2. Success and happiness in China
2.1 Chinese views on happiness and success and their relationship to food
Confucius said: ‘They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.’ [34]
In China things are changing fast and only the ‘love’ for good food does not. Food and cooking traditionally played a big role in Chinese society, following the ancient teaching that 'food is heaven for people’. Some of the most frequently used words in China are food, eating and success! No wonder, as in China business has long been conducted over banquet tables and every Chinese friend will tell foreigners that no meeting or social gathering is considered complete without a good meal.
The philosopher and writer Lin Yutang[35] wrote about 100 years ago:
‘How a Chinese spirit glows over a good feast! How apt is he to cry out that life is beautiful when his stomach and his intestines are well filled! From this well filled stomach suffuses and radiates a happiness that is spiritual. The Chinese relies upon instinct and his instinct tells him that when the stomach is right, everything is right’.[36]
Food has been and remains an instrument to successful relationships between people at all levels in China. Food is often regarded as a living metaphor that implies power and responsibility over others. About 100 years ago, the Chinese government called the job of the chief executive “making adjustments to the tripods”; a tripod in Chinese refers to a cooking utensil. This term entails adjusting the flavors of the dishes being cooked in order to please customers' tastes. And just like a capable diplomat, the talented cook uses talent and technical skills.
Clever cooks who created outstanding food have had unusual access to power and success throughout Chinese history, for example Yi Yin, who had been a famous cook and slave known as Ah Yeng. He cooked for Emperor Tang, ruler of the Shang Dynasty from 1600 BC till 1100 BC, who became persuaded of Yi's diplomatic and social abilities after eating his dishes. Yi Yin became China's first prime minister and eventually assisted Emperor Tang to destroy Jie, the last ruler of the Xia Dynasty from 2100 BC to 1600 BC.
2.2 History of Chinese happiness and success research
The occupation with happiness in China has a long history and tradition, reaching more than 2300 years back to the Warring States Period from 475 to 221 BC. During that time a man named Mencius laid unprecedented emphasis on human nature and the role of the mind in the quest for happiness.[37] He was born about 190 years after Confucius during the same era as the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi and the Greek philosopher Plato. Mencius and Confucius shared many characteristics as they were both born in the area of modern Shandong Province, were teachers by profession and they had traveled extensively to provide philosophical and political counsel to various rulers during a very politically tense period. Confucian philosophy is wordy and has been the most powerful influence shaping the Chinese culture and the conceptions of Chinese people for more than 2000 years. According to Confucius’ observations and teachings, happiness could be achieved through knowledge, benevolence and harmony of the group. Mencius has been called by some Chinese scholars the pioneer of positive psychology, because The Book of Mencius provides lengthy debates on happiness, in which he claims that within people lie the ‘sprouts of virtue’, and if people nourish these ‘sprouts’ of identification and sympathy and extend such feelings to broader social and political relationships, they would be filled with a flourishing sense of irrepressible and enthralling joy. Mencius believed that a person had a “lesser self”, the physiological self, and a “greater self”, the moral self, and he was convinced that the mind played a mediating role between those two. Personal fulfillment and happiness would come from getting the priorities right between these two.[38]
Another early piece of work in history devoted to happiness is said to be from Zhuangzi, a Chinese philosopher, who was born about 2,300 years ago. He wrote an essay with the title “Ultimate Happiness,” which is now a chapter of the book named Zhuangzi, after the author. One of his most famous thoughts might be the following: “Instead of running around pointing fingers, why not laugh? Better than laughing why not go along with things? Then you can experience the mysterious oneness of the ‘Dao’. Whereas Confucius placed emphasis on human relationships, Mencius on rationality, Zhuangzhi, and Daoists in general, rejoice in nature, and particularly the mysterious ‘Dao’, which is manifested through our natural surroundings. For Mencius, Buddha and Aristotle, the role of the mind is critical in the quest for happiness. Zhuangzhi and other Daoists, on the other hand, argue that thinking too much is not desirable as it would lead us away from the intuitive Dao. For Zhuangzi, ultimate happiness is wuwei, the skill of doing nothing against the ‘Dao’, which can be translated as “way”. “Dao”, is the source of a much deeper form of happiness, which only needs to be harnessed, as we are in the midst of nature and therefore part of the Dao itself. This is done through the practice of wuwei, which is the skill of “going along with things” (see chapter 4.2)[39]
But despite this long history of Chinese occupation with happiness, research studies on Chinese happiness are not sufficient in terms of extent and depth. The first studies on happiness reach back to 2006 and most recent studies on happiness in China are based on the data collected by academic institutions, for example the China Social Sciences Academy, which are in general not available to the public. Also, their validation is often hard to assess. Relevant literature can be summarized as either theoretical studies or empirical analysis. Theoretical studies include Guangqiang Tian and Liyan Yang’s attempt to introduce the mainstream economic approaches into happiness research. By constructing a standard theoretical model, they demonstrated the existence of a critical income level. Empirical analysis began to appear in recent years, mostly after 2006, and the number is still very small, including Chuliang Luo’s study from 2006, who used data from China’s Social Sciences Academy to detect the subjective well-being in urban and rural residents, and Daiyan Peng and Baoxin Wu’s study in 2008 about the relationship between income gap and farmers life satisfaction in rural Hebei and Hubei provinces.
2.3 Chinese research results on happiness and China’s global rankings
2.3.1 Chinese definitions of happiness
On Chinese TV, one can find an increasing number of TV series and shows about ‘happiness’, whether it be ‘Tears of happiness’, ‘Sunny Happiness’ or a recent CCTV program, which asked countless people from all over China whether or not they felt happy in today's society. The show sparked much debate within China, as many people claimed that happiness is a subjective feeling which cannot be accurately assessed by respondents in front of a television camera. However, the program has led to the fact that the question, how to define happiness, got into the consciousness of many Chinese.
No wonder that ‘what does happiness mean to you?’ has become a popular question in oral English classes. English teachers in high schools encourage students to think about happiness, but viewed as an emotion. When they are asked ‘what is happiness?’ students get choices to answer the question with adjectives like ‘joyful, positive, comfortable or even sweet’. School books provide answers on what should make students happy in the form of pictures of people eating Chinese food, spending time with relatives, singing karaoke or climbing a mountain. Some teachers go further and let students discuss how they can become happy and how to understand this as a function of their own ability to increase their ‘capacity for enjoyment’. ‘The more we can enjoy what we have, the happier we are’, said one teacher, as a 18 year old student mentioned that he cannot be happy, because he has no car, apartment or money on his bank account.
The word ‘happiness’ did not appear in the Chinese language until recently; instead, the word ‘fu’ was used, which is perhaps the closest equivalent of happiness in ancient Chinese writings. However, its definition, which is very vague, usually means ‘anything positive and good in life’. In ancient times, longevity, prosperity, health, peace, virtue and a comfortable death