“I WOULD be lying if I told you that when, back in October, one of my students peered over the toilet stall door to wish me a ‘Happy Mid-Autumn Festival’, it was the first and only time I have struggled to hide my dignity in China.”

The foregoing was written by American educator, Hayley Fletcher in the ‘Expats Eye’ column of the BEIJING REVIEW of June 11, 2009. In the course of the thought-provoking article, Fletcher goes on to relate other awkward experiences as she explores the concept of personal privacy and the disparity of the concept across East and West.
First of all: What is privacy? According to Wikipedia, privacy may be defined as the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby reveal themselves selectively.
Privacy is sometimes related to anonymity; the wish to remain unnoticed or unidentified in the public realm. When something is private to a person, it usually means there is something within them that is considered inherently special or personally sensitive.
There are many types of privacy: Informational privacy; medical privacy; financial privacy; political privacy; and more. I may address these down the road, but right now, I am fascinated by personal privacy and how it shapes social interactions.

Painful experience
Why is it that something we think nothing of doing may be an intimate and painful exposure for someone else? Fletcher recounts another experience:
“In hospitals, modesty is often thrown to the wind, as treatments are carried on in front of milling crowds. When I had my own medical examination, people were allowed to walk in and out of the consultation room, and observe the many tests that were being carried out. Indeed, the curious crowd that had formed around the ultrasound monitor where my test results were being projected was nothing short of bewildering.”
The term “privacy” means many things in different contexts. Different people, cultures, and nations have a wide variety of expectations about how much privacy a person is entitled to, or what constitutes an invasion of privacy.
In the majority of Western countries, a person’s medical condition is a very private matter, to be discussed between the patient and doctor, and sometimes family and very close friends.
More readings on the subject continue to prove that privacy (at least as understood in the West) is not a universal concept. I was quite shocked to learn that privacy, as in freedom from public intrusion, is a concept that has developed in relatively modern times.

Many languages lack a specific word for “privacy”. Such languages either use a complex description to translate the term (such as Russian, which combines the meaning of solitude, secrecy, and private life), or borrow English “privacy” (as in Indonesian Privasi or Italian la privacy).
‘The long march to privacy’, an article published in THE ECONOMIST on January 12, 2006, explains:
“It is surely telling that the characters that make up ‘yinsi’, the Chinese word for “privacy”, carry the connotations of illicit secrets and selfish, conspiratorial behaviour. The notion of privacy has not traditionally been valued in China, and proof of that is on display everywhere. The country’s public lavatories are often open-plan affairs, where locals unabashedly squat, elbow-to-elbow, as they tend to their business.”
The article supports Fletcher’s experience, saying that in hospitals, modesty is often thrown to the wind, as treatments are carried out in full view of strangers.
In the most casual of social interactions, complete strangers think nothing of asking each other details about their salary, weight, and so on that most Westerners would not share, even with close friends.
Another source, seeking to explain why privacy is important, cited two main reasons: The first is that privacy helps individuals maintain their autonomy and individuality. People define themselves by exercising power over information about themselves.
A second reason that privacy is important is because of its functional benefits. This area has been especially slippery for policymakers because they have often used the term “privacy” to refer to one or more of privacy’s benefits. For example, anonymity and pseudonymity protect the privacy of people’s identities, which has the functional benefit that someone may speak at a political rally or go to a bar and not have to answer later to political opponents or unwanted suitors.

Modesty
Anonymity and pseudonymity both lend to privacy, and these act as safeguards for safety and peace of mind. Most people have a strong sense of privacy in relation to the exposure of their body to others. This is an aspect of personal modesty.
A person will go to extreme lengths to protect this personal modesty, the main way being the wearing of clothes. Other ways include the building of walls, fences, screens, partitions, and by maintaining a distance.
People who go to those lengths expect that their privacy will be respected by others. At the same time, people are prepared to expose themselves in acts of physical intimacy, but these are confined to exposure in circumstances, and to persons of their choosing. Even a discussion of those circumstances is regarded as intrusive, and typically unwelcome.
Have you ever had a casual interaction, in which a complete stranger asked you what was your weight, salary or so on? For most Westerners, topics such as these are not for sharing, even with friends. Yet, in some cultures — I have to cite China again — these questions are asked to show friendly feelings of interest and care for wellbeing.
In short, understanding the culture you live in is of crucial importance to avoid misunderstandings, and to help us learn why the concept of privacy is viewed so differently.