The Fight for the Bill in a Chengdu Restaurant — Epoche A2
At the end of a dinner in Chengdu, I watched four grown adults fight over the bill — hands pushing a card away, one phone held over the counter before the others could raise theirs. Nobody was angry. Everybody was serious. The Analects open by asking whether it is not a joy when friends come from far away. In China that joy has a cost, and the host wishes to carry it. Everything at the till follows from this. If the host invited you, the meal is a gift. A gift that the guest pays for is no longer a gift, and it leaves the host smaller than he was when the evening began. So the host must win. And the guest must fight, because a guest who gives in at once looks as though the invitation meant nothing to him. The cleverest people never fight at all. They stand up to wash their hands, pay quietly on the way, and come back with an innocent face. Phone payment has made this both easier and harder: you can pay from your seat in two seconds, so the race now starts before the plates are cleared. Splitting the bill evenly is not polite everywhere. Sometimes it only says: let us owe each other nothing.