The difference between the East and the West

In The Missionary Call, David Sills gives an excellent explanation of the difference between how people relate in Eastern cultures compared with Western cultures:

"Every culture uses language for two reasons. One is to communicate information and the other is to maintain relationships. The culture of the United States uses language in this order of priority. Relational, face-to-face cultures of the group-0riented societies of the world operate with an opposite order. Our culture of direct communicators expects honest answers to questions; in fact, our society depends on it. But indirect communication cultures answer with what you want to hear in order to appease and avoid the awkwardness that saying no to a request might cause. The resulting confusion makes the North American missionary seem rude and demanding at times, while he things that people in the new culture are liars who are incapable of telling the truth" (139).

That last sentence described us for at least the first year of our time in China. I really wish I would have read something like this before we went over!