Culture: Instant Friends

I thought it would be hard to make friends in China. In fact, it's suspiciously easy. I am confused about the motivation behind people's actions, not because of any conscious attempt at deception, but because my cultural knowledge is so severely retarded. I never realised until now how many of our day-to-day choices rely on assumptions about the intentions of other people.

Students wishing to practise English on me are a relief, because their motives at least are transparent to me. When I sat down at my favourite restaurant on Friday, almost immediately a boy from another table approached me and introduced himself in slow, stretched syllables of English like a fish choking on air. I asked him to recommend something on the menu, I pretended I was grateful for his help with ordering my meal, and sooner or later his friends dragged him out of the restaurant.

An entirely different type of encounter occurred just as I was about to leave. A man on the next table suddenly pushed a bottle of beer into my hand and jovially invited me to pull up a chair. We toasted, we chatted, we wrote our names on the back of a chopstick wrapper (ie the slip of paper that disposable chopsticks come in), and then he asks, "Can I call you a friend?" This is an phrase I've heard before, and I'm starting to think it must be a sort of ritual expression. As soon as I said "Yes" (for what else could I say?), he asked for my phone number. Sensing that there was something underlying all this that I didn't understand, I made the excuse that my phone hadn't been connected yet, but asked for his number which he willingly gave me.

Things became a little clearer on Saturday, when the minibus driver I met earlier called and invited me to his house for lunch. His family certainly went all-out for me, coming in a taxi to fetch me and serving up an exotic feast of seafood (and teaching me how to disassemble a crab). Best of all, in my opinion, was that we ate it sitting on his kang. A kang is a raised platform that is heated from below, used for sitting on during the day and sleeping on at night. You're unlikely to see one in urban Dalian, where most of the apartments have central heating, but my friend lives in a village on the outskirts of the city.

Then my friend mentions that he hopes to send his son to Australia to study one day (what a coincidence that I'm from Australia). "I'd like to help, but what can I do?" I ask. I'm ashamed when he merely suggests that I could help him choose a good school. But is that the whole story?

I don't understand the rules of guanxi, but he is probably taking for granted that I do. Guanxi (connections) is a fundamental aspect of Chinese culture, and works on the principle of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. My friend has already offered to take me to see the beautiful Zhuang River when summer comes, probably at his own expense. Why such generosity? One hypothesis is this: although he knows nothing about me, my friend is taking a gamble that I have (or will have) connections in Australia that could benefit him years down the track when his son is old enough for college. In other words, I'm seen as a winning lottery ticket by virtue of my foreignness.

Did the guy from the restaurant have this idea on his mind too? I'm trying not to jump to conclusions, but I was amazed to see the pattern repeat a few days later. I was in a different restaurant this time, eating alone again, and suddenly I realised that some people at the next table were talking about me. When I looked up, a guy caught my eye and exchanged some pleasantries with me (in English, to my dismay). After just the usual where-are-you-from-and-what-do-you-do questions, he was already offering me his phone number in case I "need any help in China". But he forgot that magic word "friend", and I was able to refuse his number by saying that I wouldn't want to trouble him.

Even while writing this article, I took a break for dinner and wound up with yet another phone number! I have been getting friendly with one guy who works at a kitchen in the student canteen. It turns out he's actually the boss of that particular kitchen, and today he gave me a bowl of noodles on the house. They were just closing up at the time, and he came out and sat with me for a bit of a chat. I was pleased at first, but when I heard the word pengyou (friend) I thought here we go again. He wrote down his name and phone number, and even scribbled pengyou underneath it!

I think I need a cultural consultant who can advise me on the best way to handle these situations. Anthropology has a term for this: an informant. Unfortunately, finding that person poses a chicken-and-the-egg problem.