Why Chinese people don’t find talking about money taboo
- While talking about money can be taboo in the West, many Chinese people discuss money with candour
- Apart from religious practices and ancient superstitions, booming private wealth in recent decades helped remove social taboos around openly talking about money
Shao Yifei still remembers the first time she introduced her fiancé to her parents.
Almost immediately, they asked three questions: “What does he do for a living, how much does he make and how much property does he own?”
From anecdotes about Chinese immigrant parents’ thriftiness to reports of Chinese tourists buying out luxury stores in Europe, the stereotype of Chinese people loving money is pervasive. It was the main punchline of a Netflix comedy special by Daily Show comedian Ronny Chieng.
While talking about money can be taboo in the West, many Chinese people discuss money with candour.
University of Hong Kong anthropology professor David Palmer recalls how, during one of his first bus rides in Chengdu, in 1993, he was asked much money he made.
“When I sat on the bus and people started to chat with me, the first question was, ‘So where are you from?’,” he says. “And the second question was, ‘What do you do?’ And the third question was, ‘How much do you make a month?’”
“Everybody asked me the same three questions, in that order, whether I was in a bus, a train, or a restaurant,” he recalls.
