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Published: November 10th 2009
Chinese people care a lot about 'face' and status. To lose face here is a massive deal and appearances are hugely important. For example, if you offer something that is discounted, many people won't buy it if others will know they paid a cheaper price, rich parents don't want their children educated with the less well off and, even in the school, if you want to discipline a child you have to be really careful that you don't cause them to lose face in front of his classmates, especially if they are from a rich family. This preoccupation with what others think also manifests in other ways - a pretty girl will be offered a job over a plainer girl even if she is less well qualified. I am realistic enough to know that appearances matter in the west too and I certainly dress well and put make up on if I have an important meeting or job interview in order to make the best impression. When recruiting, we will often get a 'good feeling' about someone, or like someone but not be sure why and that will be to do with the way they look, they way they carry themselves etc rather than the more objective things we know we should judge people on. However, I think, in the west we do try and counter these natural reactions with objective questioning and by trying to rationalise what we are feeling - here, they are more honest I guess. People will say, 'we hired her because she's pretty,' 'our customers will like her because she has class'. I think the reason that this upsets me is because it tends to be richer people who have that 'class' because they have had a different education and have mixed in the relevant circles to learn how to carry themselves. So the rich will carry on getting richer and the poor will stay where they are.
Yesterday I had a two hour delay at Qingdao airport due to bad weather. I didn't have anything to read or do and although there was free internet in the waiting lounge I didn't have anything I really wanted to do online. I found a bookshop though and bought the only 2 English books that they had. They were really expensive, about the same as a 1hour 15 minute taxi ride costs. One is a collection of articles from the Shanghai Daily newspaper which gave a really interesting insight into real lives here. One piece was about these very famous crabs, apparently the most famous in China and, in a random coincidence, when we went out for dinner last night we had them!
I was flying back into Hangzhou and was supposed to be spending a couple of days there, seeing some of the sights but the weather was awful - torrential rain, thunder, lightning so we came straight back to Tonglu. In the ten seconds it took to get from the taxi to the school we got absolutely drenched - my jeans were still wet this morning!
Last night we were taken for dinner by some of Tarik's adult students. He asked them to make it informal, and apparently it was although it still seemed quite fancy to me. We were in a private room with a massive table and had so much food - these Yangchung Lake crabs, duck, loads of veggies, meat stew, chicken soup, sugar cane, pumpkins. I'm afraid I didn't like very much, it was not really my kind of food but I ate enough to be polite. They also do a lot of toasts, just when you sit down someone else proposes one although most of it was Chinese so I didn't follow a lot of what was said. I hope we don't have to have too many more dinners like that. when we got in, Tarik, Benny and I played scrabble and I had a second dinner of crisps and chocolate...ooops.
Today, it's still raining. Tarik and I had Korean food for lunch and I'm now at the school having discussed which classes I'll be teaching. Later, I'll look over his accounts and help him with his business planning. I'm also hoping to meet a tailor as I've been doing some drawings for the clothes I'd like made.
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mum
non-member comment
Lucky you.I assume WW is on the back burner!