During my time in Taiwan, I was applying the rules of my own educational upbringing in an English stream school.
For example, I was addressing my colleague's parents as 吕先生 / Lǚ xiānsheng / Mr Lǚ and 吕太太 / Lǚ tàitai / Mrs Lǚ, which I thought was polite and therefore I couldn't go wrong.
They were the parents of the colleague who took pity on me, all alone in a foreign land (in those days, 21 was considered very young for an Oriental female to be working abroad), and invited me home every Sunday to spend time with them.
At the end of the two years, however, I was taken aside by a friend (Daniel Chiang, founder of sina.com) who said, "You look Chinese, yet you behave in a very unChinese way. These people have been treating you like one of the family, offering you hospitality every Sunday, yet you keep them at arm's length even after all this time by addressing them so formally. It's hurtful."
I was totally taken aback. How should I have addressed them, then?
The Chinese use terms of address for relatives on people who are not related to them, as a form of cordiality. The "cordiality" here, in the Chinese context, is more than just warmth and friendliness -- there's the extra element of embracing the other party as family, hence using labels like "Uncle" and "Auntie".
So, I should've been addressing my colleague's parents as 吕伯伯 Lǚ bóbo / "Uncle Lǚ" and 吕妈妈 Lǚ māma / "Mummy Lǚ".
I've since (almost 40 years later) discovered that some other cultures adopt this practice as well.
When I was made redundant at age 58, I went to work in a pub to meet my bills. A regular customer there, aged early 30s maybe, used to call me "Auntie". He looked West Indian to me.
More recently, three or four years ago, I met an Iraqi man and his two young daughters (now 11 and 8), who called me "Auntie" as well.
So, it looks like it's not just the Chinese who do that, yet I failed to observe that rule, because I was such a banana.
(Taiwan, 1975–6; London, 2017 & 2022)
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