Tom O'Malley

“Strangely enough, though, it is also a country where, contrary to a general Western misconception, there is almost no feeling whatever for aristocracy by birth - although the superiority conferred by education is universally respected. Man is man; and although the advantages of wealth and power are obvious enough, it never occurs to him to be ashamed of any condition in which destiny has placed him. So in China one never finds, for instance, the embarrassed class consciousness that so often makes for mutual awkwardness in the West. Social false shame is simply unheard of, unknown; and it is a great relief to be done with it.”
― George Kates, The Years That Were Fat: The Last of Old China