Being Polite and Fake Expectation
2015-04-30
If you have a Chinese friend, you will often hear them say :"Next time, I will invite you to come over to my place"
Most of your Chinese friend will tell you that, but how many really did invite you to come over the next time?
One, or two...a few, if you're lucky
One day in Chinese Culture class, I asked my teacher about this and she laughed at me
"Being polite is a part of common courtesy in China...but it doesn't mean that they will really do it"
The next night, I met a Chinese. We became friends and he said, "next holiday, I will invite you to come over to my hometown"
A few weeks later, national holiday, I call him again and ask "so what is the plan? when will we go?"
"What plan? Where are we going?" he asked me, looking confused.
"You said you gonna take me to your hometown" I told him.
"Oh yeah...about that..." and after a hundred excuses later...we are not going.
Lately, I learned it again in a hard way. 3 months ago, on my university's New Year's party, I met this Chinese man, a boss of my university's canteen. He told me that he was interested in foreign students' activity and as I was a vice-president of the student committee, he was hoping that I will come and invite him to be a sponsor if we ever have any events or activity.
We will have a football competition for foreign students next month and we need some money for the activities. I call Mr.Wei (not a real name), the restaurant boss, and arrange to meet him last Friday at 4pm. He show up 3 hours late from the appointment and we only talked for about 5 minutes. He told me that he will think about it and call me later. Two days later, still no answer from him and I send him a text. The next night, I called him, his wife answered the phone and told me that they can't spare any money for the activities. Damn!
I told our supervisor (a teacher) about this and he laughed
"They just being polite by saying that...but it doesn't mean that they will really do it"
Do you guys ever have any experiences about this matter? How do you differentiate whether the speaker really means it or just being polite?
Please share your opinion in the comment below.
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