Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Chinese Family Altar
11
THE CHINESE FAMILY ALTAR
STINE & JOSEPHINE
Introduction
Introduction
Represents important kinship
One ethnic group = One metaphor
Business Family
- Japan: Cooperations, Sony
- China: Family business, uniting generations, preserves
family assets
FAMILY
The Importance of Family
- Expatriate Chinese -> original homeland
to visit burials of ancestors
- Wants to be buried beside their ancestors
in their native village
Name: Individualistic vs Collectivistic
- West: First name - Clarity, independence, self-
- China: Family Name interest
- Harmony, dependance,
loyalty
RELATIONS: Individual acts for the family
Japan vs. China:
- Japan: favor collective group
- China: Relations between
individuals, mix
High vs Low context
- Common understanding, nuanced and
layered
- Less shared understanding, precise clear
- China: high, get to know people (guanxi)
- Language: privacy, I
More than 60 million
expatriate Chinese
The Expatriate
Chinese
Successful in business
Seek integration,
but stay connected
Practice complex and informal networks through guanxi (relationships or connections)
Thailand + USA vs. Malaysia + Indonesia
Taiwan
- Established after WWII, now one of the richest countries in the world
Hong Kong
Malaysia
Countries
Singapore
Indonesia
- Riots directed against Chinese
- 5% of population Chinese,
controlled 70% of the nations resources
Thailand
- Good relations,
intermarriage is common
Context, usually big influence
Roundness
Roundness
- Living, dead and unborn
Physical description:
- Your own altar
- Central of the house, opposite the front door
- Incense pot on the left for animistic gods
- Ancestral tablets on the right side
- Backdrop with popular deities
- Patrilineal kinship group
How you do it:
- Elderly women burns three sticks of incense
- Meal by the altar: make the life better in
the netherworld, depend (group)
Continuity and completeness
of the family.
Connects the natural and
supernatural world.
Dynamic and round: yin-yang, time is circular and so is life
Linear vs. cyclical time, harmony
The Role of Women
The Role of
Women
Problem: Patriarchal approach -> inequality
No children or no sons -> divorce (traditionally)
Roles: daughters < sons, wives < husbands
- Higher prestige with age
- Activities segregated by sex
Family business:
Man: External relations
Woman: Office
The importance of the eldest son
Looking at the Long Term
Short vs Long Term
- Fast fashion and fast food
- Durable and quality products
- China: think long term
Americans: long-term is 3 to 5 years
vs. Chinese: 10, 20, and 100 years
- pattern of collective responsibility over time
Existed since the Duke of Chou (12th century BCE), the boa-jia system
-> family/kinship divisions into family units with one responsible leader
- rely on personal closeness of the group to handle fraud and default
Looking at
the Long Term
Roundness + strong family connections -> long-term perspective on problems and issues
Polychronic time, more flexible,
no contracts,
relatiosnship more important
Lifeblood of a Chinese company = guanxi
- To build long lasting relationships and social obligations.
- Actions > contracts
- Reciprocity: Chinese son -> University
The Modern Businessman
The Modern
Businessman
"Spacemen": Modern Chinese Businessman -> roundness
- Fly around the world
Business associates -> guanxi (relations and connections)
Working with non-Chinese: build relations
Limitations: Excludes individuals, in the way of
new business opportunities
Harmony
Harmony
Wet rice farming: work together to provide
subsistence
China: Harmony
West: liberty and pursuit of individual happiness
- Collectivistic vs. individualistic
Ideal harmonious family: no quarrels, no financial problems
or illness.
Common prayer: for harmony
- Pass an exam, sickness, employment
- Gives hope and comfort
Shadowy netherworld = uncertainty -> luck and fate ->
no seatbelts
Gambling: reinforce roundness and harmony
families play together
Fluidity
- the capacity to change while maintaining traditions
- reflects relations-oriented approach:
to be individualistic but meet family obligations
- conservative, but innovative and entrepreneurial
- Chinese history as endless cycles of renewal and decline
-> dynasties and rulers, family stayed
Fluidity
Conservative:
the importance of traditional Chinese religion
Innovative:
Family altar: pray only to gods who have answered their petitions -> fluidity, change -> but they still pray at the family
altar
historically invented a lot, such as bridges, fishing reels, fireworks, wallpaper, paper, and so on