‘Nice’ isn’t the same thing as ‘polite’.
While in China, I observed that interactions with strangers tend to be a lot more transactional and a lot less personal than in the US. While buying things, for example, neither the buyer nor seller is expected to say ‘hello’ or ‘thank you’. Oftentimes, the person at the counter won’t say anything more than the price of what you’re buying, and even the currency unit is a luxury — they’ll simply say “ten”, or “fifteen”, or whatever you owe. Most of the time, they barely even look at you.
Servers in restaurants will never come to your table and say, “Hi, my name is Dawei and I’ll be your server today”, and they certainly aren’t going to interrupt you mid-meal to ask how things are tasting. If you need anything, you stop them and ask for it. And sometimes, your servers will look downright irritated, presumably because something else is on their mind or they’re having a bad day and not because you’re a bad customer. They don’t feel the need to put on a smile if they’re not happy; this might have to do with the fact that there are no tips in China, but that’s another topic for another time. As long as you don’t cause trouble, they don’t really care, and if you need service, they’ll take care of it.
At first, this was really grating to me. It felt rude, even. I mean, in the US, strangers are generally nice to each other in transactional situations. There’s a feeling of friendliness that’s expected of vending/service roles. Why, I thought, are people in China not nice? Why are interactions with strangers so bare, that they don’t even feel polite?
But after thinking about it more, I don’t think it’s really appropriate to conclude that Chinese service, much less Chinese people in general, aren’t “nice”. It can only be reasonably said that these types of pleasantries aren’t a part of the culture. Does it make sense to conclude that a culture isn’t nice because it feels transactional to engage in, well, a business transaction? Probably not, but then, based on this cultural difference, what constitutes being nice and what constitutes being polite? What is the relationship between the two?
One interaction in particular really spurred up this line of thinking for me: I bought a peach from a guy selling fruit from a roadside hole in the wall type shop. He had a sink coming out of the wall above which a paper sign was taped which read, ‘To wash your hands, 5 yuan’. Naturally, after being out and about all day, I wanted to wash my hands (and the peach) before eating.
“Can I was this here?” I asked him.
“5 yuan.”
“Really?”
And he started laughing with a big smile on his face.
“So you’re joking?” I said, and he laughed even harder.
“Yes, I’m joking. Go ahead.”
Genuinely nice interaction. I paid him for the peach, he had a little harmless fun messing around with me, and the peach was great. It seemed like once there was some social pretense for this interaction beyond the bare transaction, a wall had come down and he was nice to me in a way that felt a lot more special than the typical “Hi, thank you, have a nice day” you get at nearly any establishment in the US.
While that type of interaction in the US is culturally considered to be polite, is it necessarily rude if omitted? I don’t think so; there are definitely plenty of times in America where the person behind the counter will just tell you your total and say nothing else. Although, to be fair, that’s pretty unheard of in American sitdown dining. In retrospect, what initially struck me as rude in Chinese interaction was the startling level of impersonal nonchalance — the fact that you barely get looked at — moreso than the lack of a hello/thank you/goodbye.
And in any case, I don’t think it’s quite right to compare an American standard of politeness to a Chinese one. In that sense, I thin politeness is culturally relative, not objective. In China, it’s simply seen as practical to exchange fewer words, get things out of the way as straightforwardly as possible, and then move on. You aren’t friends with your transactional partner and most likely aren’t ever going to see them again, so why pretend to be?
I would say that politeness is about meeting a social standard, while rudeness is failure to do so. Perhaps from my American perspective, it’s weird to think about the lack of a certain behavior (attention/greetings/small talk) as polite, since in my usual culture this constructive behavior needs to be taken in order to be perceived as polite. But in China, if it’s considered sufficient to not engage in those behaviors, maybe this type of interaction can be construed as polite.
Politeness shouldn’t be confused for niceness, which I think is more about looking out for somebody’s best interests and/or going out of your way to improve an experience for them.
Politeness is about meeting a social standard; niceness is about going out of your way to improve an experience for somebody.
In transactional interactions in the US, niceness and politeness are conflated. The feeling of friendliness is appreciated and can brighten both parties’ day, if genuine. From a service perspective, we place a cultural emphasis on the experiential aspect of the transaction, while this is largely absent in China. It may be true that in American service, we expect strangers to be nice (thus niceness is a subset of politeness), but it would be presumptuous to apply that expectation to other cultures.
Interestingly, when I came back to the US, I found it really weird that people taking orders from me at restaurants or checking out my items at a store were so conversational, and apparently concerned about me. It was even weirder than when I first got to China and was startled by how unconcerned the service was.
At a certain point, it actually starts to feel fake when the guy at Walgreens asks me in a sweet voice how my day is going. Am I obligated to ask him about his day, too, even if he’s most likely just trying to do his job the way he was told to and may or may not give a shit?
I don’t really think it can be said that one way is better than the other. It really just comes down to whether or not you like to have a brief and honestly empty, although pleasant, conversation with strangers. Something interesting to think about: to what extent is your preference a reflection of a “true self” (introversion vs extroversion), and to what extent is it a reflection of cultural inclinations that you’ve just fallen into?
