The Culture behind Masks: Why Asians like to wear them
During the COVID-19 pandemic, videos of mask-wearing Asians being attacked western countries went viral on social media. Even though these Asians living in the western were never told explicitly by the western government to wear masks at the very beginning, they still did it.
In China, before the government explicitly required everyone to wear masks, people were already stockpiling and sporting masks on the streets. If you don’t wear a mask, people will stigmatize against you on the streets of Shanghai, Hong Kong, or Tokyo. On the contrary, even when millions of people have died in the United States and the CDC advised everyone to wear masks, many people are still not wearing them.
Why are Asians generally more receptive to wearing a mask, and why are westerners so adamant about not wearing it?
1. Religion/Culture:
In contrast to western individualism, there has been a rise in Asian values in the East. These values include collectivism and communalism in Singapore, China, Japan, and Korea. People prioritize the wellbeing of a social unit (either in the form of a family, a community, or a country) in contrast to individual human rights.
This concept is deeply rooted in Confucian values of a society’s wellbeing. Confucious stressed the…
