The remarkable, although very particular, tolerance of the Chinese is composed of a sufficient enough aggregate of individual behaviour to qualify as a cultural phenomenon. Nevertheless it is not altogether a virtue; it may, in fact, be responsible for some of the more obvious faults of the country.


I first came across the pleasant side of this tolerance on my first stay here in 1994 as a young, unqualified English teacher prone to late night drinking sessions with my American colleague, Danny; the direct consequence of this habit hit me fairly early on in my new job when I woke up, surrounded by empty beer bottles full of cigarette butts at 7.55, some 5 minutes before my first lesson of the day was due to begin. Although I was not conscientious enough to avoid large scale alcohol consumption until the small hours, or to engage in any kind of lesson preparation beyond a cursory glance at the contents page in the student textbook, I did have a thing about getting to class on time: a pathological punctuality that I imagined compensated for my slovenliness in all other regards. This potential lateness gave me the adrenalin to temporarily disregard my hangover. Getting from apartment to classroom required a three minute trot (which, after 10 hours of drinking and just 4 of sleeping, was my fastest pace), allowing two minutes to get ready: just about enough time to ingest a cold and hardening steamed bread while hastily pulling my buttoned shirt over my head and diving into a pair of trousers, then a swift application of toothpaste to my mouth - more in the hope of disguising 10 hours of imbibing than the expectation of any hygienic value - before dragging shoes over my sockless feet and fleeing from the door.


As I dragged myself home at midday, adrenalin spent, I blessed my employer's decision to leave afternoons free. I eschewed my usual lunchtime fare of biscuits and convenient noodles to more rapidly enter my welcoming bed, and slept the afternoon away without getting changed. It would have been considerably longer if weren't for Katherine's knocking on my door at about 4.30. Katherine, who prior to being my wife had been my student, and I chatted inconsequentially until she asked, "So is that the fashion in England," pointing at my shirt. I was momentarily stumped, as fashion is not something I much consider; I gave a cursory look down at my standard white shirt, which could have been made at any time in the half century since wing collars were eased out of general use, and shrugged, "not particularly. Why?"
"Oh we were discussing it afternoon."
"Who?" I asked a bit taken aback, and suddenly a little self-conscious about what I had considered an uncontroversial approach to clothes. "Your classmates? What's wrong with my shirt?"
"Oh, it's not the shirt," Katherine explained, nonchalant to my insecure tone, "it's how you wear it."
In my morning's teaching I had not had cause to examine my shirt, it was only now that my attention was turned, that it dawned on me that the buttons of my hastily pulled on shirt were facing the wrong way: it was inside out.


Of course the fact that after a night of drinking I should wake up and put on my clothes inside out, is hardly remarkable; it is that not one of my students thought to accuse me of anything, but were willing to explain it away as a cultural idiosyncrasy of the English and therefore not to be praised or condemned, that surprised me.


In my second stay in China 10 years later I came across this attitude far more routinely: not because it had become more common, or that I more often indulged in inside out clothing, but because I had acquired three children in the meantime; and children require oodles of tolerance. There was plenty of opportunity for the kind of 'well-you-wear-inside-out clothes-in-your-country-so-it-is-not for-us-to-comment' type tolerance: the Chinese have a very particular safety first and education-focused approach to child rearing that leads them to view with curiosity the behaviour of my children. George, aged 3, loved swimming: not that he could actually swim, but he was rather good at manically jumping from a raised platform into the pool below and then trusting to my paternal affection for his return to terra firma. He had been intently engaged in this for about 10 minutes when a fellow swimmer approached.
"Are you training him?" He asked, without introduction.
I still wasn't used to the Chinese habit of express travel to the point, without the common delay of stop offs at such courtesies as greetings; I mouthed an inarticulate syllable and shrugged.
"I thought maybe you were training him for something." He repeated, clearly under the fairly accurate impression that I had not caught his meaning the first time.
"Erm,' I stumbled, not quite sure of his terms of reference: was he really asking if George's mindless flinging of himself into the water was some kind of training programme? "No, er, he's just having fun."
"We Chinese would not do anything so dangerous with our children." He explained unnecessarily; leaving the last word hanging in the air, as though more might be added, a 'and certainly not for something as trivial as fun' perhaps: but whatever it was it remained unsaid.
"Er, ur," I stumbled, uncertain as to how such conversations might continue, "He's alright."
"You foreigners like to make your children independent. We Chinese are different."


And there it was the essence and limit of their tolerance: you do things your way; we do things our way. Right or wrong does not come into it - it is just a matter of fact. Of course inside out clothes and belly flopping boys do not impinge upon anyone, but Chinese tolerance extends beyond that. Young children behave in a way that you would expect for their age without tutting and disapproving glances. In restaurants toddlers slide from chairs, crawl under tables and chase their excitable cousins, while other multigenerational tables are too absorbed in their own enjoyments to notice, and an overstocked staff smile on indulgently. The whole atmosphere being one of noise and frenetic pleasures, literally and metaphorically several thousand miles from the cold watchfulness of English restaurants, the only rushing about done by overworked waiters.


