For years, something about the way people in China discuss all sorts of questions has puzzled me. A conversation may begin with a specific issue, turn into an argument after only a few exchanges, and then deteriorate into a quarrel. In the end, neither side convinces the other, and they part on bad terms. This is common in everyday life and on social media. I have also seen it happen in discussions that appeared to be quite serious and academic.
I have often wondered why. Increasingly, I think one important reason is that people do not first establish what they are actually discussing. Both sides may use the same word while understanding it in entirely different ways. Sometimes the problem goes beyond an unclear concept: there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the question itself. On the surface, everyone seems to be discussing the same issue, when in fact they may not be talking about the same thing at all.
There is also the question of how people conduct a discussion. One person presents facts while another talks about personal feelings; one examines cause and effect while another quotes a famous saying as though that settles the matter. If a metaphor is vivid, people find it persuasive. If a sentence sounds forceful, its speaker somehow seems to be right. When someone asks about definitions, assumptions or evidence, the discussion easily shifts towards positions and emotions, as though questioning a claim meant opposing the person making it.
I have never been particularly comfortable with this way of discussing things. The problem is not simply that people end up quarrelling. By the end of the exchange, the original question has not been examined, the facts have not been established, the concepts remain unclear, and no conclusion has emerged that everyone can test against a common standard.
After moving to Australia, I had more opportunities to experience a different social environment directly, and I paid closer attention to how people discussed problems. There are arguments, prejudices and emotional judgements here too. It would be quite wrong to imagine that everyone in Western societies reasons logically. Still, within certain professional discussions, educational settings and public institutions, there are comparatively explicit expectations about defining concepts, providing evidence and setting out an argument. Speaking persuasively and being correct are two different things. Comparing these environments over time led me to look for possible explanations in cultural traditions and the history of how knowledge has been transmitted.
One direction that occurred to me was the range of functions literature performed in traditional societies.
When we speak of literature today, we tend to think of novels, poetry, essays and drama, of telling stories, creating characters, expressing emotions and offering aesthetic experiences. Over a longer span of history, however, literature has occupied a much wider place. From early times, people used stories, songs, myths, legends and sayings to pass on historical memory, moral rules, practical knowledge and ideas about the natural world. In societies where transmission was primarily oral, such forms were memorable and could readily be passed from one generation to the next. Literature and the communication of knowledge once overlapped to a considerable extent.
We also need to distinguish oral literature from written literature. Discussions of literature today often concentrate on what an author has written and what a reader has read, almost as though only literate people could take part in literature. Yet oral literature has always been an important part of it. In some Australian Indigenous cultures, storytelling, song and ceremony have long been means of passing on history and knowledge. In China, storytelling performances, folk tales and traditional theatre have made the same characters and stories familiar to many people who never read the original texts. Someone who cannot read may still listen to a story, tell it again and pass it on to the next generation. We cannot assess literature’s social influence solely by counting those who can read written texts for themselves.
In this sense, a substantial body of written narrative has absorbed and organised material previously passed down orally. But that does not mean all written literature is merely a written record of oral literature. Once writing emerged, oral and written traditions continued alongside one another and influenced each other. Some stories were told before they were written down; other works were written first and then carried to a wider audience through storytelling, theatre or other forms of performance. Literature’s influence has often developed through these exchanges.
The traditional Chinese idea of wen, roughly meaning writing or literary culture, covered a much wider field than literature in today’s narrower sense. Classics, historical works and essays were not only read for pleasure. They also served political, ethical and educational purposes and helped people explain the world. Reading classical prose could simultaneously mean learning how to conduct oneself, understanding society and history, and acquiring certain ideas about nature. There were historical reasons for these overlapping functions, and they helped societies preserve, organise and transmit a great deal of experience.
What concerns me is whether our ways of understanding and using those texts have changed as different forms of knowledge have developed their own standards of judgement. Some sayings originally expressed a generalisation drawn from everyday life, yet in practical discussion they have come to be treated as universal laws requiring no further proof.
Take the familiar Chinese saying that only those who endure the bitterest hardship can rise above others. It sounds powerful and can encourage someone to persevere. But why should enduring hardship necessarily bring success? If someone is heading in the wrong direction, using the wrong method or repeating the same mistakes, further hardship may achieve nothing. Learning, training, changes of method and external opportunities can all affect the outcome. Hardship by itself is plainly not a sufficient explanation of success.
Consider also the saying that failure is the mother of success. If a person fails and then neither examines the reasons nor changes their approach, they may simply fail again. Failure can provide an opportunity to learn, but whether that opportunity produces progress depends on what happens next.
Another comforting saying holds that gold will always shine, implying that talent will eventually be recognised. Yet whether a person’s abilities are noticed also depends on their surroundings, opportunities, institutions and other conditions. Many capable people never get a proper chance to put their abilities to use. The saying may encourage someone going through a difficult period, but it cannot be treated as an objective law of how society works.
Then there is the advice to take a step back and find the world opening up before you. In ordinary personal disagreements, yielding may well be sensible. In the face of persistent mistreatment or a question of principle, however, giving way may make things worse. Whether to retreat depends first on the circumstances.
The saying that water too clear has no fish, and a person too exacting has no followers, illustrates the problem even more clearly. It can remind us not to be excessively harsh in our dealings with others. But when someone uses it to argue that an organisation should not be too transparent or its management too strict, they have moved from an observation about interpersonal relations to a judgement about institutions. The consequences of transparency need to be examined through actual institutions and evidence. Whether fish can live in clear water tells us nothing conclusive about how an organisation ought to be run.
