Authors: Eric Weiner
I click off the TV. The program was less than satisfying. It danced around the unspoken yet urgent question: What happened to all that Song-era ingenuity? And, more pointedly, does modern Chinese culture squelch creativity?
Some evidence certainly suggests that the answer is yes. On tests designed to gauge creative thinking, Chinese participants consistently underperform Western ones. Pressed to explain their findings, psychologists usually point to Confucianism, with its demand for allegiance to tradition and authority, as the culprit. The Chinese, after all, have an expression: “The first bird to fly is the one who gets shot.” It’s similar to Japan’s “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”
How can someone be creative in an environment like that? Isn’t a genius, by definition, the protruding nail, the bird in flight? A few courageous social scientists have tackled the question of culture and creativity head-on. It’s a minefield from the get-go.
For starters, there is no one definition of creativity, or even agreement on whether creativity is good or not. Some cultures place no special value on originality. Among the Katanga Chokwe of Africa, “artists work ceaselessly at a repetitive task, like making ceremonial Mwana pwo masks, yet never tire of doing so,” writes Arnold Ludwig in the
American Journal of Psychotherapy.
Likewise, the Samoans tolerate repetitive activities without getting bored.
In some cultures, creativity is viewed as something akin to a disease, a dangerous compulsion that must be contained at all costs. The Golan mask makers of western Liberia are presumed to possess supernatural skills but are regarded, writes Ludwig, as “irresponsible, vain, unreliable and untrustworthy.” Liberian parents discourage their children from entering the trade, fearful of the shame it will bring the family. Some literally try to beat these artistic propensities out of their children, but many of the wood-carvers persist, driven by a desire that they cannot name, let alone control. “They carve because they must,” concludes Ludwig.
We in the West consider creativity—and certainly creative genius—the province of a select few. Yet that is not true of all cultures. Anthropologist Marjorie Shostak interviewed members of the Kalahari Desert’s !Kung San tribe, known for their bead weaving, storytelling, and music. When asked who were the most creative members of their tribe, they invariably replied, “Everyone.” In primitive societies, most people participate in creative activities. In more “advanced” ones, creativity becomes
something special and therefore an option for fewer and fewer people.
Asian cultures—especially Confucian ones such as China and Korea—approach creativity very differently from Western ones. Westerners tend to be concerned solely with the outcome of creativity. The product, as it were. Asians care about process, the journey as much as the destination.
Also, Western cultures equate creativity with novelty; for us to consider something,
anything
, creative it must represent a radical break from tradition. Not so in Confucian countries such as China. The Chinese are less concerned with the novelty of an invention or idea and much more concerned with its utility. Not “Is this innovation new and surprising?” but “Is it useful?” In China, creativity represents not a break from tradition but a continuation of it, a circling back.
Why such different approaches? Our notions of creativity and genius are deeply rooted in our creation myths. These myths are extremely powerful. Even if you’re not the least bit religious, chances are you have internalized them. “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” The impact of those words, on the religious and the secular alike, is enormous. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is possible—indeed admirable—to create something ex nihilo, from nothing. That is what God did in creating the world, and that is what we humans aim to do, too. In this worldview, the artist (or architect or software engineer) creates something out of the blue, something that did not exist before. The creative act, like time itself, is linear. The creator starts at X and advances—in fits and starts, with plenty of coffee breaks—until he or she reaches Y.
In Chinese cosmology, though, the universe, the Tao, has no beginning nor is there a creator. There has always been
something
and always will be. The creative act, therefore, is not one of invention but of discovery. The Chinese way is
creatio in situ.
Creation in context. Confucius himself said, “I transmit but do not create,” and warned people away from the novel and unusual, lest they fall into the trap of “strange doctrines.”
It makes some sense, but I find myself resisting this Chinese notion of moving forward by looking back. When the Chinese say, “We can be creative and still honor tradition,” is that just some clever wordplay, like saying, “I can eat a dozen glazed doughnuts and still honor my diet”?
