I was reminded yesterday of a small part of Chinese culture that I have had a hard time accepting over the years.  Anybody expat who lives here will probably know what I am talking about and I’m sure there are numerous China blogs that have touched on this subject in the past, but now it’s my turn: I’m talking about the art of “Chinese lying“.

The Party

To give you a small bit of background, my wife had planned a very nice Halloween party for all our friends and co-workers last weekend.  She put no small amount of effort into not only the party, but also the food, the costumes, and even the invitations she handed out.  Based on what people told us the week leading up to the party, turnout was going to be pretty good so she would have to make a lot of food.  Yesterday, the day of the party, we spent most of the latter half of the day working, shopping, and preparing for that afternoon.

But as it happens, some mysterious sickness came over many people (who look perfectly healthy today, by the way), their bedtimes all-of-the-sudden changed (8pm…really?), or they got unusually busy for a Sunday night.  I guess we should be thankful that those people even called us five minutes before the party started, because another handful just didn’t show – they all simultaneously “lost” our numbers they told me today.  Let me clarify that neither my wife or I are bitter about this as we had a grand time with all those who did show up, but I will admit that it was annoying.

Why “Lie”?

These people, most of whom we have been friends with over the last 2 and a half years, decided it would be much better for them “lie” to us by telling us they would come to the party and then “lie” to us again when they called to give their excuse.  I put the word “lie” in quotation marks because I sincerely doubt they think they are lying.  In fact, I have a feeling they think they are doing us a favor. It’s wasn’t until I was able to come to grips with this idea that my anger over these kinds of situations was able to change into just minor annoyance.

You see, it is my belief that our Chinese friends think rejecting our invitation at the moment we ask would cause us to lose face. The theory behind all this seems to be that if the party flops, we can at least say that we just had a city-wide outbreak of the flu so it’s really not our fault. The same thing goes for Chinese weddings, which is why there is no RSVP.  I have never heard of anybody turning down a wedding invitation when passed out, but I have been to a couple weddings where multiple tables sat empty with food on them as if expecting guests who decided they couldn’t make it that day.  That’s just the way it is, and when you grow up with this way of doing things, it’s not seen as wrong, only as the norm.

Turning the Tables

I run into problems, however, trying to figure out how to deal with this art of Chinese lying when I am the one who needs to reject an offer.  A man called us a few weeks ago asking for us to tutor his daughter on the weekends after we had already decided we weren’t going to accept any more tutors.  Although in English saying a simple “I’m sorry, we’re not accepting any more tutors” is acceptable, directly saying “no” to this man could have been taken as rude here, especially in our small town.  Our options were limited to a couple more acceptable things:

1. Lie to him.  Tell him we’ll think about it and call him back later…but never call him. We try to avoid this – it feels so wrong to do this.
2. Lightly brush him off.  Tell him we’re not sure we have enough time for him, even though he and I both know we do.  We reject his offer without saying “no”, but there’s still a bit of awkwardness present.  We do this every once in a while but still find it uncomfortable.
3. Redirect him with a counter offer.  This, in my mind, is the best option when available.  In this case we told the man that we had good friends who were looking to tutor and we would give them his number because we are very busy this year.  Here we can tell him “no” without being direct and yet still please him by partially satisfying his request.  This also doesn’t force us to lie or tell partial truths that we really don’t want to do.

The Pictures

So now that you know the story behind the party, here’s a couple of pictures to let you see how a Halloween party in a small town in Xinjiang looks.  It’s nothing like what you might find in Shanghai or Beijing, but we had a good time, and there were more people than is evidenced by these pictures.