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The Chinese Have a Word for It : The Complete Guide to Chinese Thought and Culture
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price:
$17.95
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$12.21
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Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.0014
EAN: 9780658010781
ISBN: 0658010786
Label: McGraw-Hill
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 528
Publication Date: 2000-09-01
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Studio: McGraw-Hill
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Editorial Reviews:
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This is an ideal introduction to the Chinese language and culture for business people, students, and travelers. It sheds light on the character and personality of the Chinese by examining the meaning, historical significance, and use of more than 300 Chinese expressions. This practical guide will help readers anticipate Chinese behavior and avoid cultural faux pas.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Flawed - but interesting & useful read
Comment: The lack of pinyin is a serious flaw for Chinese learners; with pinyin you could look up the characters in the Wenlin dictionary.
Most of what I read rings true even though the author's perspective appears tainted. If you can read through that bias it can help you better understand the Chinese when you are on the ground there.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ugh...
Comment: I am a student of Mandarin Chinese, and that is why this book looked so appealing.
This book is nothing more than the opinions of an amateur anthropologist. As others have said, it is full of value judgments and is condescending. It contains no references or citations. It could have been written 100 years ago. Its only value is as a study of what arrogant authors will churn out to make a buck. The suggested pronunciations are of limited value because they are incomplete and without tones. There are some interesting parts and it is a very easy read, but I wouldn't trust any of it to be 100% accurate.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A good book to complement your bookshelf but
Comment: not a good book to form the basis of your understanding of Chinese culture, by a long shot. While other reviews have gone into detail about the author's lack of understanding of Chinese culture, or rather his bias, it's the two critical aspects of Chinese written language Mr. De Mente neglects that is even more important - namely the lack of emphasis on calligraphy and the radicals (sub-characters) that make up each character.
This complexity is what gives Chinese so many more dimensions and to have him continually delve into the same theme of a subservient and troubled non-individual culture takes so much away from that.
Now for the good. The author does give you a lot of information, but only in passing. The remaining legwork remains yours, which is what an author should do in the first place - inspire you to want to learn on your own. This is a decent source to refer to for research or if you are simply curious about Chinese. While his bias is inherent, it is not altogether off the mark given the standard of living in China even in this day and age. Refusing to embellish and feed the Western reader ambiguous Eastern mysticism easily distinguish the writer from the typical writings about Chinese culture and language.
With all that said, this is only a work you should buy AFTER you have already formed an informed and detailed opinion about Chinese culture and thought. If not, you will definitely get an inaccurate impression that will only harm your ability to learn. Great tidbits and trivia all along the way, but skip this incomplete guide if you don't have time to burn.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fraught with language errors and cultural misconceptions
Comment: The author paints China as this complex system of mannerisms and beliefs, when people are just people here in China. If you want a truly real perspective on China, I suggest you buy another book. If you are going to be on a plane for 14 hours, then it might be worthwhile to flip around in it, as it touches on a few interesting topics.
Although the book tends to get it right on the larger scale of things, I thought the author must have been a person who collaborated the book from previous texts while on a "study vacation" of no more than 2 years in China. As soon as I read the first section on love, I hastily flipped to the front of the book to see when this book was published; horrificially I discovered it was first published in 2000 and furthermore would like to note was horrified as I was sure the book must have been published in the late 80s.
There are so many language errors in this book, even of the Chinese characters written on the top of each section, that this author lost all credability with me immediately. The author attempts to portray that he is an expert on the subject of China, but I kept wondering the entire time: "Who edited this book? They should have caught these language errors." For example on page 26 entitled "Engaging in Melancholy", the correct romanization of the character should be qiu, not chou; and the first thing I thought of was "stinky" (which is one of the translations for the word chou).
Another culturally insensitive, completely erroneous, and embarassing mistake is that the author contends that the word 'haole' (a Hawaiian word) translate to "white pig", while discribing other cultural ways of terming foreigners (see page 145). Having absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the book and being completely in error, I wish the editor or the author would have removed the unnecessary comment.
Furthermore on page 145 the author asserts the term yang gui zi means "ocean ghosts", when in fact the character yang was used specifically to describe foreign things or items during the Opium War (things coming from beyond the ocean), during which this specific use of the language came out. The term should be corrected to mean "foreign devil".
Again, page 404 title "A Chinese Nooner", the correct romanization should be wu xiu, not wu xin, or more colloquially refered to as zhong xiu.
Anyway, maybe I am being picky...but this book does not represent China. If I could take the subjects in this book and write my own paragraph on them, I think it would be a lot different. That's the beauty of China, everyone takes away something different. I just have a lot more positive view than the author.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book deserves 5 stars...
Comment: But I'm going to give it four because the fort collins reviewer who points out the author's "bitter, judgemental, and condescending interpretation" is actually correct. I wouldn't characterize De Mente so harshly, but as much as the author loves and understands Chinese culture, it's clear that De Mente just doesn't get it. He points out, for example, a quotation from Mao Zedung who said that the Chinese are like grass. If you mow them over, more will grow to replace them. De Mente uses this example to shock western sensibilities and show how far "behind" the Chinese are in individual rights. Yet this is what makes China China: the focus on society and not the individual. For what it's worth, though, individual rights are coming to China because the Chinese want them. And so De Mente's judgements while perhaps inappropriate are not irrelevant. Personally, my biggest criticism of this book is that every Chinese word he presents is accompanied with his own transcription that I found worthless. I would've preferred that he used pinyin with tonal markers. But that's a small criticism considering the focus of the book is the exposition of each word, a collection of maybe a 100 essays, that give wonderfully concise -- and ignoring the subjective judgements, accurate -- summaries of Chinese culture.
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