Can you see me?

Yesterday morning, I had my first Mandarin lesson. While we are already cramming in a vast amount of material into a three-week time span, we are also playing catch up with a class that has been together for months now. In other words, yesterday's lesson was a crash course in Pinyin, greetings and numbers in order to get us to where we need to be to start learning more substantive material. One strange thing I noticed was our instructor's lack of eye contact. She would look down to point out the finer details on our Pinyin charts and would direct her eyes towards the ceiling when speaking from the whiteboard. Even when asked questions, she would deliberately avoid making eye contact with the speaker. Given the intensive nature our Mandarin coursework, we spent two and a half hours without looking our instructor in the eye. Cultural differences aside, averting eyes when speaking can be uncomfortable and distracting for someone who has grown up in a society where eye contact is an expected part of daily communication.

My apologies, it's the only photo I took that is relevant to this entry's topic.

One of our Taiwanese guides told me that typically school children will avoid making eye contact with their teachers and raising their hands in class out of a sense of embarrassment, meaning that there likely exists some kind of informal taboo against eye contact within Taiwan. In my travels to Japan, I learned it is common to keep one's eyes cast downwards when speaking to someone of superior status such as a teacher or a boss. I noticed that our instructor would specifically look upwards, so I am not sure if she did so out of a sense of superiority or because public speakers are sometimes trained to look out over a crowd when making a speech. Similarly, in Seoul, I found that people tend to avoid eye contact with unfamiliar people. As I already discussed, eye contact is a major aspect of western communication, especially the United States. One who avoids eye contact in the US might be described by some as shifty or untrustworthy. I understand that there are many cultural differences between my home country and Taiwan, so I do not distrust my instructor, although I do find the lack of eye contact to be a major distraction in the learning process.

Eye contact is not something I can change. I will not ask my instructor to look us in the eyes because I understand that doing so might cause her a measure of discomfort. I am accepting this unusual behavior as a minor feature in Taiwanese and broader Asian culture. For my next blog, I will discuss the differences in architecture between Taiwan, the United States and South Korea. I am no expert on architecture, but I have noticed significant differences in structure and color due to factors relating to philosophy, politics and classical influence.