Confucius had taught that part of the process of attaining perfection, as a human being is to suppress all emotional display. So no touch, no verbal praise, not even a blatant look of pleasure. As a result, children brought up in the Confucian tradition consciously or unconsciously imbibe the notion that it is inappropriate to show any feelings no matter how sad or happy. Girls are to giggle behind their hands should laughter rise involuntarily. Tears are to be shed in the heart thus the imperative “to swallow bitterness” in order to inculcate the ability to endure suffering, the fate said to be of the female condition.
Out of a culture that prohibits the open display of human emotions comes the language of silence and indirect communication. It also gives birth to the stereotype of the “inscrutable Chinaman”. Perhaps Confucius was trying to train us to win at all poker games. A more interesting implication that flows from this Confucian dictum of no show of emotions also meant that the incest taboo universal in varied cultures is particularly enforced in Chinese households unwittingly. If fathers and daughters were so strongly prohibited by tacit cultural imperatives of no physical contact, it would seem a Herculean task indeed to try and commit incest. In fact studies have shown that when one correlates ethnicity and incest, we Chinese are pretty clean. In fact our incest taboo is so strongly enforced that people of the same surname are prohibited to get married in the old days. So two Wongs do not a marriage made. Never mind if one Wong comes from Canada and the other from Jamaica. If they are Wong and the written character is the same, ‘hello young lovers’ had better be zaijian lovers.
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