Chinese culture and racism

I’ll begin this with an anecdote. There are a few people involved, all of whom are my friends:
J – J is interested in Chinese culture and stuff. J started the intro Chinese language sequence last fall. J is white, and kind of a weird and awkward person.
K, X – Two of my closest friends. They are both Chinese.
M – Another good friend of mine, but not as close as K and X. M is Chinese too.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I was playing soccer with M and some other of our friends. After the game, when we were walking back to our rooms, it was observed that everyone except me was Chinese and could speak Mandarin. They started talking to each other in Mandarin. M told me that I should learn Chinese. I protested that this would result in awkward situations of me always wanting my friends to help me. M said that I shouldn’t be worried about this — as long as I wasn’t annoying about it, my friends would love to help me learn Chinese.

Now, I had been planning to study a language next year already. I was thinking about German, because that’s useful for reading maths (especially analytic number theory — Riemann anyone?), but if I switch to finance then German would be useless (and Chinese potentially useful). Chinese is probably harder, but I don’t have any good friends who are fluent in German, whereas many of my friends are fluent in Mandarin. I hadn’t been weighting this factor too heavily, because J tries to go to friends for help, and they all find it very awkward and unpleasant, and I didn’t want to be like that to my friends. But now M is telling me that my friends actually would want to help me — maybe it’s just because J is an awkward person, not because going to Chinese friends for help with Chinese actually is inherently annoying.

So, naturally, I have been thinking about this lately (course sign-ups for next year are coming up), and I talked to K and X about it (separately). They both reacted in exactly the same way — the thought that I would be learning Chinese made them very uncomfortable. They didn’t explicitly advise me against it, but they both obviously didn’t want me to do it.

Now, this was very confusing for me. Why shouldn’t I? The fact that they didn’t try to dissuade me and didn’t give reasons suggests that it’s for their own personal reasons, rather than because they think it’s a bad idea for me. They didn’t warn me that it would be hard and that I wouldn’t succeed, or anything like that. So, I can only imagine that either (a) they fear that I’m going to do what J does and annoy them [this does not apply to X because X only speaks Shanghai and I'd be learning Mandarin], (b) they fear that my attempts to speak Chinese amongst our group of friends as I’m learning it will result in awkward situations [this can apply to X] — J does this sort of thing from time to time, or (c) they are inherently disturbed by the fact that a white person would be learning to speak Chinese.

So, it seems unfair to my friends, who are educated, open-minded thinkers, to make such an accusation as (c). Normally I wouldn’t even think of it. But there are some problems with (a-b). First, and what causes me the most concern, is that M said (a-b) shouldn’t be a concern. What do X and K know that M doesn’t? He knows J. He knows the general Chinese student body here better than X and K do. Also, regarding (a), X and K should know me well enough to know that if they don’t want me to ask them for help, I won’t ask them. I know plenty of other people that I could ask. Like M. And regarding (b), they should know that I’m socially aware enough to recognize that my weak attempts at Chinese in conversation were awkward, and hold myself back from speaking (you learn a lot by just listening, anyway).

I’ve also seen their reactions when J tries to speak Chinese around them. They get these looks of utter disgust on their faces. It’s not just that J said something wrong or had poor inflection and they’re recognizing the error. They’re genuinely repulsed by it.

So, what could it be? I can think of several explanations, but I don’t know enough about Chinese culture to say which it is. I hope someone could enlighten me.

1. Respect for the language. This is the kindest explanation I can think of, and I’ve seen other evidence for it too. The hypothesis is that Chinese have much more respect for their language than we Western boors, and they really are horrified to hear someone butchering it. They don’t want me to learn Chinese because they know that for a long time (possibly forever) I will not be good enough to speak well. They don’t want me to be dishonoring their language by speaking it poorly. And I can understand this, to some extent. If this is the reason, I would be willing to avoid speaking Chinese casually when I wasn’t good enough at it to do the language justice. But why should that stop me from learning it? Why shouldn’t they want me to come to understand and have the same respect for the language as they do? Isn’t other people’s interest in the language an honor for it? Maybe I just don’t understand this…

2. Cultural isolationism. I have seen a lot of evidence for this in the attitudes of many Chinese, Taiwanese, and other East Asian people I’ve talked to. It’s a general attitude that non-Asians can’t understand their culture. One of my good friends in high school once told me about a Korean doctor who falsified lab results in order to enhance his career. We talked a bit about his reasons, and my friend essentially told me that I couldn’t possibly understand because I wasn’t Asian. So my friends don’t want me to learn Chinese because they think that white people (and non-Chinese generally) are unable to properly understand and appreciate Chinese culture, and they are uncomfortable as soon as a foreigner gets serious about it. They don’t care if I have Chinese friends and play Chinese games, but once I’m making a serious effort to learn about and get involved with Chinese culture, they’re against it. I find this attitude repulsive and I really hope that my friends don’t feel this way. I believe that Eastern culture and thought is superior in a number of ways to Western culture and thought, and I’d like to learn and understand more. Why do they want to stop me? Why shouldn’t they share their ideas? How could this possibly harm them? I don’t understand.

3. My friends are assholes, and it’s nothing to do with Chinese culture. This is possible. I should hope I am better than that at making friends, though…

I’d really love to hear anyone’s thoughts about this, especially a non-Asian who has been immersed in Asian culture, or an Asian who has some perspective about my friends’ side of this situation.