Social life

“Politeness” is 礼貌 lǐmào, literally “the bearing of the rites”. Everything starts from 礼 lǐ, whose ancient form 禮 puts the altar, 示, next to a ritual vessel filled with offerings, 豊 ⟶ the rite, then propriety, then politeness. The character keeps coming back on this page: a present, 礼物 lǐwù, is “the thing of the rite”, and even Sunday, 礼拜天 lǐbàitiān, is “the day of worship”, an expression that comes from the weekly service of Christians. To be honest, I know of no English word that renders 礼 in full: rites, propriety, custom, politeness, each one takes only a piece of it. On our page Chapter 1 of the Analects of Confucius, Couvreur chose “mutual duties” to translate the sentence by Youzi, a disciple of Confucius, that closes our examples: 礼之用，和为贵, “in the practice of the rites, it is harmony that matters most”.

To greet someone, textbooks start with 你好 nǐ hǎo, and they are right to. But be careful: between neighbours or between colleagues, you hear it far less than you might think. People tend to greet each other by stating the obvious, 上班去啊？, “off to work?”, or with the famous 吃了吗 chī le ma, “have you eaten?”, which calls for no detailed answer (nobody wants to hear your menu). Young people, for their part, readily say 哈喽 hālóu and 拜拜 báibái, borrowed from English. The respectful 您 nín is used mainly in the North and with older people; in the South, many people hardly ever use it.

客气 kèqi deserves a closer look. 客 is the guest: to be 客气 is to have “the air of a guest” ⟶ polite, reserved, even formal. Hence 不客气 bú kèqi, “don't play the guest” ⟶ you're welcome. Between people who are close, too much politeness creates distance, and one thank-you too many can give offence: you will be told 别见外, “don't put yourself outside”, don't behave like a stranger. This is disconcerting for a French person, brought up with the idea that you can never thank people enough. The same logic applies to compliments, which are brushed aside with a 哪里哪里 nǎli nǎli, “where, where?”. On the other hand, among the under-thirties, a simple 谢谢 is gaining ground, and so much the better for foreigners who no longer know where they stand.

At the restaurant, the bill is a little piece of theatre. The one who invites, 请客 qǐngkè, has to pay, but the others make a show of trying to beat the host to it: this is 抢着买单 qiǎngzhe mǎidān, “fighting over the bill”, sometimes to the point of jostling at the till. Splitting the bill, AA制 AA zhì, has become the rule among young city dwellers, but in many families it still comes across as stingy. Treating people is also called 做东 zuòdōng, “to play the east”. The most common explanation goes back to the 东道主 of the Zuozhuan, the state of Zheng, which offered itself as “host on the eastern road”; another points to the place of the master of the house, on the east side of the hall. I couldn't say which one is right.

Gifts follow rules that nobody explains to you. You first refuse, out of politeness, before accepting; you don't open the parcel in front of the giver; and one day you give back what you received, because 礼尚往来 lǐ shàng wǎng lái, “the rite values the going and the coming back”. Some objects are to be avoided. You don't give a clock, 送钟 sòng zhōng, which sounds like 送终, “accompanying the dying”; you don't share a pear, 分梨, which sounds like 分离, “to separate”. The proverb 千里送鹅毛，礼轻情意重 consoles those who arrive almost empty-handed: an envoy who was bringing a swan to Emperor Taizong of the Tang, so the story goes, let it escape on the way and could offer only a feather. The gift is light, the intention is heavy.

That leaves 关系 guānxi, which the Western press has ended up adopting as it is. In the literal sense, it is “the relationship”; in practice, it is the network of people you can count on, and to whom you owe something. A favour done creates a 人情 rénqíng, a debt of feeling that will have to be honoured, and face, 面子 miànzi, already met on the page The body, governs the whole thing. Getting a place through connections is 走后门 zǒu hòumén, “going through the back door”. Be careful, however, not to turn 关系 into the master key to China: France has its networks too, it just calls them “piston” (pulling strings), with a little less philosophy (and far fewer banquets).

As for neighbours, the proverb 远亲不如近邻, “a distant relative is worth less than a close neighbour”, is already on the page Family and relatives. It comes from a world of shared courtyards where people spent their lives in each other's homes: 串门 chuànmén is literally “to thread doors”, the way you thread beads ⟶ to go from door to door. In today's tower blocks, many Chinese people no longer know the neighbours across the landing. Ties are formed elsewhere, in the WeChat group of the residential compound, where people complain about noise, 扰民 rǎomín, as much as they help each other out. But you always end up running into each other: 低头不见抬头见, if you don't see each other with your head down, you will with your head up.

For quarrels, the most learned word is also the most vivid. 矛盾 máodùn, contradiction, comes from the Han Feizi: a merchant was praising a spear, 矛, that could pierce anything, and a shield, 盾, that nothing could pierce. A passer-by asked him what would happen if you struck the one with the other. The merchant was left speechless. You quarrel with 吵架 chǎojià, you fight with 打架 dǎjià (the whole difference lies in the radical: the mouth, 口, or the hand, 扌), then you make up, 和好 héhǎo. And when the falling-out drags on, people stop speaking to each other: this is 冷战 lěngzhàn, the “cold war”, whose domestic sense is far more frequent than the historical one.

This page closes the “Relationships” subcategory. Friendship, love, dates and break-ups are on the page Friendship and love. The next pages will deal with identity and origins.

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order is shown stroke by stroke, with the arrow that gives the direction of the movement.