Beach Party

In the U.S., a beach party would generally be a simple and unstructured affair involving a beach, food, a Frisbee, and beer. Other than that there isn’t much to organize besides making sure people go and get home safe. This is not the case with a Chinese beach party. All the same ingredients are there, but the difference lies with the amount of structure applied, as a Chinese party lies on the opposite end of the spectrum from a western party. The beach is not just a pleasant stretch of coastline where one can spread a towel, but a subdivided expanse of bungalows one must rent. There is still food, and it is plentiful, but it is only served during regimented meal times. The Frisbee is actually hours of games reminiscent of field day mixed with church camp wholesomeness. Gosh, isn’t this fun!? And having nothing to do with the amount of structure in Chinese parties but worth noting, the beer is warm.

My experience with this came three weeks ago when the owner of my English school threw a beach party for the employees from us and the employees from his music schools. All the attendees arrived at their respective schools and were shuttled down to the site in coach busses which should have been my first clue. To me, coach busses evoke pictures of uniformly bright colored tee-shirts, chaperones with microphones, and time specifically intended for the gift shop. Beach parties on the other hand, do not come to mind.

At the beach, lunch was served in one of the larger aforementioned bungalows, and periodically interrupted by a Chinese ‘envoy’ stopping by the English school’s table to make sure we were having fun at such a magnificent party—as a side note, it seems that in China, magnificent equals big and big equals magnificent; it is big so it must be good. After lunch came the games. Not knowing the true nature of the games, I sat obediently with the rest of the guests for forty-five minutes while people sound checked the impossibly fuzzy sound system, and made various other preparations to make sure the fun went off without a hitch. The fact that we could have just relaxed and gone our own ways until the games were ready didn’t seem so register or bother anyone. By the time the games actually started I had given up on showing a good face and fallen asleep. Upon waking and recognizing the all afternoon nature of the games, myself and the other foreign teachers instead opted to throw rocks at a shoe. In the evening, organized activities continued with dinner and a stage performance filled with an unending sequence of speeches and halfheartedly prepared sub-amateur level musical sing alongs. It was right around then that I completely gave up all pretenses and left to watch waves crashing on the shore, a slightly less repetitive activity.

Without experiencing it directly, it’s hard to predict or picture how the group mentality of Chinese culture manifests itself, and upon first arriving I was surprised at how little I felt like I was living in a hive. This was largely due to the expat cocoon I was living in. But as I had more experiences and got used to my new life, I noticed subtle cues that Chinese culture is not oriented toward individuality. The most obvious examples of Chinese group-think are outings like the beach party which make the assumption that you need strictly organized fun to have a good time. It seems like ‘organized fun’ should be an oxymoron. At least, it does to me given that my conception of fun is very closely tied to feelings of spontaneity, creativity, and improvisation as opposed to rules and structure. For the Chinese, however, fun is something you must prepare and plan for so that the group is organized and accounted for. Such outings have a way of making you feel as though you’re walking among uncharacteristically jolly zombies that have not yet realized the feast you represent.

A subtler cue as to the group culture is people’s lack of individual motivation to push their boundaries. Group activities come with built in social justifications for participating, and people here don’t understand behavior that lacks those justifications, even when it is not objectionable. Most of the Chinese people who ask about my time off can’t understand why I would do something like camp on a mountain by myself. No one planned a group excursion to hike a mountain or explore random parts of the city, so why did I go? Who told me that it would be fun? I can’t imagine the confusion my bus excursions would have considering their inherently free-form nature.

Some might use the rampant spread of Capitalism in China as an indication of increasing individuality and a counter argument to this analysis. And while they are right that Chinese have been rapacious capitalists, the vast majority of businesses only further illustrate group-think in their homogeneity. Businesses here fall into a very few classifications—mostly cookie cutter restaurants, hair salons, and corner stores—and within those classifications, very few distinguishing markers in appearance or service exist. Ingenuity is left to a precious few. The capitalist style economies should inspire stores to innovate, and some do, but on the whole, any one restaurant will look and perform identically to the one across the street. The same is true of corner stores, labor shops, apartment buildings, and hair salons. Especially hair salons. So in that sense, despite the bravery needed to start a business, these people still fit the mold. The difference between the US and China is that US businesses strive to stand out while Chinese business owners don’t seem to realize that they could even try. “Do you want to be an entrepreneur? We have a package deal for that too!”

Western Way- If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!

Chinese Way- You are happy, and you know it. Clap your hands.
The eerily clear but unspoken response:
“Yes we are! Yes we do! Let’s clap our hands!”

Of course, I am a westerner, and accordingly biased in my preferences and observations. Chinese people clearly love their brand of fun and don’t have widespread problems with their cultural habits or they would likely have changed by now. I’m not going to go on a behavioral crusade any time soon, even if I wanted to try, no one would take serious critiques from a foreigner. But then, I’m also not going to go home and tell all my friends about how much fun the three legged race was on the beach or how great it is to just shove someone out of the way if you want to board the bus first.

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