Beyond the Chinese Face: Insights from Psychology

by Michael Harris Bond

Are the Chinese people unique? How can we compare the Chinese with other groups? Are the Chinese more concerned with "face" than other people? How can we explain the relative academic success of immigrant Chinese students? What is the impact of learning an ideographic script on the Chinese people's way of thinking and perceiving? Are the Chinese more or less family centered than other national groups? How can we understand Chinese negotiating techniques?...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195851161
• ISBN13: 9780195851168
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 140 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

An excellent read!

This is an easy-to-read yet thorough examination of the Chinese culture. It has a current focus and provides the reader with an excellent guideline for communicating with Chinese people. An important guide to dealing with the major economical influence of our time!

Making sense of a new environment

I have now been working in Hong Kong for nearly four months. A colleague lent me `Beyond the Chinese Face' in my first week here in Hong Kong. I have lived in several different countries and cultures, and so have at least an intellectual understanding of different perspectives and ways of seeing the world. But it is amazing how unhelpful one's intellectual awarenesses are when faced with understanding actual events or situations in a new cultural setting. What `Beyond the Chinese Face' managed to do for me was to assist me in building a framework in which to understand what I observed on a daily basis. By enabling me to feel that I understood more about the context I was in, I felt more relaxed, and so was able to engage with different customs and rules more easily. Even Hong Kong bureaucracy became more comprehensible! I liked the fact that the book made it clear that many of the existing research studies are flawed, but the overall patterns emerging from research were clearly laid out. It was refreshing also to read a book that was based on academic research but was written in a style that was accessible and easy to read. If only more academic writing were like this! This is a valuable resource for all newcomers to Hong Kong. Thanks, Michael.

Very good introduction if you know how to use it

I think the reader from Victoria, BC, Canada was probably most right here in this forum. You have to know what you can expect and what you cannot. What you cannot expect here, is a guide to the thinking of around 1,5 billion people, because that is the number of people we're talking about. And they are very very different, I would dare to say more different than any other ethnic (can we say so?) group worldwide: you have ABCs (American born Chinese), their parents and certainly CBCs, Aussie BCs and so on. There are Singapore-Chinese and overseas Chinese in other Asian countries. Taiwan Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese. And then there is this huge mainland area with around 1.3 billion Chinese, where the living conditions differ so greatly that it's hard to imagine for anyone who hasn't been there.All those people are Chinese, but the all have different backgrounds: capitalistic system or planned economy (though even the mainland is shifting very quickly towards capitalism, stronger than outsiders usually see), freedom of speech or getting killed for speaking out the truth, diversity or open hate from other societal groups (e.g. Indonesia) and so on and so on. And then there is the fact that people differ even within a society, with the result that you could very easily meet Chinese people from, say Beijing, who are very open sexual and have more sexual experience than, say, an American 30 year old who never had a girlfriend. Nevertheless it's a fact that most Chinese are not like that but instead having less sexual experience than their western counterparts (I'm not judging this, just stating the fact as the book says it and also as my own experience supports it). Now, one could say (and 3 other readers did so) that this book is therefore useless. I strongly disagree. First of all the author states exactly this fact at the beginning and warns about generalisations (as every psychological book should do so). Second the information he gives is in around 95 % of the cases supported by my own experience (nationality: German; 8 months living in Hong Kong, studying Business and Chinese and working, travelling on the mainland to Shanghai/ Beijing/ Guangzhou/ Shenzhen, also having lived in the US for 6 months meeting quite a few ABCs,).So use this guide as a background information but not as a "now I know everything about Chinese"- guidebook. Nobody will ever know everything about the Chinese, simply because there are no "Chinese" as such. But this is the general problem of all social sciences where there is no 1+1=2 like in maths. Knowing that, this book helps you a bit and gives you quite a few "I see!"s on your journey into the fascinating Chinese culture (which is indeed possible for a non-Chinese although the reader from San Francisco obviously doesn't think so). Therefore I rate the book 5 star because it delivers what it promises and this is how I define quality.

A fascinating yet understandable voyage into Chinese Culture

What an insightful, sensible, readable and informative book that explores the question that many ask about other cultures - "HOW and WHY do others think and behave as they do?" Without a doubt an expert in his field, Dr. Michael Bond masterfully weaves for the reader an explanation to this question in a thorough and understanding fashion. A fascinating, yet understandable voyage into Chinese culture. This small yet valuable book truly goes - "Beyond the Chinese Face."

It's the best book of its type.

This book is written by a scientific psychologist for the intelligent layperson "who wants to understand how and why Chinese people behave and think as they do." The facts and conclusions about Chinese behavior and thought - the "how" part of the preceding sentence - and the facts and conclusions about Chinese society - the "why" part - are gleaned from scientific studies of the Chinese people. The author, Michael Harris Bond, Ph.D., has taught at the Chinese University in Hong Kong for 25 years and is presently president of the International Association for Cross Cultural Psychology. He is also one of the best writers in psychology, and he has done a masterful job "translating" scientific jargon into words we all can understand. As one reviewer put it, "It's one of the best such books I have ever had the pleasure to read, a skillful blend of hard data and warm human insights. I was captured from the first sentence to the final quote." Now, it must be said that certain readers are going to be disappointed with this excellent book. It is not a Fodor's-type travel guide to social interactions in China, and it's too complex and humble to be of much use to businesspeople eager to exploit the Chinese market. Flakes "into" weird Chinese philosophies and medicines will find nothing of interest here. But for the thoughtful reader who wants to learn about Chinese psychology, this book has no peer. It's the best.