何毓琦的个人博客分享 http://blog.sciencenet.cn/u/何毓琦 哈佛(1961-2001) 清华(2001-date)

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Is this a matter of Chinese Culture?

已有 3545 次阅读 2018-11-11 22:32 |个人分类:生活点滴|系统分类:海外观察

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My wife advised me NOT to publish the following piece in my blog. She think it will serve no useful purpose and only make some readers angry at me. She is always right. But at my age, I feel like getting this off my chest and damn the consequences. So here goes:  

At my urging, my granddaughter, Melody Kim, wrote an excellent piece of advice based on her professional experience about applying to US colleges for my blog pages. In a matter of 3 day, the article gathered nearly 5000 reads – a most popular record on any basis http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-1144793.html . There were no negative comment of any kind about the article so far. In fact there were no comment at all. This is somewhat curious to me and certainly somewhat disappointing to my granddaughter. In the past, whenever I personally wrote something that benefited some readers or did some good, I was always thanked by many in my comment section. This article of college admission gave some really good advice in my opinion as someone who knows the inside of admission process in the US. I’d go so far as to say the advice are better than the articles I have written previously in these pages about college admission. Thus I am somewhat curious as to why there was not even one simple “thank you”. Two of my Chinese American friends in the US who have college age children did thank “me” for posting the article (A typical American on the other hand would write a “thank you” note to my granddaughter and ask me to transmit it to her). Otherwise, utter silence. I discussed this phenomenon with my wife who also grew up here in the US, we both suspect this is another aspect of Chinese culture that are 180 degrees different from the West.

Youth in China are never praised or

encouraged especially in public

My question to ScienceNet reader: Is our suspicion correct? Or is the effort by my granddaughter really not worthy of praise/thanks? (An American would still thank the writer for effort and good intention even if he does not think much of article).

Finally, is this a matter of gender inequality? Remember the old Chinese saying “A talentless woman is a good woman 女予無才便是德”. My granddaughter pointed out to me that her two brothers had all written about their personal experience with college admission and college life in my blogs in the past. Their articles had about 7000+ readers in SIX to NINE years (not days) but all received comments and feedbacks. How come not hers? I have no answer for her.

(Note: If you rather not cause controversey publically, you can send me your opinion/amswer privately to me  ho@seas.harvard.edu Thank you.)

 



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