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When I first started coming to China and getting involved speaking Chinese on a daily basis, I was often confronted with a situation in which I thought I knew what was being said because I understood each of the words used. It’s an easy approach if you’re translating directly, but direct translation has its faults. Often, it will lead to misunderstanding and get you into a bit of trouble that with a more perfect understanding you would have been able to avoid.
One standout example is the phrase
要不要？
Yào bù yào?
Now translated directly, this means “want no want,” which to me came out to something very close to “Do you want it or not?” Walking down a street full of vendors in Yabaolu (雅宝路), each of whom shouts at you “do you want it or not?” over and over again even after you’ve passed on by can be, and has been, interpreted as both annoying and aggressive. Add to that the onslaught of another variant on the phrase:
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More than any other city in any other country on earth, Beijing is a bicycle town. It is home to more than 10 million bikes and is accommodating to its bikers. Every road has a wide, sometimes very wide, bicycle lane on each side, and Beijingers make sure that the space is used. At all hours of the day, but especially for the several hours each morning and evening that comprise rush hour, bicycle lanes throughout the city are swarmed with riders. Riding a bike in China is not at all about being an environmentalist. You don’t ride for your health, or to make a statement. Since the days of the revolution, the Chinese ride because they need to get places.
Of the 100 million bicycles produced in the world every year, over a quarter of them are produced in Tianjin, a city about an hour’s train ride southeast of Beijing. While the city itself does not have much to offer, in the cyclist’s mind, it does produce at least one glorious product: the Flying Pigeon (Feige) bicycle. Fifty pounds of iron with rod brakes and little stopping power, the gearless Flying Pigeon was once the most ubiquitous bicycle in China. Deng Xiao Ping, Mao’s successor and the architect of China’s transition from a purely socialist command economy to a “socialist market economy” himself made the Henry Ford like declaration “A Flying Pigeon in every household” to showcase what economic progress had in store for the Chinese people. The company complied, offering the bike in any color you like, so long as it’s black. The Flying Pigeon’s chief competition, the Forever (Yongjiu) brand bicycle, looks very much the same: large tires, fenders, chain guard, kickstand, irritating bell, back package carrier, and handlebar basket. Together, the two brands serve to clog the bicycle arteries of Beijing and other biker friendly cities throughout China.
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It’s 6:30am when Wang Zhifeng steps out of his 14th floor 1200 RMB/month apartment in the Haidian district , waving goodbye to his wife as he closes the door behind him and lighting up a Double Happiness cigarette on the way to the elevator, elbowing-grabbing his fruit jar of green tea to do so. Ling, the elevator lady, is already at her chair in the elevator, hard at work knitting a new pair of socks for her niece, the same position she’ll occupy for the next 12 hours pushing the buttons to take people up and down. Even though they’ve lived in the building for years, they exchange no pleasantries, as is their custom, and Wang Zhifeng smokes his cigarette the whole way down. The lights in the hallway still aren’t working and the paint is peeling off the ceiling, but it’s home, and Wang Zhifeng steps out into the daylight and heads to his cab, a shiny new Volkswagen that he rents from one of the many taxi companies in Beijing and splits in 12 hours shifts with his next door neighbor. It’s not cloudy, but there’s a haze of pollution and it’s going to be another long day in Beijing traffic. Nestling his tea jar into the space beside the passenger seat with the emergency brake, he drives for a couple minutes to the end of the street with a stop by the jianbing (an oniony egg crepe around a crunchy fried dough) stand for a quick breakfast. For the next 3 hours, he tackles stop and go traffic driving a businessman to work in Dongdan, an elderly couple to Beijing’s West Train Station, and several minutes just driving around looking for the next fare: Me.
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At first glance, it’s the picture of a certain ideal: a teacher standing at the head of a classroom with a piece of chalk in one hand, the students listening attentively and hanging on the teacher’s every word. The students are quiet and reasonably well behaved, repeat like a chorus what the teacher asks them to repeat, and are otherwise silent while the teacher lectures. They ask no questions, and the teacher infrequently asks them to answer questions individually. More frequently, the class answers en mass. This is the picture of a typical Chinese classroom. It is has been this way for generations and the role of the teacher in China is at the heart of it.
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“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson
The art of the business deal here in China goes one step further than the boardroom, and it’s in the arena of the banquet hall that many a deal can be made or unmade. A banquet is a way of bestowing respect on a visiting business partner, and should be an expected part of the business experience in China. Indeed, the Chinese put a great deal of importance on the building of relationships, a term that is best understood through the catchall term guanxi, and it is during the banquet that guanxi is established. In fact, it may be that the real decision makers of a Chinese firm will only appear during one of these events to judge the steel of their potential business partners, to see if their partners are compatible on a personal level. Beware, though, because the Chinese banquet is often a long, arduous undertaking involving a great deal of food which may not be familiar to the Western palate, a great deal of toasting with baijiu, just about the closest thing to real firewater out there, and what one might assume to be a friendly after work dinner party can quickly become what looks like ritualized hazing. Here are a few pointers on what to expect, mastering the etiquette, and how to get through a banquet anywhere in the Middle Kingdom, from Harbin to Guangzhou.
1. The business card, or mingxingpian:
Chances are you’re going to meet people who you haven’t met before the banquet truly begins. Be prepared with your business cards, and don’t make the mistake of giving it to the recipient one handed or off the cuff. Chinese present their cards the way they would present themselves: with respect and humility. Use both hands to present your business card, and the recipient will receive it in the same way. Give and receive with a ni hao and a xie xie, respectively.
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