Such sayings survive because they compress certain experiences into language that is brief, vivid and easy to remember. That is a strength of literary expression. But a little analysis reveals conditions left unstated, a limited range of application and, quite often, possible counterexamples.
Interestingly, other widely repeated sayings appear to point in the opposite direction. One advises us to step back and allow more room; another warns that kind people are easily bullied. One says contentment brings happiness; another urges us always to strive higher. These need not really contradict one another, because they may apply to different situations. Yet if we never examine those conditions and simply choose whichever saying supports our position, almost anyone can find a proverb to justify almost any side of an argument.
Discussion then becomes a search for words that make one’s own position sound reasonable. An aphorism replaces an argument, a metaphor replaces proof, and emotional force takes the place of examining the facts. To my mind, this is a habit of thought worth serious scrutiny.
Does that mean the West is free of the same problem? Certainly not. Ancient Greek epics also carried religious ideas, historical memories and moral knowledge. Western societies have always had myths, fables and proverbs. Even today, Western political, religious and online disputes often rely on inflammatory language and weak analogies. Saying simply that Chinese people do not reason logically while Western people do is neither factually sound nor capable of explaining the phenomenon I want to understand.
What seems more useful to compare is how different fields of knowledge subsequently became differentiated. Ancient Greek philosophy developed specialised investigations into concepts, propositions, reasoning and argument. Aristotle’s studies of logic, rhetoric and poetics already showed a conscious interest in the distinctive characteristics of different activities of thought and expression. This does not mean that ancient Greece had a modern system of academic disciplines, or that later Western development followed a straight line. Modern scientific methods, specialised disciplines and university research institutions took shape through a long historical process.
One important change arising from that process was the increasingly explicit recognition that different questions require different methods of assessment. Mathematical propositions require proof. Claims in the natural sciences must withstand observation and experiment. Historical research has to examine sources. Philosophical discussion must make its concepts, premises and inferences clear. Literature can address all these questions and offer profound insights, but the emotional power of a piece of writing cannot substitute for the evidence and argument appropriate to the subject.
Ancient China, of course, had specialised traditions of knowledge as well. The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art contains specific methods of calculation. The Compendium of Materia Medica brought together extensive knowledge of medicinal substances. The Mohist thinkers and the School of Names made important contributions to distinctions and reasoning. It would be inaccurate to say that ancient China had no scientific knowledge, no logic or no differences between fields of study.
What I want to compare is the place such knowledge and methods occupied in mainstream education and public discussion. Historically, China’s dominant classical education continued for a long time to place ethical, political, historical and knowledge-transmitting functions together within wen. Specialised training in concepts, argument and the methods appropriate to different forms of knowledge did not develop into such broad, relatively independent norms as some of those found in Western education and research since the modern period. This is a difference between traditions that deserves investigation, not a claim that rigorous thinking was absent from Chinese history.
These historical differences may have left traces in how people express themselves today. China now has a fully developed modern system of academic disciplines and many researchers and professionals who have undergone demanding training. But having separate school subjects such as Chinese, mathematics, physics and chemistry does not guarantee that every person consciously distinguishes literary expression, factual claims and logical argument in everyday discussions. I am criticising a tendency I repeatedly observe, not making a claim about all Chinese people. How widespread that tendency actually is, and how much cultural traditions and educational practices contribute to it, would require systematic comparative research. My own observations cannot establish the whole causal explanation.
Nonetheless, the way discussions are conducted deserves attention, particularly when it appears in public exchanges among intellectuals or even within academic circles. Someone quotes a well-known saying, makes a striking comparison and adds a few value judgements, then assumes the case has been made. When others ask for supporting reasons, the discussion shifts to their attitude, loyalties or motives. In the end, the participants have not even agreed on how to decide whether a claim is justified, so they can hardly return to the question they began with.
This connects with my previous essay, “How We Read Traditional Culture and the Problems of Chinese-Language Education”. That piece looked mainly at how we read ancient classics, distinguish literary expression from inherited experience and specialised knowledge, and consider how Chinese-language education might help students develop their own judgements.
Reading Traditional Culture and the Problems of Chinese Language Education
Here I want to take the discussion a little further. Why did literature perform so many functions in the past? How did those functions gradually become differentiated? And what happens when a form of expression is used to answer questions that call for evidence and reasoning?
Literature can convey experience, create empathy and help us notice problems we had previously overlooked. A moving story has value in its own right; a metaphor can also make a complicated relationship easier to grasp. But serving as expression or insight is not the same as establishing a fact. What happens to a character in a story cannot directly establish that the same thing will happen to everyone. And because two things resemble each other in one respect, we cannot assume they share the same causal relationships.
That is why I think education should teach people to analyse literature and familiar sayings, as well as appreciate and remember them. When a remark sounds convincing, we can first ask what exactly it says, which assumptions it leaves unstated, when it applies and whether there are counterexamples. If it makes a factual claim, look for evidence. If it expresses a value judgement, explain the reasons for that judgement. If it is a metaphor, keep it within the limits of what the comparison can illuminate.
When discussing a specific issue, we should at least begin by making sure we are talking about the same problem, then work out what evidence would support each position. Literature can continue to inspire us and enrich our understanding. But when proof is needed, the fact that something has been beautifully said does not mean it has been proved.
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