You're listening to Roundtable, I'm Yuho Lin, joined by Steve and Yu Shen.
This year, sidebars or academic bars have been popping up across Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and all the big cities here in China, bringing fresh energy to traditional lectures.
Led by passionate young scholars, these events encourage people to grab a drink and enjoy lively discussions on topics like philosophy and cultural history.
But what's behind this trend?
And why is this approach resonating with so many young people?
But before that, learning all about the academic bars or sidebars lets first get cozy and comfy for Roundtable's Heart to Heart.
As always, it's all cozy and comfortable and this is the segment where we accept and actually welcome many different questions and comments and anything that you would send to us, we would share that, share the comments or the questions you have, and it's always the best occasion when we can actually
receive an audio message, a sound memo that you send so that you can be part of the show.
And this week is one of the good weeks that we've got a really good question that's got our attention and want to share with you the answers on the show.
Hi, Roundtable. My name is Eric and I was wondering if you had some good advice on, well, how to give advice.
I'm finding it difficult these days when I try to offer advice to people.
It seems like they don't want to listen to me or they seem to get a little offended that I'm giving any advice at all.
Now, I know that giving advice to people when they don't ask for it is considered a no -no.
But at the same time, if I see someone like a friend or a family member in a situation where I think I can help, then am I supposed to just wait for them to ask?
That doesn't seem like the right thing to do either.
So what do you think?
What's a good way to give advice that hasn't been asked for?
Is there a good way to start that conversation?
Anyway, thanks. Love the show.
Thank you. Thank you so much for that question.
And well, I don't think I have the answer you look for, so let me address to Steve first.
What do you say? Thanks, Eric, for taking part in Roundtable.
The best way to give advice for someone who has not asked for advice, I think, is to approach the conversation through suggestions rather than simply commands.
Instead of do this, do that, do this, do that, maybe phrase it in a softer way, for example, have you considered this, or have you ever thought about that?
Then you're putting the ball in their court, so to speak, and it doesn't make it sound so much like you're the person who is telling them what to do.
It's a tricky spot, though.
And from a personal point of view, the very memorable experience I've got on being received such a very subtle offering of help and kind gesture was when I was studying abroad and I know nothing about how to find the right classrooms, because, you know, like the classrooms they're everywhere, it's not really
in one building, and it was a huge campus.
And there was this British classmate of mine who obviously discovered that I was probably lost because I'm kind of late every single time.
And she was like, I'll be here at this place at a certain time if you need to go to certain places together so that we can go together instead of you discovering this whole campus on your own.
So by that I mean she wasn't really trying to stand at a higher ground and trying to show, oh, I know this better than you do, so you better listen to me.
But rather she's offering this choice.
So it's your choice that if you find yourself lost by any chance, I am able to help and I'm going to be here if you need me.
Oh, that's very good.
That's something that I learned from this girl that when you approach people, you don't have to offer everything you can, but instead just give them choices and let them choose if they want your help.
I think that is a very sweet example.
But I think she's offering her help instead of offering an advice.
An advice would be you shine your light all the time.
You should wake up 10 minutes early.
That is an advice. That doesn't feel like advice.
No, it feels like a cue thing.
That's my point. Yeah, go on.
I think what the girl is doing is that saying I can help in my way and if you want it, I'm offering it instead of I see a better opportunity or a better alternative for you in this occasion, I think you should choose the better alternative instead of the one that you're currently choosing.
And I think that is the difference.
No, I disagree. I think she was giving advice because she knew that you didn't know where you were going, but she didn't want to make you feel small or stupid by saying, look, just let me take you.
Okay, which that approach would have been totally fine with me too.
But to say I'll be here each day at this time if you need my assistance, that's kind of giving advice in the softest of ways.
That's the equivalent of saying, just come here and I'll help you with it.
So there's two. That's the thing about advice.
There's different ways you can deliver the same message, right?
But her way was a very soft, almost masked effort to get you to class on time, right?
That's how she impressed me as well.
And then I realized it's a way of approaching people for a lot of the Brits that when they talk to people, they don't just straightforwardly present themselves or their request or their offering or whatever they're trying to approach you for immediately, but rather they pass on the choices to you, like
offering help or anything.
That girl, she was just having lunch at the same cafe every day at that spot.
And that's why she offered me to, if I need it, to go find her at that cafe.