Then I read T. S. Eliot. In his brilliant essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” he argues that the new needs the old; no poet or artist exists in a vacuum. “You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.” A truly creative person, he says, perceives not only “the pastness of the past but also its presence.” Tradition is not something that innovative people and places should run from. It is something they should—they
must—
embrace.
That is exactly what the geniuses of Song-era China did. They viewed every potential innovation within a context of tradition. If it represented a natural extension of that tradition, it was adopted. If not, it was dropped. This was not a retreat from the spirit of innovation but, rather, a recognition that, as historian Will Durant would put it some eight hundred years later, “nothing is new but the arranging.” The Chinese did not despair, as we might, at the prospect of a lifetime spent reshuffling the stuff of life. They knew that great beauty is to be found in arranging. Genius even.
This helps explain why China’s golden age, unlike, say, the Italian Renaissance, was not defined by sudden (and disruptive) leaps, but, rather, gradual and steady progress. Does that make it any less remarkable? I don’t think so. All innovation is evolutionary. The difference lies in the marketing. In the West, we are skilled at making even the most minor tweaks
appear
revolutionary. Automakers and computer manufacturers (to name just two culprits) are forever launching
new and improved
models, which are, more often than not, neither. They know it. We know it. Yet we all play along, complicit in promulgating the novelty charade.
All of this would be harmless, amusing even, if we didn’t take it so seriously. Yet every day across the United States creativity consultants descend on troubled companies and inform the beleaguered workers that everything that happened until now doesn’t matter. The stuffy past is going to be torn down and a new, shiny future erected in its place, one that bears no resemblance to what came before, one that is created ex nihilo, from nothing.
That is not what the ancient Athenians believed. That is not what the Chinese of the Song Dynasty believed. And as I walk along the shores of
West Lake, its waters glistening in the afternoon sun, just as they did during Marco Polo’s time, I realize that it is not what I believe either.
I’m beginning to suspect that China’s innovation gap is, like so much in this country, an illusion. Are the modern Chinese really less creative than Westerners, or are they simply creative in a different way? I’m hoping that Dana, being both modern and Chinese, might have some answers.
We meet again, this time at one of her favorite coffee shops. Inside is a mélange of rich colors and fabrics. Chinese cozy. I order a coffee, then ask her about the alleged innovation gap. She pauses before answering.
“There might be some truth to this,” she says finally. “We have more limits, from our family life and from tradition.” It would never occur to her, she says, to disobey her parents about
anything
, and she doesn’t understand how American children get away with it.
Young Chinese face another obstacle: language. Written Mandarin consists of thousands of characters, or ideograms. The only way to learn them is by rote memorization. Starting at age six, Chinese children are required to learn five new characters
every day.
With so much cerebral space required to retain all of those characters, perhaps the Chinese simply have fewer neurons freed up for creative thinking. And unlike in, say, English or French, the Chinese language does not lend itself to improvisation or wordplay. The character is the character. Period. How different this is, I realize, from ancient Athens, where language didn’t hinder creativity but drove it.
A while later, over lunch, a feast of crunchy tofu, fried fish, and bok choy swimming in garlic sauce, I switch gears and ask Dana about the Chinese sense of humor. Humor can be an important engine of creativity. Studies have found that people who are “primed” with humor, by listening to a stand-up comedian for instance, perform better on creative-thinking exercises than a control group that didn’t listen to the comedian.
Humor was much appreciated during the Song Dynasty. Su Tungpo, for instance, possessed an “incorrigible propensity for cracking jokes at the expense of his enemies, friends, and himself,” reports his biographer Lin Yutang. I’m not so sure that comedic touch holds sway today, though.
At least one recent study found that the Chinese do not value humor as much as Westerners do, and that they do not equate humor and creativity. I ask Dana about this. Is it true?
“No. That’s not true. We value humor.” A long pause follows and I can tell by the faraway look in her eyes and the way her chopsticks have frozen in midair, hovering over the tofu, that she has more to say. “But.”
