Chapter Two Different Manifestations of Privacy

Different values and traditions in China and Western societies lead Chinese and westerners have different requirements for privacy and different ways to pay attention to privacy, therefore there are differences in the manifestations of privacy. This is particularly reflected in space culture, that is physical space in China and psychological distance in western countries.

2.1 Physical Space in China

It is famous that Chinese people prefer advocating the construction of walls to protect their own. Chinese people are used to using walls, fences and other things to get their house or garage surrounded. Wrapped with the circle structure, people feel more secure, and it seems to them that their privacy is naturally protected. The Great Wall and the Forbidden City are typical examples. So, from the ancient times to the present, in Chinese dynasties, the establishment of a new nation must be accompanied by newly built wall to consolidate the country and newly built palace for the maintenance of security. Today is still the case, both State and family, urban or rural, factory or school, garrison or park, walls regardless of high or short, wide or narrow, soil or iron, and even wood or bamboo fence can be seen everywhere. Such culture of advocating walls of Chinese people is in fact a protection of group interest, a maintenance of group privacy.

In the past, the traditional Chinese family is a large family of three generations or three generations above, dozens of people living in a mansion courtyard. A typical Chinese-style home must include houses, courtyards, walls and a closed door. Within its walls, the family form a self-contained and indivisible whole. Wall, as a physical barrier, isolates the family home from the outside world, and bounded by walls, things within it should not be published. Outside the traditional courtyard walls, there is a protective screen wall to ensure that even if the door is wide open, outsiders can not spy on the secret.

In general, Chinese architecture is a framework structure which has a high transparency while the shape of western architectural structure is a block structure which has a strong entity. Western architectural entities reflect that western culture is derived from individuals and emphasizes individual entities while Chinese culture focuses groups, continuity and mutual support. In many western cities and schools, there are no walls or other spacers, western concrete buildings and

7

castles mostly emphasize spacious and commodious vision. In China, tall walls are a protection to safeguard the common interest of the group, people stress the collective field, while the construction of the west is more a manifestation of showing the individual pursuit and field independence.

2.2 Psychological Distance in Western Countries

Westerners are extremely sensitive to distance, especially psychological distance, they pay special attention to protect their private lands and private space, so as not to be violated. Unlike Chinese culture of advocating walls, in the Western cities or villages, walls are difficult to find, the dividing line of each territory does not seem to exist, however, the real dividing line is in fact exists in the Westerners’ hearts. The bordering neighbors separate from each other by psychologically specific neighborhood boundaries and they never enter someone else’s territory without permission. In the West, if a person intrudes into other’s house, the consequences will be disastrous. “A man’s home is his castle” is an important tenet of the westerners, it’s an expression of the Western concept of individual privacy.

Within the house, rooms are completely isolated from one to another, each family member has his own separate room, the room is his personal site and private area in order to ensure the privacy of the individual. Even parents do not have the right to entry into the children’s room without permission, the unauthorized break into the room is considered impolite and does not respect the privacy of others. The personal belongings in the room should not be utilized if one does not seek the consent of the owner, because it involves personal privacy. This shows that the privacy protection awareness of westerners has penetrated into all aspects of family life, the concept of privacy has become one of the basic values of Western culture.

In social interaction, each westerner needs to have their own field, an invisible space around his body that don’t allow others to invade. Such as what is mentioned in a book, “Westerners together, if there is an outsider walk into one’s 18-inch range, it will be seen as an intrusion even under a large crowd.”3 From this we can see that westerners need a space distance around them to protect their intangible territory. Westerners do not want to interfere in other people’s privacy, of course, do not want others to intervene and interfere in their privacy. Some of the common problems in Chinese culture and conversation, such as age, income, religion, hobbies, marriage and family, constitute a violation of privacy rights for westerners.

In short, due to the different concepts of privacy, the manifestations of privacy in China and western countries are largely different, for the physical space of Chinese, people should respect

8

the distinct boundaries; for the psychological distance of westerners, language learners have to develop cross-cultural awareness to familiarize with the invisible dividing lines.

Chapter Three Different Protections of Privacy

Privacy is a psychological environment of confidential nature, it is a state of mind existing in certain groups or individuals that do not want or can not be known for another person or group. Therefore, in order to protect their privacy right, Chinese and westerners take measures from different aspects, such as self-adjustment in China and legal-defence in western countries.

3.1 Self-adjustment in China

Chinese are used to regarding the feelings and attitudes as a matter of personal things, a kind of privacy, they never let out but rely on psychological mechanism adjustment to protect it. For instance, Chinese women will put one hand over mouth or turn away when they laugh, this is a typical example for the remedy of the lost control of personal feelings.

