The sins of the Chinese

Which one is the worst of all?

During my first three years in China, I worked as an English teacher. My job, as a foreigner, was to expose my students to a ‘proper’ English accent (meaning, any foreigner’s), since their local teachers usually have very strong accents and it is generally difficult for Chinese students to practice their conversational skills, with a much stronger emphasis in reading and writing.

So I had to keep coming up with new things in the classroom to keep them interested, as my classes had no grammar, no rules and no homework: it was just the rather daunting challenge of getting mostly very shy students (the vast majority of them had never seen a foreigner in their lives) to try and open their mouths and speak in a foreign language. Needless to say, I used a lot of games, competitions and whatever I could think of that could pique their interest and make them speak their minds, and in time these practice taught me a great deal about Chinese culture.

I once came across this exercise which became quite popular and which I kept using from then on. It consisted of first introducing and explaining to them the words for the seven capital sins, and then start a group discussion about them, which more often than not turned into funny territory.

First of all, they couldn’t wrap their heads around the concept that Gluttony may be a cause for going to hell. OK, eating too much is unhealthy, sure, but eternal damnation surely sounds quite like a drastic punishment for such a minor transgression. Keep in mind that China has gone through more famines than you can shake a stick at, so this leniency towards overeating is not surprising. And this discussion went through all seven of the sins. Long story short, at the end of the class I always proposed a vote: the whole classroom was to rate the seven sins from most to least harmful. In the West, the classic answer is that Pride is the worst of the lot, so I wanted to compare what would be the Chinese take on this problem.

Now, I carried out out this experiment literally hundreds of times, with thousands of students aged 13 to 50, from all walks of life and from many economic extractions. And when the time came for them to vote, the results of course varied, but only in the order of places from 2 to 7. In the top spot, I never — not once — got anything other than the one, same answer:

of all those character flaws, the worst by far is Sloth.

Please take a minute to let that sink in and to think about its implications. This is a nation of close to one and a half billion people who have this one shared belief. It is an intrinsic, definitive part of their worldview. Just take a few moments to let that thought really sink in.