From my experience, the Chinese are quite extreme in their social interaction:
- If they don’t know you, they can be cold and uncaring.
- Once they know you, even if it’s indirectly (e.g., through a friend or a friend’s friend), they’ll often be warm and generous. (I had written to a then-boyfriend in 1988 with my theory about this, but that’ll have to wait for another blog.)
Yes, yes, I know these are generalisations, as lots of statements out there often are.
I was at the negative receiving end of the second extreme on one occasion.
A mainland Chinese woman, Mei, with whom I’d become acquainted when I interpreted for her at a hospital appointment, took me to the meat counter at a Chinese supermarket in Chinatown, saying the woman who worked there had been a neighbour of hers back in Shenyang, NE China. In the typical Chinese way, Mei wanted her ex-neighbour, Yao Li, to be aware of my existence (as her friend), so that Yao Li could give me nice service next time I went there. That’s the bit I was saying above: about your being given good treatment even if it’s an indirect relationship.
A few days later, I took a Singaporean lady there to buy some pork for her daughter’s birthday meal. The Singaporean lady asked the mainland Chinese man on duty at the counter a few questions about the different cuts, which the bloke then started to look a bit unhappy about — presumably because it was taking up time, although there weren’t many people about. She then said, “I’ll have this piece.”
It was at this point that I took advantage of the lull to ask, “Is Yao Li in today?” The man gave a terse, “No,” which is not an uncharacteristic Chinese trait, so I didn’t think anything of it. If she’s not in, she’s not in, as far as I was concerned — just an idle enquiry, that’s all.
The man picked up the piece of pork. The Singaporean lady said, “Can you cut it up for me?” The man threw it back onto the tray, and said, baring his teeth, “不卖 / bù mài / “not sell”!!”
Huh??! What was all that about?
I later told Mei about this incident. Mei said, “Ah, you said the wrong thing to the wrong person. That bloke and Yao Li absolutely don’t get on, so when you asked if she was in that day or not, he assumed you were her friend, so you became his enemy too. The Singaporean lady was with you, so she also became his enemy.”
Wow, so not only did we become his enemy by extension, which on the personal level is bad enough, he even refused to do business with us just because of that. This is the extent to which the Chinese will go for people who are friends or otherwise.
(OK, I know, I know, he was already getting fed up of her asking those questions about the different cuts, and he was only an employee, so it was no skin off his nose if he didn’t make a bit more money for his employers. By all accounts, a lot of them almost deliberately boycott the business in covert protest at the low wages, but then if they’re illegal, they should be grateful that they’re taken on at all.)
A week later, Mei and I were in Chinatown again. The man was standing outside the supermarket, looking sheepish. Mei had apparently told him off after that episode, and wanted him to apologise. I refused to approach; just stood a few yards away, waiting for Mei to rejoin me.
The point is: he was only looking sheepish because there’s now a positive link between us (me being Mei’s friend, and he was caught out behaving badly towards her friend), rather than the negative one he’d thought we had (me being Yao Li’’s friend). (Watch the upcoming blog with my theory about this, part of which is already proven by this tale.)
Yet another week later, Mei brought me a sweater top, stripy and pink, as an appeasement. Said it was from Yao Li, who wanted to express how sorry she was that I, her friend’s friend, had been treated so shabbily by her enemy.
C’est compliqué, as Serge on the French farm had once said*.
* See: https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2012/02/conflicting-instructions-france.html).
(London, 2004?)
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