But I had long before realised the limits of Chinese tolerance: it is personal rather than moral, and much as I enjoyed it and the pleasant atmosphere it created, I regretted its limits; but it took me a long time to connect the essence of Chinese toleration with so much that is frustrating in this country. The tolerance is an unthinking acceptance of difference rather than a conscious embracing of it; and this unthinking acceptance extends to all kinds of dubious opinions that have arrived fully formed unmediated by any personal experience or knowledge. The most obvious expression of this is racism. China, as a country, has no problems with race by taking the simple expedient of, in the main, having no more than one. Although the government claims to have more than fifty ethnic minorities it has no more meaning than the distinction between Frank and Norman in modern France; the only expression of this ethnicity are dances and trinkets for tourists. Where ethnicity is more strident in the Western provinces of Xin Jiang and Tibet the government maintains a straightforward attitude: it is crushed under a Han supremacy. There is simply no mixing of races in the main part of China, and therefore no racial problem. This means that dubious views do not have the kind of impact they would in Europe or America, where there is at least awareness that racism is wrong so that at least the courtesy of hypocrisy is paid, and go happily unchecked. It is quite ordinary for well educated Chinese, liberal in all other respects, to announce that Blacks are the root of most crime in the West (a comment intended to flatter me, a White) or that it is a proven scientific fact that Blacks are intellectually inferior.


But unlike Britain or America this is not a multiracial society; however unpleasant these views, they do not have the effect of an English manager using all the right phrases but only employing or promoting those who look and sound most like himself. The limits of Chinese tolerance are unpleasant, but ineffectual, while the body of it has a profound effect on society: not all of it positive.


It is Chinese tolerance itself, not its limits, that can have a negative effect on every day life here. I live in an apartment block with three boisterous under tens and a yappy dog, and I am grateful to my neighbours good humour, but there are times I wonder whether people should get more upset: that the relaxed attitude I had fallen into in China was not always a good thing. I used to let Chug off the lead when we walked round the park; right up until the time Chug shot out of the park into the main road and in front of a line of traffic, which, much to my surprise, calmly stopped, and patiently waited while I retrieved my miscreant dog, and then wordlessly continued on its way. In England the halt would have been accompanied by much screeching and then followed by at least one angry man jumping from his vehicle loudly denouncing my irresponsibility. And although I was the one let off the hook this time, I reflected that I am also a victim of this laissez faire attitude to irresponsible behaviour. Most obviously whenever I have to travel: there is always a scrum for the bus or train entrance in which it is quite legitimate to push or poke; on the metro passengers shove onto overcrowded carriages, while the unfortunates inside have to fight their way out. And then there are the queues.


By 1994 the concept of the queue had clearly formed in the mind of some central committee member, and its essence had been communicated to Beijing police: the well-patrolled capital being the only place where the government was sufficiently able to impose its will. In the main railway station hordes of police used electric cattle prods to sculpt the scrum into some semblance of a line, dragging the twitching detritus of the unpersuadable to the outside foyer. 10 years later and the line as concept, standing for some higher ideal, has spread far beyond the capital, but its actual practice is still limited. Buses, trains and metros often have a calm line on the right hand side of the door, politely waiting for passengers getting off: unfortunately these passengers are rarely in a position to acknowledge the queuers on the right as they fight their way through the ruck on the left.


And no-one complains: not the actual queuers, who seem to line up for no more reason than their fancy, nor the passengers descending, some of whom are trapped to entirely novel destinations. I came upon this implacable tolerance most explicitly in the taxi queue outside Suzhou train station on the kind of dark and wet evening when taxis are much in demand. Katherine, myself and three exhausted children joined the end of the line, where, despite a fair number of people coming out of the station, we remained for about 15 minutes as the rain poured down upon us. What we hadn't noticed was that forward and to the left whole groups of people were barging in and rapidly attaching themselves to the door handles of taxis as they arrived.
"Hey miss!" Katherine shouted at one well-presented miscreant, "the queue's here. Don't you know how to queue?" Then as she disappeared into a taxi, after just five minutes at the rank, "Hey don't just barge in."
The woman in front of us, who had also waited 15 minutes in the rain only to watch this young woman walk straight from the station and into a taxi that justice would have demanded that she had no right to, turned to Katherine, "I don't know why you are having a go at her."
"Because she just pushed in," Katherine quite rationally replied.
"Maybe she was in a hurry."
"But I'm in a hurry!" Katherine exclaimed
"Why don't you push in then?"


Which advice we promptly took, and this injustice was patiently tolerated by the lady who had once been in front of us; for all I know might still be waiting for a taxi at Suzhou train station upholding the queue as an ideal, while the world buts in. But I can't help thinking that, admirable as her tolerance was, China would be a fairer and a better ordered place with a little less of it; a place without people who wear inside out clothes and allow their yappy dogs and unruly children run wild.




Nick Little
July 2004

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