Picking up the BillRecently I have found myself with a rather lovely problem. I’ve got this great Chinese friend who I get on with brilliantly and who always has great ideas for places to visit and restaurants to eat in. We meet regularly, and she has lots of patience as I try and express myself in Mandarin. The problem is… she always wants to pay for everything, all the time. In this case, everything really means, everything. I take out my purse on the bus, and she says "no need, I got it already". As the last tasty morsel passes through my lips in the restaurant, she waves her hand and pays the bill before my still-chewing self has any opportunity to protest. On a couple of occasions, I have been able to hand over my money before her. Her usual response is "Well, you really should have let me pay, you know".
Linguists might query my usage of the word "problem" to describe this particular situation. Who passes over a free dinner? But as a Scottish girl (admittedly one who grew up to the sounds of Destiny’s Child’s "Independent Woman") I am used to paying my own way. When someone else keeps paying for everything, perhaps the best thing to do is just to appreciate one’s good fortune, but the result of a lifetime of going Dutch is a nagging sense of awkwardness.
Nor am I alone in my unease in this kind of situation. My Australian friend commented that when dining with friends back home, it’s extremely rare to feel obligated to pay for anyone else. If anything, the opposite is true. People might feel something akin to shame if they relied on someone else to pick up their bill, fearing their friends would consider them a ‘bludger’ or ‘cheapskate’.
My point here is not that splitting the bill is universally the best, or even the right, way of doing things. Indeed splitting the bill equally brings a whole new set of problems. Cries of "I am going to put in fifty pence less because I didn’t eat any of the nan bread" can lead to resentment among groups of friends about people being too stingy. Curiously even after everyone has thrown in their share, often the amount does not quite reach the one on the bill - all kinds of awkward questions thus follow about who needs to put in more. On the other side of the coin, there are people who indulge in lobster, fine wine and desserts at the dinner table, and then assume their omelette eating friend will still pay for half of the bill. A sure recipe for a long lasting friendship, I sincerely doubt.
However, it is only as I travel that I discover the international variations in approaches to picking up the tab. I have learned that especially among the older generations, the general rule in Asian cultures is that one person pays for the whole meal. Traditionally when a group of friends eat together in a restaurant, they compete for the honor of paying the bill as in effect this means they are the most wealthy and generous at the table.
In the case of a man and a woman sharing a meal, then the man often pays, even if the relationship is not romantic in nature. While I appreciate that Scots do have a reputation for stinginess, I am fairly sure they are not unique in generally expecting girls to pay their fair share. The exception, of course, is when it comes to dates: especially on a first date it is common for the man to pay. Still, even this is becoming less widespread: some modern feminists strongly discourage this practice, because the man might feel like he has paid for a service of some kind. After the first date or two, most couples tend to split costs equally. Yet with some Asian male friends, I frequently find myself having things bought for me merely by virtue of my gender. I have a Korean friend who always insists on paying when we eat together – he says it would be damaging to his pride to let a girl, particularly one younger than him, pick up the tab. I asked a Chinese friend to recommend a good book, so he took me to a bookshop right there and then, and bought one for me. Very chivalrous behaviour, but markedly in contrast to what many Westerners would expect.
So, it seems established that who is expected to pay is decided on a cultural basis. I found an interesting piece online offering foreigners advice about living in the UK, in which one student wondered: `My lecturer invited us to go out for a Chinese meal and then she expected us all to pay our share of the bill. Most of us did not have any money and it was very embarrassing. Why did she ask us if she did not want us to come?´. In English speaking countries, asking "do you want to go for dinner?", is not the same as asking "can I buy you a meal. However, in Chinese, when you ‘qing’ (ask) someone to dinner, the word also implies that the meal will be your treat. Therefore the person who issues the invitation is the one who is meant to pay. Still, courtesy dictates that the guest should still offer to pay as well.
However these rules are not universally true across Asia. Young Chinese people, especially those with lots of exposure to Western culture, are increasingly embracing the idea of only paying for what you actually eat when you go out with friends. At university in China, I had many Korean classmates, and one incident that really made me smile was when one of them invited the Scottish guy in my class out for dinner. Apparently the meal was particularly delicious but my compatriot was stunned at the end of the meal when his friend said "Great, now you pay". He began to wonder whether the motive for the meal invitation was friendship after all, or a free dinner ticket! Nonetheless, he paid the bill and discovered the Korean custom of the invitee treating the inviter. Sure enough, the next time they ate out the Korean picked up the bill.
In the end, picking up the odd meal or two for a friend is not going to break the bank. If it aids cultural harmony, then I am happy to forget the idea of ‘going Dutch’, or as the Chinese say ‘splitting it A-A’. Still, I wonder how to recompense my generous friends who won’t let me pay for stuff. Maybe I need to hit the shops before I meet with them to find something to present them with. They definitely won’t try to pay for something I already bought…
Reference
http://www.shef.ac.uk/ssid/international/living/invitations.html
