I have a crappy old Chinese textbook that imparts the following tidbit: ‘Chinese people can be remarkably rigid in some cases, and remarkably flexible in other!’
For a long time, I thought that whoever wrote that was full of crap. I had only ever met inflexible Chinese; no imagination, have to study what my parents tell me, you have to do this because it is in your contract, etc.
But now, life is better and Bella and I speak better Chinese so we hang around more Chinese people. And now the flexibility comes to the fore.
Last week I ordered food at our usual restaurant and the waitress girl made a mistake calculating the price. I paid nineteen yuan when I should have paid twenty-two. I went out for a bit to buy some groceries and when I came back to pick up the food, the lady who owns the place had already been chewing the girl out. When I offered to pay the extra three yuan, she refused, though. She said – in Chinese – that it had been the girl’s fault and not mine. And then went back to giving the waitress a talking-to.
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