Chinese Civilization

I was early for an appointment with the Boss, and he was a few minutes late. So three young women in the office took the time to give me a Chinese lesson. "Now let's say I'm on a crowded bus and I need to push an old lady aside in order to get off," I asked. "How do I say, "Excuse me?" The women began talking rapidly among themselves in Chinese. After a good deal of discussion, they gave me a phrase: qing rang yi rang. When I tried to say it, they tittered and giggled even more than they had with my earlier efforts. Chinese tones are not easy for a Westerner, but this was discouraging.

"Is my accent terrible?" I asked.

"It's not that," one of them told me. "But if you say this in a bus, everyone will think you are a very polite foreigner!"

"So I should just push the old lady aside and not worry about `excuse me'?" They nodded in unison.

Which brings up an interesting aspect of Chinese life. All the guide books I had read, and friends who had visited China in the past, warned me to expect a good deal of rudeness. When I discussed this issue later with a Chinese friend, he shrugged and said, "Well, there are just so many people in China!" And it's true: on crowded streets, on busses, and in stores, a person sometimes has to be aggressive. You certainly don't have the time to beg the pardon of the hundreds of shoulders you bump up against each day.

Yet there is a different kind of politeness in China. My experience is that individual Chinese are often remarkably civil and helpful to strangers. I have been lost many times in Beijing, for example, standing on a street corner with a bewildered expression on my face, and had someone come up to me and inquire in English, "May I help you?" Another instance: Soon after my wife arrived, she was having dinner with an American friend in a restaurant. When my wife asked for the bill, she was told that someone ( a stranger) at another table had already paid for them. This is hospitality in the extreme; not my idea of rudeness at all!

I think Chinese and Americans simply have their priorities in reverse when it comes to etiquette. Westerners might be full of "thank-you's" and "I'm sorry's" in public, but in our private lives we often neglect our families and friends, with the excuse that we are too busy. The Chinese, on the other hand, may push and shove in a subway, but friends and family are of utmost importance, and one always has time for them.

"Networking" is how an individual survives here. A few days ago, my wife and I were having lunch with a young Chinese woman. "Foreign businessmen come here, and they're often in too much of a hurry," she said. "In China, you need to make friends first. Then do business afterwards." Who's to say that this isn't a more civil approach than how we do business in the West?