The interesting comments here prompted me to read the article. I wonder how genuinely poor anyone has been who has received a private university education in th

The interesting comments here prompted me to read the article. I wonder how genuinely poor anyone has been who has received a private university education in the United States, to take up an issue in one comment thread. (I fully agree with the idea that remembering my poorest years, which were during and immediately after my pursuit of higher education, is very good for me keeping perspective on my current more well-off life.) Another comment mentioned refusing to accept compliments. That is just annoying in most Western countries, where the expected response to "Great job!" or "You look fabulous in that outfit" is along the lines of replying "Thanks." In some other parts of the world, standard politeness operates differently. In the Chinese-speaking world, it is expected to factually deny a compliment, no matter how actually counterfactual the denial comes out. If I speak Chinese in a Chinese-speaking country with my patently Western appearance, many people will politely say to me, "你的中國話說得很好" ("You speak Chinese very well"). And the only polite response to that would be along the lines of saying, "不敢當. 說得不好." ("I dare not accept your praise. I speak it poorly.") Different cultures have different patterns of politeness. The most extreme example I have seen in real life of the east Asian pattern of politeness was witnessing the husband of one of my classmates in Taiwan (both the husband and wife were Koreans in Taiwan to study Chinese) hear a Westerner say to the husband about our classmate, "Your wife is very beautiful," to which the husband replied, "No, she is quite ugly" IN HER PRESENCE. The statement was conventionally polite, and not at all weird in cultural context, but contrary to fact, as she was actually a beautiful woman.