Everytime I finish meals at restaurants in the United States, I am into a struggle. I don’t know what to do on whether I should clean up my eating area or just leave it there. To figure this out, I usually look around to see if there are waiters or waitress serving for cleaning up the tables, but still I am doubting my decision when I simply leave my leftovers there. I keep looking back to see if there are people coming to clean that up. Then I suddenly realize that I am judging myself in turns of the western value.
Tracing myself back home in China, I never had this kind of struggles. I would just leave my leftovers there and go because I know there are people coming to clean this up. It’s not me being lazy. Almost all the restaurants in China have pointed staff that are assigned this cleaning job. Looking around, you will see people unconsciously leave their leftovers there without any hesitations. I’m not going to evaluate the morality of this kind of behavior but to bring this up into the cultural contexts.
There is a longstanding ethos in China called, “the customer is god.” Customers in China are used to being served as the merchants are trying to sell out their products and restaurant are trying to provide the best experiences for the customers when having meals. The better the restaurants are, the better services people get. I recalled my research on Qianmen district in Beijing, many traditional stores broadcast this golden rule although many of them may not actually perform the way in a real sense. For example, some stores sell stuff that are fake. But anyway, the ethos “the customer is god” is the thing at least they tend or pretend to perform. Thus, customers practice in ways that they are supposed to be provided with services.
For the case of the United States, it’s quite different. The simple case is the fast food chain stores like KFC. There are no people serving in the customer area but only these behind the counter for ordering food. At the first beginning, I thought I would just leave my unfinished food there but with more experiences and senses with the situation here, I know I should have cleaned up my eating area. The case for fast food chain stores are so easy that once people recognized the “rule,” they know how to behavior. My struggle came from the Asian restaurants in the United State when I can barely find people serving cleaning the tables. There is kind of continua that I tend to perform, which means I tend to clean up the table in the Asian stores like I did in other local fast food chain stores. Sometimes it turned out to be unnecessary, because the strange part is these Asian stores don’t really have a recycled center for people to put back the dirty dishes, then you can’t do anything even if you want to.
The above experience also influence the way I behave after I return to China. I tend to clean up my own eating area after I finish up meals especially in fast food chain stores. I clearly remember that the staff serving for cleaning up the tables was so appreciated that I did her job and asked me to leave it to her. I didn’t realize that I was helping her but just perform the continua I was cultivated in the States.
Any of you share the same feeling? It’s a feeling I consciously experience but never came up with a so sure solution after I experienced the different social ethos across different cultural contexts.
Sensing the World 