Okay, so the thing is, Ushan is a super nice girl.
And she also learns to go to the right classrooms after a while.
So that's fine. But let's say if you're not going to a certain classroom all the time, if it's not just in the school campus, it's the entire city, and she offers that I will be your personal GPS.
I will do this if you need me to.
And she promised that and one day she couldn't deliver.
Would you blame her?
Ushan would not, but some people might.
That is why I don't suggest, that's why I feel like my advice is not the device that you're looking for, Eric, because my advice is if this person does not ask for help, maybe don't try to give advice.
Yeah, and to be fair, not knowing the perfect directions to a classroom, that's not the most serious problem in the world, right?
Eric's probably referencing things that are more.
I think you should break up with your boyfriend.
Or having real problems at the office or troubles in a relationship.
My advice for relationship advice, do not give it.
Right? I made that mistake a long time ago.
I was very young. I was 23 or 24.
Do you want the story?
So I was convinced I was doing the right thing.
I was convinced. So my friend who I had known for about a year.
So it's not like we had known each other for that long.
But anyway, he was dating a girl and I found out through our circle of friends that she was engaged to someone else.
Now, see, that's your initial reaction, right?
That was also my initial reaction.
And I didn't know anything beyond that.
And this is a very sweet and sensitive guy, easily hurt.
And I thought, oh, my gosh, she is going to crush him.
She's going to destroy his heart forever.
So I very strongly suggested to him and suggested is a kind word here.
I told him, you need to get rid of this girl.
She's toxic. She's terrible for you.
I told him all her bad qualities in my mind, thinking I'm doing him a favor by opening his eyes.
Now, here's what was going on.
This was an arranged marriage to a person in another country that she had never even met before.
And she had no intention of going through with this whatsoever.
Technically, her family had her engaged, but she had no ring.
She had never met this person.
She was not really engaged.
That I did not know.
I had already said all the terrible things about her to my friend.
He never spoke to me again.
Oh, that is a tragic story.
I think it's a great example.
I thought I was doing the right thing.
Right. So my point is, if you think you're giving the right advice, particularly with someone in a relationship, having a problem or it doesn't even matter.
It could be any context.
Be very, very careful and make sure that you know all of the details.
But even if you do know all of the details, then you don't know how the other person feels about those details.
You know how you feel about it, but that's your own bias.
And that bias has nothing to do with them.
So it's best, perhaps, to tread lightly.
I think. Oh, my gosh.
When I found out that extra information, I thought, oh, yeah, that was my mistake.
Wasn't it? Not good.
So besides all that, besides all that, you should not give advice.
Advice. One last thing I think you might need is a practical way of giving advice in the occasion that you feel like you have to get it out of your heart.
You just really have to get it out of your chest.
You want the other person to know.
Then try this approach of, instead of giving advice, asking questions.
For example, Yuxian loves cats.
Let's say Yuxian got a stray cat.
Let's pretend that she does not have any cats and she has nothing.
She has no knowledge about actually keeping a cat as a pet in her family.
And she just got a stray cat.
And I'm trying to give her the advice of not keeping the cat.
So this is what I would do.
I heard that you got, currently, started to be the foster mommy of a cat.
Yeah, exactly. I'm so excited.
This is the best thing happened to me this year.
In that case, I would not give the advice.
This is my red light already.
But if she says, Yeah, cats are really lovely, but in the meantime, I always wonder whether or not I can keep really good care, take really good care of it.
I'm worried a little bit and family members are having advices and having discussions about it.
I would say things like, well, in that case, do you have you talked to people who really have cats?
Or have you done any research about rearing the cats because you are seriously considering it, right?
And if she is, her answer is, for example, not really.
I haven't thought about it that much.
I just I just feel so sorry to leave it on the street.
And then I'll give the advice as well, maybe you can find someone.
Another way of doing it is to looking for some people who have the knowledge about having a cat or is already thinking about it, planning on it, but not that haven't decide whether or not to get a stray cat or buy a cat and maybe ask them.
I think this is a very good point, Hongling, because something as complicated as raising a pet can involve a lot of responsibility and is no easy choice that these people can make themselves.
And neither is it such an easy advice.
You can just simply throw it at anyone.
So I think the idea is that try to approach in the way of asking questions and making sure that the receiving end is open to suggestions, which was going to be my next point.
Let me ask you both.
Do you are you OK taking advice?
