Customer Reviews

The Chinese Have a Word for It : The Complete Guide to Chinese Thought and Culture

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

On the positive side, the format of this book is wonderful and easy to read, and the commentaries are educational and often insightful. However, this book is suffused with a bitter, judgemental, and condescending interpretation of Chinese culture. De Mente portrays the Chinese as misogynistic, ruthlessly authoritarian, and socially backwards, pointing to an obviously negative experience De Mente had living there.

The easiest way to illustrate this problem is with an example. Let us turn the tables and use De Mente's style to do a silly definition of "Liberty" in American culture: "The American concept of liberty has created a culture that is exclusively focused on the self centered pursuit of indulgence, entertainment and wealth. This corrosive desire to be free of any form of social obligation prevents the healthy formation of any family or communal relationships. Although a growing number of Americans are being exposed to the benefits of Chinese culture, it is unlikely that this trait will ever be fully exorcised from the American psyche until several generations have experienced life in a society that understands and values responsibility and respect."

The last few sentences of this example were actually lifted right out of the book, but with the value judgements reversed. As you can see, this commentary may be true, educational, or even insightful, but it is obviously offensive and condescending when there really is no need to be. If you are using this book to learn about Chinese culture, keep these cautions in mind, as De Mente vents frustration on Chinese culture in almost every definition.

The author paints China as this complex system of mannerisms and beliefs, when people are just people here in China. If you want a truly real perspective on China, I suggest you buy another book. If you are going to be on a plane for 14 hours, then it might be worthwhile to flip around in it, as it touches on a few interesting topics.

Although the book tends to get it right on the larger scale of things, I thought the author must have been a person who collaborated the book from previous texts while on a "study vacation" of no more than 2 years in China. As soon as I read the first section on love, I hastily flipped to the front of the book to see when this book was published; horrificially I discovered it was first published in 2000 and furthermore would like to note was horrified as I was sure the book must have been published in the late 80s.

There are so many language errors in this book, even of the Chinese characters written on the top of each section, that this author lost all credability with me immediately. The author attempts to portray that he is an expert on the subject of China, but I kept wondering the entire time: "Who edited this book? They should have caught these language errors." For example on page 26 entitled "Engaging in Melancholy", the correct romanization of the character should be qiu, not chou; and the first thing I thought of was "stinky" (which is one of the translations for the word chou).

Another culturally insensitive, completely erroneous, and embarassing mistake is that the author contends that the word 'haole' (a Hawaiian word) translate to "white pig", while discribing other cultural ways of terming foreigners (see page 145). Having absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the book and being completely in error, I wish the editor or the author would have removed the unnecessary comment.

Furthermore on page 145 the author asserts the term yang gui zi means "ocean ghosts", when in fact the character yang was used specifically to describe foreign things or items during the Opium War (things coming from beyond the ocean), during which this specific use of the language came out. The term should be corrected to mean "foreign devil".

Again, page 404 title "A Chinese Nooner", the correct romanization should be wu xiu, not wu xin, or more colloquially refered to as zhong xiu.

Anyway, maybe I am being picky...but this book does not represent China. If I could take the subjects in this book and write my own paragraph on them, I think it would be a lot different. That's the beauty of China, everyone takes away something different. I just have a lot more positive view than the author.

But I'm going to give it four because the fort collins reviewer who points out the author's "bitter, judgemental, and condescending interpretation" is actually correct. I wouldn't characterize De Mente so harshly, but as much as the author loves and understands Chinese culture, it's clear that De Mente just doesn't get it. He points out, for example, a quotation from Mao Zedung who said that the Chinese are like grass. If you mow them over, more will grow to replace them.

De Mente uses this example to shock western sensibilities and show how far "behind" the Chinese are in individual rights. Yet this is what makes China China: the focus on society and not the individual.

For what it's worth, though, individual rights are coming to China because the Chinese want them. And so De Mente's judgements while perhaps inappropriate are not irrelevant.

Personally, my biggest criticism of this book is that every Chinese word he presents is accompanied with his own transcription that I found worthless. I would've preferred that he used pinyin with tonal markers. But that's a small criticism considering the focus of the book is the exposition of each word, a collection of maybe a 100 essays, that give wonderfully concise -- and ignoring the subjective judgements, accurate -- summaries of Chinese culture.

