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 It's really interesting that you bring up the link between culture and language. This is something I studied a little last year in conjunction with Jared Diamond's book. I read other authors such as Eric A. Havelock who comments on the nature of the Greeks introducing the first fully phonetical alphabet. This enabled multiple words to be formed based on sounds made, creating a literate and philosophical culture where new words could be readily formed and recorded. Part of Havelock's interpretation of this is that it enabled the transition of emphasis from the collective to the individual. Mandarin, as I understand it, is a fully logogrammatic alphabet, meaning that each character represents a word, rather than simply a sound. As such, the same sort of situations that you presented with "Dao" arise.

I have noticed, in my short time at Bryn Mawr thus far, that many of the Chinese students speak of the Chinese people as a conglomerate: for example, your statement "on how Chinese people think," that it is possible to speak of the largest population in the world as having one methodology of thought. I am not challenging this! I have neither the expertise, nor the tools with which to do so. Rather, I doubt highly that the same could or would be conjectured of and by American people. Whether this stems from a difference in language, values, or what, I'm unsure, but I find it very interesting.