Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Chinese manners, lesson one.

Today I learned 2 new ways of politely declining in Chinese. I already know about 4. How many ways can there be to express one thing?!

Anyways, for those who don't know, here's a lesson in Chinese manners:

When a guest arrives to a house and is asked by the host what s/he wants to drink, s/he should reply: “It doesn’t matter!”, namely: ‘”随便” (sui bian).

And why? Well, because if the guest asks for a coke, and the host doesn’t have any coke to offer, it’s an uncomfortable situation.

By replying ‘it doesn’t matter’ you’ll never risk letting your host lose face.

And I thought Swedes had a tendency to overdo politeness? Man, we’ve got much to learn!

1 comment:

thetrystero said...

what was the second way?