It happened last summer, when I went back to my hometown in China for holiday. I got together with my High-school class mates at KTV, and we spent a great time there. By the time we left, one of the gentlemen class mates paid the bill. It was 250yuan in total and there were 5 of us, so I passed him 50yuan subconsciously. He did not accept the money, but stared at me and asked: ‘What do you mean?’ I could tell, from his tone, that he was angry about me! Other friends also stared at me as if I was a stranger to them. I then realized that I made a mistake by breaking the Chinese culture!
In China, people treasure friendship and they believe in “share and share alike(有福同享，有难同当).” So when some friends eat or play outside, they would like to treat each other to show close friendship. Usually, one friend would pay the bill for all; another would pay next time, so on and so forth. They don’t care about gain and lost with friends and don’t “go Dutch”. So when I paid my friend 50yuan for myself, I hurt them by being “clear” with them.
For the first time, in my hometown, I experienced the difference in culture norms and values. After 4 years staying in Singapore, I am used to the western culture here. For Singaporeans, go Dutch with friends is very common. Being “clear” with money doesn’t mean being far away from friends. Instead, it avoids a lot of troubles caused by money, which makes the friendship more sincere. I appreciate it and enjoy “go Dutch” with friends even when I went back to China. But my carelessness hurt my friends. It reminded me again, that the fundamental rule of intercultural communication is to respect each other with their culture.
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In Malaysia and Singapore, it is very common for one to pay for their own bill when going out with a group of friends. This is to avoid trouble caused by money matter, where one might think that it is very unfair as he has to pay more than his friends. For me, when I go out with friends, the reason for us to prefer going Dutch is that as we are all students and have not started earning money yet, thus we would not want to burden our friends by paying extra. However for older adults, they will usually pay the bill for all when they are having a dinner with friends, relatives or business partners. A Dutch treat is considered as a stingy behavior for them and may show that they are having financial problems.
However, I would like to know, how did you view Dutch treat when you first came to Singapore?
To regina,
I managed to learn some western culture from books and internet before I came to Singapore. So I was not surprised to see people going Dutch when I first came to Singapore. Instead, I appreciated it a lot. Actually, I knew many people(especially students) in China didn't like the way of treating each other, but couldn't do much about it because of the culture. And I was one of them! So, I did enjoy Going Dutch with friends from the first time I did it.
Wow, this is my first time hearing such a culture in China. Well, i believe that practicing the go Dutch is more practical and less troublesome. It is fair enough to pay for our own share. If we are to treat each other on different occasion, some people might tend to forget whether it is intentionally or not. Moreover, at this age, we are still students, which means that we do not have any income yet. So, some people will feel bad if they were to use their parents money to treat others.
We practice this Dutch treat in Myanmar too. I personally feel students like us should practise it since we do not have steady income like regina mentioned. By going Dutch treat, we can have what we like since we spend our own money.
It really depends on the clique you are in. For example, my friends and I do have the culture that you talked about in China. So I do not experience that issue over here like what you mentioned.
But Singaporeans usually like to go Dutch though. My friends are different. Sometimes we do talk about this issue also. We will say things like 谈钱伤感情 (being calculative will hurt the relationship). But if a person in a group never pays for anything, what will you guys do then?
To MJ,
From my experience, it depends on the person's financial ability. if he has financial problem, as his friends,we will understand. Well, if he uses friendship to take advantage of others, day after day, he will be left from the group.
haha... the situation when I was in high school was even worse. The boys always paid bills when the class or friends went outing...it seemed a responsibility of boys to serve the girls...
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