This week I have been fortunate to attend some Chinese business meetings with a friend. I want to learn more about the way things are done here in China, particularly negotiation and disagreements.
On Thursday night this involved a meeting with a man who wanted to "do some business" with my friend. My buddy had been generous enough to share his meetings with me, but I sensed a real reluctance to explain how he felt about the meeting. It was clear he didn't want to go, and that he was feeling some pressure to cooperate with this man.
We arrived on a street corner where the man was waiting for us, my friend was on the phone and not about to end his call just because he had arrived (this is a very Chinese thing to do). Feeling awkward, I went to stand with the man we had met and made small talk. He seemed slightly bemused that my friend had brought me along and reluctant to talk about much of anything. I asked where we were going and he said we'd go to his little brother's place for a moment to talk and then go to eat dinner. On hearing this, my friend ended his phone call and said that we should just go to the restaurant. This made me a little nervous. The man insisted we follow him and we headed into a residential estate and up some stairs to a lobby area where three men and two women were waiting for us. If the first man had been bemused to see me show up, these guys were stunned into total silence. Recovering after a few seconds, they started talking to my friend and talking about the building - Little Brother (a common thing to call someone close to you but younger than you in China) owned the whole thing and was keen to show it off. They took my friend on a tour of the building but asked me just to sit in the lobby where 2 men and the 2 women eyed me suspiciously. Sometimes, it is far better to pretend you don't speak Chinese so I just sat (demurely of course, that taxi driver taught me well) and waited for everyone to come back.
After Little Brother and Big Brother had finished this display of wealth and status, off we all go to a restaurant. It occurred to me that at this stage, I was also a display of status. The questions start - 'Does the foreigner eat Chinese food?', 'Can she use chopsticks?', 'Does she like spicy food?'. My friend did me a great service and told them to ask me. Hearing that I could make conversation was something of a relief to them all. As we wandered down the street, my friend spoke with me in English about the evening - telling me that these people did business in a really traditional Chinese way, and that he hoped it would go well. Was the English speaking another way to show his power? I asked if there was anything I should do or not do in terms of manners, he said there were no table manners in China which is of course a complete lie! It's just that when something is natural to you, you forget to tell other people about it.
At the restaurant, the menu is handed to me - usually confident with my Chinese and anything to do with food I suddenly baulked at the idea of having to read with 8 pairs of eyes watching me. I quickly passed the responsibility to someone else saying that they would have to wait too long for me to read everything. Food ordered it was time to order drinks. I've heard a lot about the amount of alcohol consumed during these dinners so I said that I didn't want to drink. "No problem" said Big Brother, "No alcohol for you - you're a girl and your foreign, it's fair". So a beer I was given, a strange version of non-alcoholic! The men cracked open a bottle of baijiu (the dangerous ingredient added to all our punch bowls at our student parties at Fudan) which was finished in less than 15 minutes.
The protocol seemed to go like this - each person around the table makes a toast to someone else. During last summer, I studied a business Chinese course with a man who explained that to be really polite you should hold your glass lower than the person you are chinking glasses with. I was grateful for this insight and tried as often as possible to keep my eyes down, my smile under control and my glass lower than anyone toasting me. I had also read that I should return all toasts - but I had some problem because I didn't know any one's name! And I didn't know any of them well enough to just use the catch all "Big Brother", "Big Sister". So I decided that no one would think it too odd if I didn't know what to do! The toast is made by giving the person a (rather overblown) compliment. When Little Brother toasted me, I got something along the lines of:
"Here's to you, little English sister Fenya, who has made our night so special and happy by coming and enjoying this simple meal and being so pretty and polite and speaking such perfect Chinese just like a Chinese person"
And so on and so on. I noticed that no one drank unless they were toasting so if you were thirsty, you'd have to make a toast with someone or wait for someone to toast you before you could drink something.
After the men drank their baijiu, they started on yellow wine - sort of sweet and, as my cousin Sally and I know from a very lively night out in Shanghai, lethal. Rather than share the bottle among all the men, my friend and Little Brother split the whole thing into two glasses - which they then drank dry. I was nearly sick at the thought of it remembering the worst hangover of my life and the taste of yellow wine which stayed with me for days.
By this point, everyone was quite flushed and happy. I noticed that one of the men seemed to drink much less and was watching everything. I figured that was a sensible role to give someone at a dinner where the boss gets completely wasted. Next comes another bottle of something, and drinking games started. Now, I'm sorry that I will be such a poor cultural guide in explaining what happened during this game but I'm not sure if it was the large amount of beer or if it was the complexity of the game, but I couldn't figure out the rules, or who won or lost - sometimes the winner had to drink, sometimes the loser had to drink. Then out came the Chinese tongue twisters which amused me so much earlier this week that I sprayed lemonade through my nose. I will study them and at later dinners, impress Chinese diners with my ability to say this funny poem about a Llama from Tibet carrying bread who is met by a mute man carrying a horn and how they killed each other! But for now, I will just watch and listen and enjoy.
Big Brother sat next to me through dinner and we had chatted about his wife and his hometown and talked a little about his business. I decided I would chance it and while everyone was busy with the drinking games and funny rhymes, I would offer him a toast. So, slightly worried that I would be using a too familiar way to address him, I raised my glass and said "Big Brother, will you drink a glass with me?"
I am not sure I have ever seen a bigger smile. So, we make our toast and I felt relieved. Until he stops everyone and says - "look, look, she just called me Big Brother"
And they all did something like a big "Awwwwwwwwww"
And so I got toasted again
"Little Sister, you are now part of my family and I will always take care of you. So will my wife, we could call her now so that you can chat with her"
This carried on for the whole evening.
My role in the evening became clearer as my friend starts to explain more about his business model and how he understands foreigners and what they expect from Chinese services. Peppering his language with English words and plenty of reassurance from me that, yes, most Westerners like to see traditional things in China and that yes, it would be OK for a boy and a girl to share a room if they weren't married and even if they were just friends, and yes, I would share a room with a black person. All of these things were strange concepts to the other people around the table. I think my friend wanted to show that he could run his business the right way because he understood what the foreign market wanted and that if Big and Little Brother wanted a piece of the action, they would have to do what he said.
I must admit that the rest of the night is a little fuzzy. Not so fuzzy that when Big Brother offered to drive me home I didn't manage to persuade him that it might be better to take a taxi! The Drink Drive message hasn't really been pushed over here!
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