Useful, interesting and easy reading. Interestingly, quite a number of entries are classical wisdom from the Book of Changes (I King/Yi Jing) although not always indicated. A note of caution : romanization is based on pinyin but not always accurate, with entries not quite in alphabetical order. A number of the Chinese characters described are plain wrong (though homonyms). Still, enjoyable and worth buying.

not a good book to form the basis of your understanding of Chinese culture, by a long shot. While other reviews have gone into detail about the author's lack of understanding of Chinese culture, or rather his bias, it's the two critical aspects of Chinese written language Mr. De Mente neglects that is even more important - namely the lack of emphasis on calligraphy and the radicals (sub-characters) that make up each character.

This complexity is what gives Chinese so many more dimensions and to have him continually delve into the same theme of a subservient and troubled non-individual culture takes so much away from that.

Now for the good. The author does give you a lot of information, but only in passing. The remaining legwork remains yours, which is what an author should do in the first place - inspire you to want to learn on your own. This is a decent source to refer to for research or if you are simply curious about Chinese. While his bias is inherent, it is not altogether off the mark given the standard of living in China even in this day and age. Refusing to embellish and feed the Western reader ambiguous Eastern mysticism easily distinguish the writer from the typical writings about Chinese culture and language.

With all that said, this is only a work you should buy AFTER you have already formed an informed and detailed opinion about Chinese culture and thought. If not, you will definitely get an inaccurate impression that will only harm your ability to learn. Great tidbits and trivia all along the way, but skip this incomplete guide if you don't have time to burn.

I am a student of Mandarin Chinese, and that is why this book looked so appealing.

This book is nothing more than the opinions of an amateur anthropologist. As others have said, it is full of value judgments and is condescending. It contains no references or citations. It could have been written 100 years ago. Its only value is as a study of what arrogant authors will churn out to make a buck. The suggested pronunciations are of limited value because they are incomplete and without tones. There are some interesting parts and it is a very easy read, but I wouldn't trust any of it to be 100% accurate.

I purchase a lot of books on Chinese culture and language--sometimes indiscriminately. Which is how I acquired this one.

What first grabbed my eye was the idea of a hundred or so tidy topics, under a 1- or 2-character phrase (like "An"(1)/Peace)--each discussed for about a page and a half. Perfect, I thought, for a few minutes reading, just before bedtime! What's more, the author provided Chinese characters and pinyin.

But then I started going through it: Yes, there's some good information in convenient little bundles--but not without plenty of editorial overhead (as described by other reviewers). And for a book that centers its concept so much on the "Chinese word," it utterly falls down: The pinyin carries no tone notation; the phonetic spelling is even less useful. And still more egregious, the Chinese words are not always accurately translated or displayed with the correct pinyin.

Free time is scarce. I bought this book for its mini-tutorials--but there's a hidden time-eater in ferreting out its inaccuracies.

The lack of pinyin is a serious flaw for Chinese learners; with pinyin you could look up the characters in the Wenlin dictionary.

Most of what I read rings true even though the author's perspective appears tainted. If you can read through that bias it can help you better understand the Chinese when you are on the ground there.

On the plus side, this book is good to read if you only have small bits of free time. It's arranged so that each chapter is a self-contained essay, so that you don't need to read the chapters in order and can skip and choose sections as they interest you or not.

On the negative side, you'll want to skip many whole sections as the author's views are often negatively biased, western-centric, stereotypical and very outdated. Skip all the sections talking about politics, Mao and the big brother communist party. It reads as if it's author has just come back from years forceably toiling in the fields of a re-education labour camp. This may have been an interesting snapshot into the post-Mao Chinese society circa early 1990s when the book came out, but China has evolved so much and so greatly since then that much of the book became out-of-date very quickly.

Nevertheless, there are some chapters that provide good insight about social norms and provide good advice for westerners, especially those eager to do business there. Some chapters talk about norms whose origins reach back into ancient times and those are quite interesting. The problem is that these few dozen good chapters are spread across a great many more chapters that are a wasteland of prose. I just don't have that much free time to kill to find the occasional hidden nugget of insight. These interesting tidbits are the reason why I'd give it two stars instead of just one. If you haven't bought this book yet, you're best to find another, better-written Chinese culture, of which there are many. This is an outdated book that should be out-of-print.

I give five because it is an excellent tool for students to understand Chinese characters and culture. I really love the book to use and as a author of Chinese for everyone, I found it inspiring to teach my students the characters and the culture. Sometimes the style of this book is sarccastic but not condescending. Dr Mente is knowledgeable and well versed in his domain, and all of his books are interesting and inspiring. I give five..

Marie Laure de Shazer
author of Chinese for everyone ( found on Amazon), and educator.