So, the latest learning curve: losing face – this is not an account of serious health consequences resulting from faulty facelifts, but a big thing in Asia and something hard to fully understand unless you have experienced it yourself. I'll do my best to explain with the help of a recent encounter. Once a week I go to the local laundrette around the corner, deposit my clothes with the grumpy, overweight, middle-aged Vietnamese proprietor, take my ticket and return the next day to collect it all. At a cost of less than 50p for the lot you would think you couldn’t go far wrong. However, one week I return to my digs, empty the laundry bag and find 3 garments missing, not to mention a pair of someone else's pants as replacement! Returning to the shop (with the manager of my guesthouse to act as interpreter) I enter the ‘face’ farce.
Basically, a Vietnamese person will never admit they are wrong for fear of losing reputation or respect: i.e. they will swear blind the sky is pink even when all around know it’s blue (or a shade of ‘greenhouse gas grey’ here most days). Put simply – it’s a whole heap of male bovine do-do.
Returning to our scenario – overweight, grumpy washer woman will not concede to losing my clothes (even though she itemises the garments on the ticket), she ignores the fact she has already made 1 error (that of giving me someone else’s fake Chanel ‘diamante’ nylon smalls – which incidentally were not so small and clearly wouldn’t have belonged to my pert posterior). Suggesting she pay me if she could not replace them, she looked at me as if my clothes were made of spun gold and/or I’d been sniffing crack when I told her how much they would cost to replace (by UK standards of course). This should have worked in my favour as it indicated I have higher prestige than Mrs Washer woman – alas, it didn’t: after requesting she look for them, or pay me for the missing items I cut my losses and left. I should have known my request would go unanswered – even if she had bothered to look for them and found them, she’d never return them as that would also ‘lose face’ as she’d be admitting her error.
Returning to our scenario – overweight, grumpy washer woman will not concede to losing my clothes (even though she itemises the garments on the ticket), she ignores the fact she has already made 1 error (that of giving me someone else’s fake Chanel ‘diamante’ nylon smalls – which incidentally were not so small and clearly wouldn’t have belonged to my pert posterior). Suggesting she pay me if she could not replace them, she looked at me as if my clothes were made of spun gold and/or I’d been sniffing crack when I told her how much they would cost to replace (by UK standards of course). This should have worked in my favour as it indicated I have higher prestige than Mrs Washer woman – alas, it didn’t: after requesting she look for them, or pay me for the missing items I cut my losses and left. I should have known my request would go unanswered – even if she had bothered to look for them and found them, she’d never return them as that would also ‘lose face’ as she’d be admitting her error.
So, what lessons can we take from this? Well, I have now come to learn (if I didn’t know already) I am always right in every way, shape and form! I will never apologise or admit to anything ever again, because I am an expat in Asia. One word - pants!
A xx
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