When we first moved here we signed the boys up for different activities and we signed ourselves up for Chinese classes which requires EVERYTHING to be paid up front. No problem. I hand them my Visa. Deeee-nied. Wait…. WHAT? Denied? I have never been denied. Apparently majority of the businesses only accept Chinese Union Pay credit cards or cash. Or Alipay or Wechat payments if they are more savvy.
Getting the above methods of payment other than cash requires a Chinese bank account. Getting a Chinese bank account requires you to give them an arm and a leg and like your first paycheck (kidding). So my husband started the process to set up an account which literally took 3+ months to do.
So for the first few months here we have been using cash. For everything. It’s rather annoying because we were constantly going to the ATM. In the US we paid everything with a credit card. Everything was done online. No handling dirty money or paying withdrawal fees. So here I am counting out dirty 100 kuai bills to pay off all these activities, for food, for shopping, you name it.
3 months later… we got a Union Pay credit card.
Hallelujah.
Until I tried to use it…
Usually Union Pay credit cards have a pretty Union Pay logo. Just like a Visa logo or an American Express logo. Ours doesn’t have the pretty logo on it. Which makes the cashiers ASSUME it’s NOT a Union Pay credit card. And they don’t even want to try it. So here I am learning “try it” in Chinese which is “shìyīshì”. I would seriously get some annoyed cashiers. Some wouldn’t even want to try it after I said try it in Chinese which pissed me the he!! off to the point where I just left. Otherwise bad things would have happened.
Then in my Chinese class our teacher taught us the word “qǐng” or please. Then I thought to myself – let me say please and see what that gets me. Once I started saying “qǐng shìyīshì” the cashiers would smile, say kĕyĭ (ok) then slide the card. It was such an Uhhh-MAZING turn around in attitude. And even the same people I see on a weekly basis (my obsession with Paris Baguette)! Just saying please turns a frown upside down. Like for real. So far it has worked 10/10 times with using qǐng.
After talking to my Chinese teacher about my experience, she mentioned that a lot of workers aren’t treated nicely and people talk down to them since they are just a “simple” worker. So using simple manners actually puts some sunshine in their day.
So my advice…
Use qǐng.
Every time.
Anywhere.
In China.
It is a powerful word. It ONLY took me 4 months to learn.