218 CultureShock! China
characters, just as the rules of classical Chinese grammar
are fairly predictable. Crucially, even the most modernised
Chinese, when looking at ancient texts, understand how
characters work, know quite a few of them, and thus are
unlikely to hit that infamous wall foreign students hit. Once
nearly 7,000 characters have been learned, even in simplified
form, adding a few thousand more and learning to read their
complex equivalents seems to be, if not a trivial task, at least
a relatively manageable one.Unspoken Chinese
One final area of language which is important to be aware
of in any country is non-verbal communication. Gestures,
pacing, pausing and the like are of course individual, but
there are also general trends that run across any culture and
help define it from other cultures. It is important to be aware
of these non-verbal differences.
In the case of China, from the perspective of people
from an Anglo-American background, most non-verbal
communications will be relatively familiar. An up-and-down
head shake means ‘yes’, a side-to-side head shake means
‘no’, smiles and frowns, looks of surprise and looks of blank
incomprehension generally mean exactly the same things
they would mean in your home country.
There are some key points of difference worth being aware
of, however. First, non-verbal cues in China are often more
subtle than in the West. While individuals of course vary,
Chinese on the whole are less comfortable with ‘wearing
emotions on their sleeves’ than are Westerners. The smiles
and frowns, surprise or anger, joy or incomprehension, will
be there on their faces, but you may need to watch closely
to catch it. This is particularly important for expatriates to
be aware of in the case of frowns or incomprehension. This
topic will be explored further in Chapter Nine. The basic
idea is that if you are the new Western boss, and you say
things that your new team-mates are upset by or simply
don’t understand, it may very well be that no one will go
out of their way to tell you. This may be part of the Chinese
reputation for being inscrutable, but the truth is, no one is