For privacy, Chinese adopt a psychological self-restraint compression, they curb on the preferences of the opposite sex, they simmer the anger inside their heart, they hide their feelings of some sensitive issues, such as sex, the beauty of the human body, joy, risk, difficulty or distress. The strong desire of things, the pursuit of beauty and even the trepidation of family member’s serious illness is treated as personal privacy, will be processed with self-repression to protect. So, to remain silent is a very important means of regulating privacy for Chinese.

In the society of human existence, there are the social side and of course the personal side, but Chinese culture emphasizes the social side more than the personal side, so Chinese bury their true feelings deeply in heart to accommodate group needs and harmonious social development. In this way, under social control, individuals survive in a culture of shame, they are embarrassed or can not be too casual to express their feelings and attitudes, otherwise they will lose face. China’s traditional culture and expectations of society require people to be self-controlled, calm and moderate when dealing with others.

The degree of self-restraint of Chinese to adjust privacy is relevant to social factors, which means that they know there are some things you can speak and some other things that can not speak. In general, the degree of restraint is directly related to the closeness of social relations. In

9

China, along with the older age and higher education level, people are inclined to only report the good news instead of the bad to their parents. The greater age and the higher educational level they are, the less willingness they have to tell their own difficulty, distress and risk to their parents, because they don’t want to share pain and sadness with the elderly. This traditional virtue of filial piety is also a factor that conduces Chinese to be self-restraint and self-adjust when they face the music.

3.2 Legal Defence in Western Countries

Westerners’ protection of privacy is embodied in the use of law to maintain privacy right.

Privacy right, in a legal sense, is first put forward by two scholars in the United States. In 1890, law professors Samuel D.Warren and Louis D.Brandis of Harvard University published an article called “The Right to Privacy”. Since then, privacy is classified as a natural right of people, and privacy issues are merged into the field of legal research.

Privacy is honored by a long time in the United States. Starting in the 1960s, the U.S. Court dealt with a series of privacy-related litigation that established many precedents for this litigation. Since then, the U.S. government has also developed a series of law to protect citizens’ privacy, such as “Freedom of Information Act” in 1967, “ Privacy Act” and “Family Education and Privacy Act” in l974. Then they formulated the standard to determine whether an act constitutes a violation of privacy. Firstly, to analyze whether the person has been infringed has a privacy expectation or not; secondly, privacy violations always have consequences, it would make people who have a normal sensitivity feel ashamed or emotional frustrated. Now, the law of the United States to protect privacy includes the following aspects: one shall not use a person’s name or portrait for commercial purpose without consent; people have the right to be let alone; the private behaviour of people should be protected and not subject to inappropriate publishing or exposure.

In western countries, privacy is a sacred barrier, and there are many lively examples to illustrate. Once in California, there was a policeman who checks the trash due to the detection of cases without a search warrant was brought to court for the violation of the citizen privacy. Although the final court made a judgment conducive to the police or to facilitate the work of the police from a starting of protecting the interest of the community. But before long, Supreme Court of some states have recognized in the jurisprudence that in the aspect of citizen privacy, they should provide more stringent protection than the Constitution of the United States, and the police must hold a search warrant when they check the garbage. In 2004, Seattle police found a man cultivate cannabis at home via infrared monitor, before this man being judged, he accused the

10

police of invading his privacy and asked the court not to consider the evidence obtained through infrared technology. Moreover, “Family Education and Privacy Act” provides that the school has no power to investigate the family situation of students, and parents have no right to probe the performance of students at school. Thus it can be seen that legal-defence is the most important device for westerners to protect their privacy.

To make a summary, under the influence of Chinese traditional culture, people in China developed a moderate characteristic to deal with things and other persons. In the issue of privacy, they adopt a self-adjustment means to protect themselves from hurt. While the marine culture with dense commercial element affects westerners a lot, they tend to protect their privacy right with legal-defence, a more effective way.

Conclusion

This paper mainly talks about some obvious differences of privacy between China and the western countries in the aspects of orientations, manifestations, and protections. The orientation of Chinese privacy is rooted in collectivism and Chinese pay much attention to the group privacy, while westerners pay more attention to the individualism and emphasize the personal privacy. Influenced by different traditional cultures, there are different manifestations of privacy, Chinese people advocate the use of physical entity such as walls to show their ownership while westerners are more likely to use psychological consciousness to affirm their invisible territory. The means of protection is another obvious difference, from which we can conclude that Chinese are in favor of self-adjustment while westerners prefer legal-defence when they take measures to protect privacy.

After the analysis of the different attitudes of privacy between China and the western countries in this paper, to some extent, language learners can have a better understanding about Chinese and western cultures. Though this paper is still not comprehensive, it provides more details in the explanation of privacy from aspects of orientations, manifestations, and protections. On the one hand, it can make more Chinese and western language learners know Chinese and western privacy concepts better. On the other hand, it can contribute to promote the communication between Chinese and western cultures, which is the essential part of international cross-cultural communication. Because of the limited time and personal ability, this paper only

11