Gift Giving

Gift giving is important in Chinese culture. It is customary to give gifts to superiors at any moment for any reason. It’s an indispensable way to build guanxi. Some people give small gifts, others give really expensive gifts (2000 yuan bottles of baijiu) according to their means and the importance of the recipient. It’s not seen as bribery, but as putting your money where your mouth is to show how you feel about someone. As foreigners, we get a bit of a free pass. If we give anything at all, it’s worth points in guanxi.

Some of my favorite gifts from students:

Mini-terracotta soldiers from Xi’an!

There are a lot of lucky things in China: the color red, shoes, knots, fish, bats, the number eight. Many of these are based on a phonetic similarity between a positive word (like harmony, “xie”) and the lucky object (like shoes, also “xie”). Similarly, other words are unlucky because of their phonetic associations (like the number four, “si” and death “si”). Some buildings, especially in Hong Kong, don’t have a fourth floor because of this.

Sadly, one of these little guys lost a leg; but they’re no less dear for the wear.