Michael Tai
Fellow, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and IrelandMichael Tai is a Cambridge-trained scholar, fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and multilingual writer whose work explores language, culture and empathy in cross-civilisational contexts.
Articles by Michael Tai
Society
Language as play: Why Chinese students study hard but speak softly
In East Asia — China especially — a certain restraint when learning a foreign language is cultural. It flows from a Confucian inheritance that prizes discipline and harmony over spontaneity, which may hinder their progress in mastering the language, observes commentator Michael Tai.
Michael Tai
02 Jan 2026
