While flipping around the the internet forums, one poster was talking about moving over to China for a few years to teach English, and it was there that someone posted a website that gave one Westerner's intepretation of the cultural differences between China and the Western world. One of the things that immediately jumped out at me was the story about "面" or "face" if literally translated. It's a concept supposedly difficult to describe or explain to Westerners, but I couldnt help noticing that 面 is more prevalent in Western society than people think and probably not quite as alien as the website suggests.



For example, in an old 90's movie called "Tiger on Beat" (or "老虎出差" in Chinese), Chow Yun Fat stars in one of his more comical cop films where he suffers an embarassing incident involving a gun barrel pointed at his tonsils which causes him to lose consciousness+autonomic functioning and additionally much 面 such that he subsequently is often asked how "he can even look at the sun." It should be fairly obvious how this kind of example plays into 面 and how it was lost because most police officers would probably catch a good amount of grief from their peers in that situation.

The next example came from a recent reminder while working on my rank list. 4th year of med school is largely believed to be unlike the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in that scheduling is very flexible such that you can make it as hard or easy as you want it to be. Most strike a balance between the two by working hard at the beginning of 4th year in preparation for residency applications and then tapering off the intensity as the interview season and match process draw closer. While talking with classmates about the ROL, i've become acutely aware of the sensitive and/or secretive nature of each person's rank list which then reminded me of 面 and the many ways we all try to preserve it in the faces of our peers. When discussing the match, somehow you eventually get the implicit impression that it's common knowledge to not reveal where you want to go for residency because there's the chance you won't get to go where you want to be and would then lose 面 in front of all of your peers on match day. In reality though, I and a lot of my other classmates couldnt care less where people match as long as they're happy so why is there so much anxiety about discussing rank lists? 面? I'm sure there are more examples out there, but Saving Face has probably been something we just havent overtly talked about in a more individualistic American society.