ABSTRACT
About eight decades ago, when the Chinese writer Lin Yutang worried about how the world understood China, he did not trust Europeans who spoke Chinese too well, because they “might develop certain mental habits akin to the Chinese and are regarded by their compatriots as queer” (Lin, 1935, p. 14). Nor did he trust Chinese who spoke English too well, because they might develop western mental habits and become “denationalized.” The only way, for him, to survey and understand his own country and people was to look at China by searching “not for the exotic but for the common human values, by penetrating beneath the superficial quaintness of manners and looking for real courtesy” (Lin, 1935, p. 14), which exists in the real Chinese living their daily experiences.
