Common Talk Weeklyshuang yu zhou kan
issue date

Culture Clash
October 29, 2003
By Zeng Zhen
Picture by Liu Yuanmin

What is a friend?

One day I was chatting with a Spanish guy who was sent to China for several months' business work. I was wondering whether he felt lonely here in a strange city, where all people are speaking such a difficult language.

"Do you have any friends with whom you can meet on the weekends?" I asked. "I sometimes spend my weekends with people, drinking wine and talking. They may come from all kinds of countries, speaking English or other languages. We may have wonderful time together, but they are not my friends, exactly."

I felt a little surprised at his answer. From a Chinese perspective, once you have had dinner with somebody, drunk wine with somebody or gotten-together with somebody, you can call him/her a friend of yours. So you may often hear that all people around you call others "friends" but maybe they have only met once.

Another day, a foreign friend gathered with us talking in Chinese in a cafe. A girl talked about "her friend" so often that the foreigner couldn't help but ask her: "what's the relationship between you and your friend? You seem to be quite close to each other."

The girl became red-faced immediately. She explained that in Chinese some young people use the word "friend" instead of "boyfriend" or "girlfriend".

Why?

"Because we are shy", the girl said with a smile.

Nevertheless, this way of using the term "friend" is not very popular in China. Some young people who are from the northern part of China often talk in this way. If you are careful enough, you may find there is still a slight difference between using "friend" to refer to a "lover" or a "regular friend".

If we literally translate the sentence, you may understand it quickly. "He is my friend" means boyfriend. "He is one of my friends" means regular friend.

You see, how important measuring words are in Chinese!