply because they’ve read lots of books, and some kind of denial mechanism kicks in when their firmly-held beliefs are controverted. Victor said that the Nepalese and the Laotians listen, but the Chinese don’t. They don’t try to understand what you say; they’d rather write you off instead of putting in just a little effort, which might be generously rewarded, who knows? This is a terrible quality to have in any population, and in China it means that tolerance is low and supposed outsiders must bend over backwards to assimilate to the dominant Han cultural mores. It is increasingly bland; I cringe to think that the rich minority cultures have their children running off into the myriad faceless cities undergoing rampant development at the cost of their identities, to make a buck, to improve their ways of life.