While reading the story “The Woman From New York” from Ha Jin, one of the biggest things that stuck out to me was the fact that suing someone for defamation was inconceivable from the Chinese perspective. They simply could not comprehend that someone would want to sue someone else for money because they tore down their character. They say, “Who had ever heard of a court that would handle such a trifle?”, and “why on Earth would she think of “pay” as a solution? This was a matter of name and honor, which no money could buy”. This is a stark contrast to the way we think in the United States. People often think of lawsuits as the first solution to problems of this matter. We often think that if the defamation can be corrected in a court of law and some sort of compensation can be given to us, then for the most part, all is well again. That is simply not the case in China, people there do not sue nearly as much as we do. We are a society that sues people and entities every day of the year, it is a very normal thing to hear about people suing corporations or even the government, and definitely each other, but that is just not the case in China. I don’t think any of us could imagine a Chinese person suing their government, especially if they can react this adversely to the thought of a simple defamation lawsuit. It is difficult to say whether one way of doing things in this scenario is better than the other, but they are extremely different and I feel that they have impacts on the society at large as well as to how people should behave and what all is acceptable or not.
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