Do you recall the last time you did or said something embarrassing or shameful? What emotions did you feel? How did you recover? Were you able to laugh it off and move on quickly, or did the incident haunt you for a while?

If you are like most Westerners, you probably weren’t seriously affected by your blunder. You may have felt bad for a few days, but probably everyone else who witnessed your gaffe forgot about it quickly. In America, when someone messes up publicly, we say something like, “Don’t worry about it.

Everyone makes mistakes.” However, that is not the case in most Asian cultures.

One cultural concept that foreigners in Thailand—including us—have a hard time understanding is the idea of losing face. In Thai, the phrase to lose face is sia naa. The following true story is a good example of sia naa.

A foreign man who was married to a Thai woman purchased a clothing iron from a local department store. Two months after he bought the iron, the temperature dial stopped working. Angry that the iron had broken so quickly, the man found his receipt and told his wife he was going to the store to see what they would do for him. She simply told him, “Mai bpen rai,” which in this case meant, “Don’t worry about it. Just leave it alone.” But he decided to go to the store anyway.

The man and his wife went to the appliance department at the store and showed the manager the broken iron. The manager told them to take it to the manufacturer’s repair center across town. The foreigner got angry with the manager and was vocal about his feelings. After finishing his rant, he looked around for his wife, but she was gone. She was so embarrassed by her husband’s behavior that she had left the store and was walking home. It was a long time before she felt comfortable enough to set foot in the store again.

So what happened? Why didn’t the woman want her husband to go to the store, and why did she retreat from the scene? A little background about Asian culture can help us understand.

“Upholding [the] concept of cultural honor is what drives Asian relationships, thus shame and honor are inextricably tied together. They are the yin and the yang of the Asian life. They coexist together to bring harmony, cohesion, and order to Asian countries.

Because of the Asian fixation on honor, people of Asian descent learn early on to suppress emotions and personal inadequacies and problems as a means to “save face.” Since saving face is seen as bringing honor to oneself and one’s culture, then hiding one’s true feelings also carries a degree of honor. Hence, the outward display of emotions is shunned since that would be seen as losing face. Hence many Asians will do everything in their power not to show any negative emotions or feelings for fear of going against the cultural norm of collectivism. Anger, disappointment, sadness and issues related to shame such as poor grades, relational difficulties, bankruptcy, sexual issues, and addictions remain hidden in secrecy and shame” (Asian Shame and Honor, Sam Louie, www.psychologytoday.com).

In Thai culture, as in most Asian cultures, people don’t openly talk about their problems. In the story about the broken iron, the Thai woman was very uncomfortable with her foreigner husband causing a confrontation. She abandoned him in the store because it was too hard for her to watch him lose face and cause the manager of the store to lose face by the show of negative emotion.

Fear of personal inadequacy is another part of losing face in Thai culture that we’ve experienced firsthand.

A few months after arriving in Thailand, Jared was teaching an English class of students between the ages of ten and twelve. There were eight students in the class. Jared was going around the room and having the students ask and answer questions. When he called on one younger student in the class to answer a question from his classmate, the boy just sat there looking at Jared wide-eyed. Jared waited for a moment and then gave him a little hint to try and help him get going, but the boy just sat there. Some of the other students started to snicker, and then the boy started to cry. Without realizing it, Jared had exposed the boy’s weakness in front of his peers which caused him to lose face.

Now you might say, “Jared’s a great guy and a good teacher. He didn’t mean to cause the boy to lose face.” Well, of course he didn’t (and thank you for saying so!). Even Thai people would agree with you. In fact, Thai people struggle themselves with knowing how to deal with difficult situations while trying to save face. This next story, which we recently heard, highlights this fact.

In the afternoon and early evening, the road in front of one of the local markets gets very busy. Traffic jams are a big problem. People leaving work and students getting out of school all stop by the market on their way home to buy groceries, get snacks or just hang out with friends.

One day, there was an especially bad traffic jam. So, one of the shop owners went out to see what was causing it. He was surprised to see a police car parked in the middle of the road blocking traffic. He looked around and saw the officer sitting in a nearby café drinking coffee. The shop owner approached the police officer and asked him if he could please move his vehicle because it was making it difficult for people to reach the market. The shop owner was very polite and explained that at any other time it would not have been a problem for him to park his car there, but that particular time was the busiest time of the day at the market. The police officer got very upset and told the shop owner that people could just drive around his car. He wasn’t going to move it.

What happened there? Well, police officers hold a position of authority and respect in Thai culture, and the officer was likely upset that the shop owner publicly exposed his bad behavior. The shop owner wasn’t trying to shame the police officer. He was simply trying to help everyone who was being inconvenienced. In the end, both the shop owner and the police officer lost face.

So why is it important for us to understand this concept of sia naa? Well, as missionaries, our first job is to form relationships with the Thai people. However, if we lose face or cause someone else to lose face, we might permanently damage our influence with that person or even with the community at large. At the same time, we know God has called us to reach people with the gospel of deliverance and healing, especially for the emotional wounds and destructive behaviors they keep hidden for fear of losing face.

Please continue to pray that we will have wisdom to live and work effectively in Thai culture.

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