Perhapse the hardest part of Chinese culture for me to come to terms with personally.

Face is the long-standing asian tradition of not embarassing yourself or others. ie: not bringing shame. Gaining face is basically gaining honour. My experience is that people will go to the most extreme lengths to avoid losing face. Or, to try not to make you lose face.

First thing I notice is that no one ever gets visibly upset about anything. To do so would be to lose face. Being a naturally very emotive person, I have no face whatsoever... luckily my white skin and blue eyes ALMOST exempt me from having to save face. We are expected to be a little weird.

In business, people will outright lie to you... in the most outrageous way, rather than say something that might make you lose face. It's so ingraned, that even if I say to my boss: "Are you telling the truth, because if you're not, please be honest with me even if you think it will hurt me. I don't understand your culture and need to know the truth."

One of my co-workers lost a private lesson because aparently the 10-year old daughter "might be moving to Taipei - so she will not need lessons any more". Ten minutes later I got a phone call from the mother asking me to teach because the 10-year old daughter actually just wanted a female teacher.

Here is one of my first FACE observations in a letter home.

Nov. 1st

We are all trying to figure out if our bosses are stupid or malicious. Not one of us has what we were promised. I was told the other day by my boss Mitch, that his main business is writing books, not contracting teachers. I would like to know why we were not hired as writers then. I suspect that this is a lie to save face when they lost all the contracts they hoped to get.

These lies, I am realizing, are common in Chinese culture. It is just known and assumed that people will lie to save face. The Chinese accept that without acknowledgment. Unfortunately for us, we just see everyone lying.