Teacher Gray: Many Chinese people shift the blame as soon as they are criticized

Since I started learning Chinese, I have found that some people assume my ignorance about China based on my identity. To them, looking at me is enough to know how much I understand. This is a very strange feeling because, although my Chinese proficiency was not strong at the time, I didn't feel that this meant they were smarter than me. At first, because my Chinese was weak, I couldn't refute them. But I have always been curious: why is it so easy for people to question others' ignorance, but so rare to reflect on whether they have true knowledge themselves?

I remember that a song of mine went viral the year before last, titled "Chinese Boys Don't Masturbate." As a result, I was interviewed by the news. In the comment section of the interview, someone said that I should specifically study politics to be qualified to comment like this. Please, don't have such high requirements for a small musician like me—would I really go get a PhD in political science and then come back to write a song about Chinese boys masturbating? But just because I am not a political scientist, it doesn't necessarily mean I don't know what I am talking about. On the contrary, I am quite cautious and prefer to understand a topic before I am willing to comment on it. Ironically, this netizen probably didn't spend as much time understanding my song as I spent understanding China, yet she was so confident in commenting on something she didn't understand—me.

If you scroll through my comments, you will find that many start with "You don't understand yet, you don't get it," and so on.

I have become accustomed to this kind of comment, but I myself have long since stopped using this method. If I feel someone doesn't know what they are talking about, I generally don't want to have much interaction with them. If I am going to comment, I prefer to focus on the factual content rather than commenting on the person. Because if we are going to comment or debate, there is no need to judge the other person's intelligence or knowledge first; doing so is actually illogical. After all, these do not affect the truthfulness of what they are saying.

Seeking truth requires us to first reflect on the problems in our own thinking and correct them as much as possible. But this also requires us to do something very difficult: admit that we might be wrong. I believe this kind of profound reflection, which further teaches us how to think, is a skill that saves humanity, and I find that this skill is not common in China. I find that many people from China seem to never admit their mistakes, and may not even reflect on them. Even if they do reflect, they rarely share the results with others. To be honest, most of the Chinese people I have met shift the blame as soon as they are criticized. This seems to have become their instinct; even if the mistake is caught on the spot, they will not admit it or back down. This discovery has always puzzled me because this mindset directly contradicts an important principle I was taught since childhood: taking responsibility is a strength, and only small-minded people try to evade it. I think this bias is a heavy burden on modern Chinese culture.

It took humanity thousands of years to develop epistemology to formalize our thinking process, and reflection is the most important part of it. Ad hominem attacks, regardless of who they are directed at, are a fallacy that attempts to discredit the other party's viewpoint by attacking the individual. For example, the statement "The sun is composed of hydrogen and helium" is accurate, regardless of whether it is said by Gandhi or Hitler; it remains true. For those comments questioning my knowledge, I generally don't reply because I feel that if such an assumption about me already exists, there may not be much room for discussion. But if there is an opportunity, I will say, "Which part of what I said do you think is wrong?" For those who tell me to go back to school, I actually feel that you are the ones who need to learn more. Perhaps through more learning, you will also learn how to reflect.