What can we really learn from China?

Imagine that you arrive at an airport late night on a first visit to a country where English is not widely spoken or understood, and you are greatly confused because you have difficulty locating your contact person. Eventually, someone spots you wondering what to do, and walks up to you, finds out your problem, helps […]

Imagine that you arrive at an airport late night on a first visit to a country where English is not widely spoken or understood, and you are greatly confused because you have difficulty locating your contact person.
Eventually, someone spots you wondering what to do, and walks up to you, finds out your problem, helps you find a safe accommodation and traces your contact person the next morning, and for all these he doesn’t demand any payment.
Imagine also that you are in a public bus in a foreign land, and you misplace your wallet and get stranded at a bus station. A man suddenly realises your situation and pays your fare home.
That is the kind of unique hospitality that one  finds in China. Many who have neither visited China nor related with the Chinese quite often misunderstand or take them for granted. But an encounter with the Chinese offers an intimate and dependable relationship which is hardly ever found elsewhere in the world.  A first-time visitor to China who has genuine intentions would discover that Chinese ethics are built on loyalty, fraternal duty (life-long love among brothers), filial piety, credit and righteousness. In China, people of different backgrounds go through thick and thin together, just like brothers. In fact, the Chinese say that at home, one relies on one’s parents and outside, on one’s friends. This underscores the extent of dependability of good friendship that abound in China. They call their friends brothers and treat good friends as their own blood brothers. Despite the huge population, the Chinese attach great importance to interpersonal relationships and though there may many close relations, they take non-relatives very seriously.
This model of creating a reliable belt sets a bosom of brotherhood not only among the Chinese but between the Chinese and other people.
Standing on moral principles 
Chinese (Confucian) teaching says; ‘’He who is of good faith is trusted by the people”. One thing a visitor to China would notice in the early days of his visit is that the people, contrary to the negative habit of some dubious businessmen who collude with foreign traders to ship fake or substandard goods outside China, especially to Africa, the Chinese generally express honesty and trustworthiness which carry them through their daily lives, even in business. Keeping a promise is a virtue which the Chinese combine effectively with honesty and straightforwardness. A Chinese girlfriend or spouse for instance, would maintain her faithfulness to her man as long as the relationship lasts, even if they live thousands of kilometres apart. Thus, the practice of “cheating” is rare among Chinese girls, even if they are dating a foreigner.
Ancient China had always advocated proper manners and valued honesty and faithfulness. A Confucian philosopher, Xun Zi, who lived between 313 and 238 BC, said: “The good conduct of a nourishing heart is sincerity”.
Mo Zi, another philosopher who lived during the Hundred Schools of Thought period between 468 and 376 BC, also said: “One’s action will not be effective whose promises are not kept”. In China, a man stands by his word, and expects his friend or brother to do so. 
Strict sense of duty
The attributes of honesty and reliability reflect in the Chinese attitude to work. One very important lesson to learn from China is diligence and hard work.
Most Chinese often work overtime, and though there are many places for leisure, many appear to be too busy to always actually make out much time for leisure. They believe that diligence conforms to human justice and natural law. From China, you learn loyalty and devotion to the last point. During a recent trip to Beijing, a friend saw some soldiers standing sentry in front of a public building, motionless for hours on a chilly summer afternoon of less than two degrees centigrade. My friend asked if they were statues or human beings. Just by the roadside, he saw a group of women cleaning the streets in the intense cold, carrying on their duty with every bit of concentration without minding the breezing cold.  This is illustrates the fact that every Chinese treats his job with great importance and as a special assignment.
I once went to change just $50 dollars in a bank in Beijing. The counter officer took almost two hours scrutinizing my $50 note and meticulously writing down the numbers of the local RMB (Yuan) currency before handing them over to me while spending a long time checking my international passport many times as if he was changing $50,000 or screening a suspected terrorist! Such is the seriousness every Chinese attaches to his job, from the office director, restaurant operator, policeman or minister to the street cleaner, bar tender or hospital staff.
The story is told of the richest man in China, Li Ka-Shing, who as a young man was a salesman in a rubber factory. When other people worked eight hours a day, he put in 16 hours, and in a year, he rose higher than the six other salesmen to become the highest earning salesman in the company. Li says he treats his work with sincerity as part of a personal cause and not just to satisfy his boss.
The 27 year-old Chinese professor, Liu Lu, the youngest Chinese to become professor, once said: “Only by working harder in my academic field can I live up to the expectation and support of my country and university”.
As a 22 year-old undergraduate student at Central South University (CSU) in 2010, Liu got attention by solving “Seetapun Enigma”-a Mathematics conjecture first put forward by British logician, David Seetapun, in the 1990s. In 2011, CSU approved Liu’s plans for successive postgraduate and doctoral programs of study and made special plans to help him make greater contributions to science.
Zhan Hongli, otherwise called Mother Zhan, is a judge who has undertaken more than 500 juvenile trials involving more than 1,400 people without retrials, complaints or petitions. She is called Mother Zhan by many delinquent juveniles who she says she has regarded as her own children. Mother Zhan says she shoulders great responsibility in her job, and has indeed saved many juveniles with compassion and motherly love, and many miserable families have through her, regained happiness through justice. Many such life stories, some with glory and others with sorrow, give a clear idea of the Chinese people and way of life.  Though these few stories cannot represent all Chinese, such experiences give some insight into the general way of life, values and pursuit of life in China.             
Religion versus plainness and empathy
China may not be a country with profuse religious projections; in fact, religion is not too strong a subject of discussion here, even as everyone is free to practice his or her religion. The people rather appear to be more guided by moral principles in their practical life and daily dealings than being zealously religious.  There may not be many churches or mosques corresponding to China’s population of 1.36 billion, the Chinese have definite principles of dealing with other people such that they don’t deliberately hurt other people’s feelings. For instance, many Chinese practice Shen Shi (thinking from the very start whether your action inconveniences others). If your action is likely to produce inconvenience for another person, they would rather prevent it from happening, than allow it only to say sorry. This concept (Shen Shi) tells people to be careful with anything at any time and not to do any “regretful” thing to themselves or to others. In doing so, saying sorry is always avoided, and if inconvenience does accidently occur, the apology is usually truly from the heart, and not just a casual “sorry” depicting the biblical saying; Love your neighbour as yourself.
Eating for mutual feeling and communication
The careful handling of issues mirrows the Chinese culture of eating. The Chinese say food is what matters most to people. They convey mutual feelings through table culture which they also use as a social communication. The Chinese take great priority in making sure that their visitor never starves. They use eating for social functions such as establishing close relationships or  settling a contract. Depending on the particular Chinese society, to deal with educated or highly respected people, or getting on well with intelligent people, dining with them may be a form of contact, and where to eat, what to eat, what they like to eat, are usually taken very seriously by the Chinese.          
From grass to grace in amazing speed
For the past 60 years, China has developed from a poverty-stricken country to a powerful country, in fact, one of the world powers at the moment, and the world’s second largest economy after the United States. China’s developing speed has amazed the world, which is a combined achievement made by the government headed by the communist party, and the people themselves. The development cannot be indispensible from the Chinese people who promote the country’s development and share its achievements. The general sense of duty pervades a country which seems to be in a great hurry to overtake the world with a giant stride, a stride that evokes great envy among contemporaries.