Intercultural competence

I only learned one thing:
In my home country you generally say:
Don‘t let yourself be bent, even if you should break.
In China on the other hand it‘s the other way around:
Let yourself be bent, but don‘t let yourself be broken.

(After Sir Robert Hart who spent four decades in China working as a customs officer, in the
preface of the book by A.H. Smith, „Chinese traits of character“