I actually am, depending on who's giving it.
Since you already said it, yeah, in most cases.
Yeah, me too. But it does depend on who's giving it.
Yes. An expert say that if the if the listener feels like the speaker is not qualified to be giving advice to them based on the context of their problem, they are unlikely to receive it.
So experts say know your qualifications on that particular topic before you launch into your advice.
If in that very strange context that only just provided where you're picking up cats off the street, if you are a cat owner.
Yeah, that's a bit better.
Right. And you have experience with cats, you've raised pets before.
Then your audience, you shine is more likely to receive your advice rather than if you've never owned a pet in your life.
That's what the experts say.
Yes. And in the meantime, also, if you are giving advice in the sense that you're only providing different options and in the form of asking questions, it's actually a little bit better.
But even if, for example, you shine is super, super open to the idea of getting a cat and you're planning with her.
What do you get an actual cat?
Are we talking about cats?
I mean, I got that's an actual scenario from last year.
My third cat was picked from the store.
Oh, OK. Yeah. So my my point for this particular example is that if you say, oh, you said you're getting a cat.
OK, let's pick a cat together.
Let me help you get cat equipment.
Let me help you doing research about how to raise this particular type of cat that overbearing.
Exactly. Then you're involved in this matter too much.
You are participating the subject or the project as a a co -raiser of the cat.
So that would be a little too much.
So always know your place, know your place, know your qualification, know who you're talking to.
There you go, Eric.
We have solved all of your problems.
Contact us again when life gets difficult.
And yes, you're listening to Roundtable.
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It's Roundtable with myself, Neil Honglin, Steve Hatherly and Yuxian.
Imagine learning about history or psychology over drinks with friends.
Sign bars or academic bars are giving young people the chance to do just that, merging the energy of social settings with depth of academic discussion.
What draws people to these events and how are they changing the way we experience learning?
And before answering all that questions, what exactly is a side bar or an academic bar?
Yeah, so this is a growing trend.
They're called academic pubs, and this is where experts from different fields, the humanities, social sciences, you name it.
They're invited to the pub to deliver a lecture, and then they engage in discussions with the audience.
Tickets are sold, seats are sold.
People show up, listen to the lecture.
This is something that you would typically find in an academic setting, perhaps in a university or something like that.
But now it's taking place in a bar, in a pub.
They're doing this in the United States, and now it started to gain traction in China, starting around this June.
Places like Beijing and Shanghai and Guangzhou, so the biggest cities in the country.
They've become a really popular choice for a lot of young Chinese people going to attend these events in their free time.
There's a lifestyle sharing platform here in China, and there's the hashtag Academic Pub on there that got over 2 .6 million views, and there's a lot of trending posts that are getting thousands and thousands of comments.
Yeah, so let's say I want to attend one of these bars, or I want to know whether or not I would like to go.
What are some information I should know?
Like, who's organizing, who's speaking, what kind of topics?
Usually it's held by one host, and like weeks before the event actually happens, the host will post it on social media to attract potential people that want to get a ticket and wants to get enrolled in such a topic, and also the guest speaker's name and title, and what are the main topics will also be
included. And usually I was reading this off of a Beijing host, whose name is Zhang Zhanning, who is himself a master degree holder, and he's such a big fan for university reading sessions and discussion sessions.
And that's why he came up with this idea of borrowing reading session, but applied or implemented in a pub scenario.
And usually he was aiming for, he said he was aiming for like a 50 participants per session, but usually it's beyond that.
It's reaching all the way up to 60 to 70 people.
And through the social media promotions and everything, people heard about it.
And the group start to get bigger and bigger.
I heard their WeChat group is now 500 people as of late October.
So it's something that's really popular.
But I think it's kind of new here, at least in Beijing.
But I first heard about the academic bar sessions from my boyfriend, actually, who is an archaeologist in Canada.
And according to him, after each and every university reading session, most of the students and also the teachers and staff and scholars that were invited to the seminar, they would just move from the campus to the bar.
Yeah, second round and drinking and talking and socializing, adding each other's contact and stuff.
It's just so normal for them.
But here in Beijing, we see the same pattern and kind of the same organized ways of organization as well.
Hold on, hold on. There is tiny little difference here.
That is, actually, whoever speaks to, you know, to talk at this place is required to talk at a pub level so that everyone could walk in and understand what's going on.
