not the face that you have with your eyes, nose, mouth... but the "face" of your reputation and dignity. if you lose it, it's embarrassing and humiliating... so i often tell my students to put their face in their pocket and not "lose" face when they speak English (because they can be really nervous/embarrass about it and afraid of making mistakes!) i never thought of myself as a Chinese person dealing with face... because it's not that important in American culture. BUT last weekend in Beijing was a classic example of me losing face, twice.
a big group of us had dinner with samson's father's Chinese family friend and his family. it was a great meal with great food except for the people smoking everywhere around us and my involvement with turning the lazy susan. i'm usually the one to turn the lazy susan around because i like to keep it moving slowly but steadily so that people can have a variety of dishes pass in front of them... but then one of the dishes was sticking out of the table and it knocked samson's father's drink all over his clothes!! way to go jodi, talk about embarrassing! after feeling super bad and apologizing profusely i declared that my turning days were over.
but then towards the end of the meal i noticed that the lazy susan has not been moved in a while and had an urge to turn it, just to turn it so that others will eat more... bad choice. the moment i started to turn it ever so slightly, the wife of the family friend was about to get something in front of her! when she saw me turn it she immediately stopped reaching out for the dish in front of her and urged me to eat more and get what i like.... ahhhh!! i felt incredibly bad because she never got the food she was originally reaching for because she thought i wanted to eat something.. but i didn't lol.. confused? yes, because this wouldn't happen with Americans, if i turn the table while someone is getting something they will say "wait!" or just follow the turning table and still get whatever they want, but in China- it is not so.
the table where i lost my face. haha
lesson learned: don't turn the lazy susan unless you want to lose your face! :)
1 comment:
HAHAHA =) we went to dim sum and we didn't have a lazy susan and i asked my coworker why-- he said it was b/c we didn't have a big enough table. rats.
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