Embracing a wrong interpretation

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily Staff Writer)
Updated: 2008-08-31 15:22

An audio version is floating in cyberspace, with uncanny mimicry of the original singers Liu Huan and Sarah Brightman.

Basketball player Lauren Jackson of Australia talks with Yao Ming of China during the Closing Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the National Stadium. [Agencies]

You may laugh at such a childish act of mischievousness. But actually it's not that simple. Chinese etiquette does not include hugging in public, and even though we've seen it countless times in movies most of us do not know when it is appropriate to hug, especially a non-family member of the opposite sex.

Two decades ago, I was seeing off a group of visitors at the airport after escorting them for weeks on a tour across China. The women hugged me one by one, or rather, the first woman hugged me, and then I started hugging the others. It happened that the last person in the group was an old gentleman. As soon as I opened my arms, one of the women hinted that I stop. I instantly realized what she meant, but I did not understand. I've seen movies from Eastern Europe in which adult men hugged each other. The nuances were just too complicated for a kid fresh out of college.

Today, hugging is quite common in China, especially among the young, but old mindsets die hard. Even if you conduct yourself properly, as Yao Ming and LJ did, people will misunderstand you, deliberately or not, because the same act has different connotations in different cultures.

Wait for a Yao-Ye-LJ melodrama like a soap opera fit for primetime. What netizens can cook up will be infinitely more colorful than anything on TV.

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