Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

This is my personal experience of intercultural communication and behavior during my trip to a province in western China.

Me and a friend were on a summer trip to China one holiday and was visiting a local university as part of our summer program. It was lunch time and the canteen there did not accept cash as they utilize a special card system which is only available to the local students. We met a local student who was willing to share his card with us and even offered to help us order lunch seeing that we had difficulty reading the menu (no it’s not that our chinese were bad, just that the dishes had rather fancy names). We had a meal together with our local friend and we exchanged pleasantries and introduced ourselves. It was rare to have Singaporeans in that part of China and he offered to show us around the city.

When we were done eating, the usual practice in Singapore is to go dutch and split the cost of the meal among ourselves. However, our local friend offered to pay for the meal, saying that we are his guests. Thinking that this was just out of pure courtesy, we kindly declined and said we should pay since we had only just met and were just acquaintances. Understanding that we are foreigners, our local friend explained to us that in his culture it is considered rude to reject such offers and that, being his guests, it is proper for us to accept his gestures of hospitality. The hospitality of our local friend did not just stop at paying for the meals, he paid for our transportation as we toured around the city and even bought some local snacks to bring back to our hotel.

I guess people in that culture are generally more open and generous in their givings and it is in a way how they show friendship to each other.