“Yes?”
“It must be reasonable humor.
Reasonable
is a very important word for the Chinese.”
Reasonable humor? At first, this strikes me as absurd. Isn’t humor the opposite of reasonableness? Isn’t humor reason on vacation?
Then I remember Arthur Koestler. In his tome
The Act of Creation
, the author and journalist devotes several chapters to the subject of humor and creativity. (It’s not easy reading; further evidence that nothing is less funny than the analysis of funny.) Koestler argues that humor and creative thinking utilize the same cognitive muscles, in a process he calls “bisociative shock.” We find something funny if it is unexpected yet still logically airtight. As an example, he cites the old joke about capitalism and communism.
“Tell me, Comrade, what is capitalism?”
“The exploitation of man by man.”
“And what is communism?”
“The reverse.”
Okay, it was probably funnier back in Koestler’s day, but the point, he says, is that humor relies on logic. The comedian toys with our rational minds and brings about “a momentary fusion between two habitually incompatible matrices.” The punch line comes as a surprise but makes perfect sense. The sudden click of logic makes a joke funny; humor
is
reasonable. Someone without a strongly developed sense of logic is unlikely to have a good sense of humor either.
But not only humor helps boost creativity. A sense of playfulness is also important. Playful kindergarten children, studies have found, perform better on divergent-thinking tasks than children who play less often. This holds true for adults as well, as the geniuses of old Hangzhou knew
well. Su Tungpo once described his painting technique as “play with ink” and, according to his biographer, “wielded his [poet’s] pen almost as if it were a toy.”
In a hopeful sign for the future of creative China, I see evidence that this playful spirit persists today. Such as in the two women I spot near my hotel, one of them wearing a faux-leopard-skin vest, playing a pickup game of badminton on the sidewalk—in the height of rush hour. Or in the arcade game I try one day, called Song Dynasty Sandbag Throwing Game. (It sounds catchier in Chinese, Dana assures me.)
Then there is this tale of playfulness writ large. For a while, a local bus company in Hangzhou ran a route called K155. The combination of letters and numbers looked like
kiss
, and that’s what everyone called it. The Kiss Bus. People rode the Kiss Bus even if they weren’t going in that direction, a wildly impractical act in an otherwise exceedingly practical nation. Then, one day, they discontinued the line. No more Kiss Bus. People were outraged. They wrote letters to the editors of the major newspapers. Bring back the Kiss Bus! they demanded. There’s no happy ending here, I’m afraid. The authorities didn’t budge.
I must be the only person in this country of 1.5 billion who can’t log on to Facebook, I think, as I pound my keyboard in frustration. I am a victim of the Great Firewall of China, the government’s ham-handed, mostly futile attempt to control what people can access online.
We consider these constraints imposed by the Chinese government an impediment to creativity and, if draconian enough, I’m sure they are. Authoritarian regimes can squelch creativity (see North Korea), but they can also foster it, albeit unintentionally. I’m thinking of those resourceful East Germans who cleverly contorted themselves into trunks of cars, or even the transmission, to sneak across the Berlin Wall.
We’re told the best way to encourage creativity is to remove all obstacles, but considerable evidence exists to the contrary. In one study, psychologist Ronald Finke asked participants to create an art project. Some people were given a wide range of materials, others little. He found that the most creative work was done by those with the fewest choices. Or
consider the difference between Western and Chinese styles of painting. Chinese painting is “vertical.” That is, some elements of the painting are mandatory, while others are left to the artist’s discretion. Western painting, on the other hand, is “horizontal”; novelty is permissible in all directions. Since Chinese artists work under greater constraints than Western ones, their creativity is channeled into a smaller space.
The same dynamic, the Power of Constraints I call it, occurs in music. Take the electric guitar, an instrument that, as Brian Eno has pointed out, is incredibly stupid. But it can do a few things well, so guitarists channel their creative energy into those few things. The musician is constrained, limited by her instrument, and that makes her not less creative but more.