It seems to me that in the USA and Canada, what you pay for a place or a thing is a matter of pride in a lot of cases. if you're renting a $2k/month apartment, you can expect that everyone in your area will know what that entails. if you purchase a tv for $5k, everyone knows what that means, and how nice your tv is, and even have a general idea as to what options that tv will have. chinese people don't think like this. it's not what you paid, it's not what the discount was, it's what they didn't pay, if that makes any sense? if you are paying 5000 RMB and your neighbor next to you is paying 6500 RMB for the same thing, that makes you better, in a lot of ways. you had a lot of face going in, and you didn't give up any.
face is extremely important here. it's a concept that you better get down before you try to do business here. it becomes even more crazy when you consider the fact that because you're a foreigner, you have no face. that's what allows us to get out of trouble that a chinese person would go straight to prison for. it also allows us to look down (face down) a person who is in much higher authority than we are, because he can only lose face, we can't gain it, and we can't lose something that we don't have. it's a concept that i'm finally starting to understand, but it's going to take a while.
as an example, my girlfriend, Mei, invited me originally to her hometown for new year. things went sideways for a little while, and we ended up cancelling that trip. i was convinced that it was some sort of announcement of our betrothal, or something, and that was from reading blogs, and newsboards, and talking to foreigners in china. it turns out that that was all wrong. if i had gone, her parents would have lost a ton of face because: 1. their daughter is dating a foreigner who can't speak chinese, and 2. they don't speak english. that kind of loss of face in a village is really not a good thing, and it would take years, if ever, for them to get their status back.
i'm going to bed, i'm having phone issues that i hope to resolve tonight or tomorrow morning, then i'm going apartment hunting again in the morning. i will say, that going out tonight was absolutely insane. we were in an area that is normally fairly busy, there's almost always people everywhere you go....it was deserted, new years unofficially starts today, the official start date is on the 9th, don't ask me what the difference is, i don't understand. this place is becoming a ghost town though, it's amazing to see.....the train station is completely sold out of tickets, there's millions of people in line there waiting to get on, and it's truly staggering to see. i think it's something like 7 million or so, actually leave this town for their home town for new years.
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