So no jargon and no acronyms.
And just make sure that not only your peers, your fellow scholars would be able to understand you, but whoever is walking into the bar and enjoying a drink would be able to at least raise questions or understand one thing or two.
Yeah, I think that's a good idea because it's easy for a lecturer, depending on the topic, of course.
But, you know, if they're talking about neuroscience, for example, it's easy to talk over your audience.
And then that's kind of defeating the whole purpose of this.
I love it. I think it's a great idea.
One of the pubs here in Beijing is that's popular for this, is located near a couple of different universities.
And that, from a business point of view, is such a great idea because your customers are already right there, the university students who are curious about this.
By the way, it doesn't just have to be university students.
It could be anybody.
I want to go now. Yeah, exactly.
But to have the location near the universities is a great advantage.
And one of the business owners said that, you know, on a night where we might sell 40 cocktails on a weekend night, we've doubled that number through having these lectures there.
So from a business point of view, it's making sense as well.
That's a great location for a pub like that.
And what I love the most about this activity, I haven't been to one, but now I'm really interested, is because it's formed in a way as of it's a discussion session, but it's made up of one hour for the guest speaker to share their discoveries and latest findings, and then followed by one hour of discussion among all
the listeners from all different walks of life who probably are not experts of this particular field, but just interested in such topics.
And the topics are really nice, too.
Most of them are following the field of humanities and social sciences so that everybody knows a little bit.
It's not really like mathematical or scientific kind of topics.
Examples would include some cultural symbols reflected from Black Myth Wukong, the game.
And then there is good cultural transformation through photography with a trip all over China.
So it's like something that people can all relate to just a little bit, maybe in their real life.
And then it's reflected in a scholarly, if not academic kind of discussion where people can just engage in the exchanges.
Yeah. They're doing this in the United States, too.
In New York City, as a matter of fact, I saw a story from the New York Post and right around the same time that this started to pick up steam in China, it started to pick up steam in New York as well.
In New York, a couple came up with the idea, same concept, inviting speakers.
And the speakers can be academics like university professors or things like that, but they can simply be expert storytellers, too, or an expert in whatever field they happen to be.
They call it Lectures on Tap, which I thought was kind of a clever title for it.
Their first event was called Your Brain on Movies, and they invited a Columbia University neuroscientist who talked about how our brains interpret a film when we're watching it.
What an interesting topic, right?
The tickets that they sell for each event, those $40 each.
Not cheap. That's for sure.
But actually, this example makes me feel like instead of just doing a sidebar kind of event, it's almost like they're doing a live podcast show with audience, with an interaction possibility.
Yeah. There was another event where they had an NYU professor who's an expert in personality disorders and facial expressions.
And the topic was how to tell when someone is lying to you.
What an interesting topic from a very qualified, talking about being qualified, giving advice, that, well, that person's very qualified.
The other side of this that I love and that I didn't consider, but I did see it, it was part of the New York Post story.
Gen Z is called New York City, the loneliest city in the world, and there's a loneliness virus going around.
And when you have an event like this, it's something where people can go and meet other people and approach other people and say hello with already something in common.
Whereas if you're just at a bar, you know, starting a conversation sometimes can feel creepy or weird, right?
But in this setting, it doesn't.
And at these events that are being held in New York, people are exchanging telephone numbers and contacts and they're sitting there having group discussions about the topic that's being told on that particular day.
I think this might be the biggest benefit of the whole thing, is that people are getting out, they're learning.
Remember, we've talked about this on the show.
People have forgotten how to socialize and make new friends.
So this is really helping out with that.
The social element is definitely very important.
This actually reminds me of another example that is this summer during the Olympics, actually CMG initiated the idea of watching the games in a cinema.
Initially, you will not find it something that could be really popular, is it?
I mean, you have a tablet, you have a screen, home, you have phone, you can watch the game everywhere.
Yet a lot of people are embracing the idea because in the setting, you can shout out and you can support the team with people just next to you.
And that moment, you know, you're into the same game.
You know, you have similar knowledge and similar enthusiasm.
And that is also a socializing moment.
I can see you giving a lecture.
Socializing. What to do when you see a cat on the street?
I can totally do that.
Audience of one. And strangely, that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
We'd love to hear your thoughts all the time and just send us an email or leave us a message directly.
This is Nihon Lin with Yushan and Steve.
Bye.
