Vblog - Protocol & Etiquette in Between China and the US

French Fries for dessert?

You’d say I’m nuts. “Of course not” – you’d insist if you were a Westerner or had lived in the West for at least a few years. But, in China, anything is possible.

I was walking around the International Trade Center in Beijing just a few days ago and saw a place called “Chamate”. It is a tea place with some selected Chinese dishes including deserts. I walked into it and sat at a table near window looking out at the stores inside the Trade Center. I was very impressed by all the different teas they had – it was almost like a full bar cocktail menu. And a description for each tea reminded of me reading the poems from the Tang and Song Dynasty when I was little. And you didn’t see a single marketing word with the suggestion of “service, product, promotion or selling”. Instead, it was like a neighbor calling for a get together in the village backyard. And there were many people who walked in and out of this Chamate place. Business seemed quite good.

I was murmuring to myself “perhaps this is a master piece of how to do marketing in China.”

And as I flipped over the menu and reached the desert section, I was finding myself staring at one thing – French Fries, which was cast in parallel with some other Chinese deserts on the menu. And there was a boy with his mother sitting next to my left munching away at a plate of them.

The local Chinese people have no immunities against all the stuff dumped on them from the West. How vulnerable we are. No one told us that French Fries are actually just Western junk food. No one would ever place it on the table as a desert in the States, let alone in France.

Fascinating and sad! Fascinating - if the market can turn the French Fries into a desert dish, then anything is possible. Sad – as Chinese consumers have no guide for what to accept or not to accept. The only guide foreign companies have provided them is their marketing materials for product manuals. Chinese people have to do our best to make sense of them, with little to no context.

And it would seem that China is struggling. Or maybe innovating.

“Go back and fill out the card in Chinese!”

I was going through immigration at the Beijing airport heading back to Hong Kong this afternoon. After waited in the line for about 10 minutes and it was my turn to show all the travel documents to the custom officer, a young Chinese woman in a light blue uniform.

She looked my Chinese passport and the Departure Card I filled out for leaving the country. Then she looked me and said in a very stiff, commanding voice “go back and fill out the card in Chinese!”

The Departure Card I filled out was in English, which I’d done automatically. I wasn’t even aware that it might be an issue. As someone who lived in the US for almost a decade working back and forth in between China and the US so many times, filling out the Departure Cards or Entrance Cards in English is something I do naturally. They process them in either language and I never considered it would be an issue.

Honestly, I was very angry and asked in Chinese– Does it have to be in both Chinese and English? “You are Chinese and you have to fill it out in Chinese!” She didn’t even look at me.

Do I need her to remind me of my Chinese identity? NO. I’ve always intended to keep my Chinese passport and not apply for the US citizenship for a very simple reason – I don’t want to lose my Chinese nationality. This, although I was eligible to get a US passport many years ago. I travel to China with my US green card.

This young Chinese woman may have felt I was doing this on purpose. She may have found me arrogant, or ignorant. Perhaps she thought I pretending for effect. Maybe she was simply jealous of my relative freedom to come to and leave from China as I pleased. Whatever the reasons behind her attitude, commanding me to “go back and fill it out in Chinese” as if I were less than human, was her own issue to deal with. I just wished she could ask me differently, even it is REALLY NECCESARY to fill out the card in both Chinese and English ( we all know it doesn’t matter whether it’s filled out in Chinese or English). She could say –

- “I believe you write Chinese beautifully, could you please fill it out in Chinese?”

- “it would be great if you could also fill it out in Chinese. Thank you.”

I would have even accepted: - "Ms. the regulations state Chinese citizens must fill the card out in Chinese. Please prepare the card in Chinese as well."

My feelings to her would be totally different, if she had said above words. Maybe I am just dreaming. Bureaucrats in any country are rarely known for going out of their way to be polite.

I realized today that I needed to manage my “Multiple Identity Disorder” issue. I use the term of ‘Multiple Identity Disorder” because like many Chinese who lived and worked in the US for many years, I am in between the two cultures. As my husband said, to be truly bi-cultural is always painful. I just simply can’t behave like a 100% local Chinese in China, any more than I could ever really completely adopt American culture!

Filling out the Departure Card in Chinese is a natural extension of my American day-to-day life and, it never occurred to me whether I should fill it out in Chinese or English. As matter of fact, I do sometimes fill out the cards in Chinese.

From an etiquette point of view, this young Chinese immigration officer certainly has a lot of things she needs to work on in her own maturation process. From the big-picture perspective I find it sad to be reminded how low the level of courtesy is by Chinese officials towards Chinese people at my nation’s capital airport, and by extension, throughout the country. This woman is just one manifestation of our slow evolution towards greater civility among Chinese people.

I may see her and going through her checking counter again in my next trip to Beijing around end of May. Maybe I can get her to smile this time . . .