Saving Face

I thought I would give everyone a cultural lesson today about a subject which will cause any foreigner in China a lot aggravation. This is the concept of "saving face". Saving face can be defined as basically not telling the entire truth (or flat out lying) in order to save yourself the embarrassment of admitting that either 1) you don't know the answer or 2) you think someone won't like the answer. If you don't know the answer, it is very common place here among the natives to just make something up that is totally incorrect. And if you think someone won't like the answer, you can also make up something you think they will like. In general, this causes a lot of grief for the average foreigner. I really can't say whether the Chinese play this little game amongst themselves but I am pretty sure they do.
Here is an example of a recent experience in saving face. My friend and I recently went to lunch in a new restaurant. We ordered our food and drinks. We promptly got our drinks and fell into a deep conversation without realizing the time. By the time we checked our watches, it had been over 35 minutes since we had ordered (VERY long by Chinese standards). I asked where our lunch was. The waitress replied "It's coming- please wait a moment". Ok, 5 more minutes went by and no food. Finally my friend got up and asked again where our food was. The waitress came over and rambled something in Chinese about waiting a short while (again). We decided to wait another 5 minutes since getting up and moving to a new restaurant seemed like it would take more time than just waiting (or so we thought). At this point (yes, another 5 minutes later) we asked to speak to the manager who spoke a little english. "Oh, our gas is broken so the cook has not been able to start preparing your lunch". Huh? Did they think that in the "short while" we were waiting they were going to repair the gas and manage to cook up an entire lunch? No, they thought that if they came and told us right away that their gas was broken, we would have a bad impression about the restaurant so they decided to save face by not telling us the real story until we finally pitched a fit. This is a very typical experience in China. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten in a taxi and had the driver tell me he knew where the address was only to go around in circles because he didn't know and he didn't want to loose face by admitting it. So if any of you get the opportunity to visit China, beware the answer that just doesn't seem right - chances are it probably isn't.