The Chinese Concept of Guanxi and our New Apartment

A week ago, as I was picking up a package at the international office I was told there was “good news.”
“We want to move you to a nicer apartment!”
The thing is we already have the nicest apartment so I was immediately suspicious. “We’ll talk about it later,” I said and ran back home to tell Ryan about it.
Well, a few days later we found out what was going on. The dean of the university wanted 2 nice apartments across from each other for one big family. Apparently while there were many available apartments there were none that were located on the same floor. Of course seeing as how we are foreigners, and seeing as how no one lived across the hall from us the dean decided that out of the dozens and dozen of apartments he wanted ours.
Cultural Difference #1: In China, if the dean asked you to move apartments you would do it without making a fuss or saying anything. In America the first thing you do is get offended.
And we felt offended. I mean are we of so little importance we can just be moved at the whim of the dean? Do they think they can push around the foreigners? Do they not care that we just signed another contract to stay another semester?
At first we said no way, and that we would talk to the dean to tell him ourselves that we wouldn’t move out of our super sweet apartment just so his friends could move in. Hell no! But instead of the dean we ended up talking to our dean, the one in charge of the international office.
We knew this situation was rife with cultural land mines we knew nothing about. In China there are very strong influences of “face’ (like saving face) and “guanxi.”
Guanxi is the social network between people something along the lines of our “owing you” culture. You know: “Please come to my boss’s mother’s funeral with me. I’ll owe you!” But here it goes much deeper than that. It’s hard for me to describe because I don’t understand it myself but you begin acquiring guanxi with people at a young age and it builds over time. You use guanxi to get a good job, to find a suitable husband/wife, to succeed in every part of your life. The more powerful you are, the more guanxi you have. And while it is very important in the business world the idea of guanxi is for all people regardless of class and is a central idea in society in general.
Cultural Difference #2: With our slight understanding of guanxi were we making our bosses “lose face” by refusing to move? What would that do to us in the future? Also, if we did move would it earn us guanxi? Could foreigners earn guanxi?
So we had lunch with our dean, a guy who has been very nice to us over the semester. He has a good grasp of English and has traveled and worked in western countries enough to know that we might not have been happy about the move. In fact, he told the dean that we would decide for ourselves and we could say no. (A concept that I think is unheard of if we were Chinese.)
We also asked our dean to be straight with us. Face and guanxi are not spoken concepts here, but rather underlying cultural norms that people act on without being obvious. For instance students won’t answer questions in class (unless you call on them directly) because if they get the answer wrong they lose face. Also, a teacher won’t admit they are wrong, even if they made an error because they would lose face. Also, if the teacher makes a mistake and a student catches it then they will never say anything because of face again. It can get very confusing at times!
So we asked him straight up to tell us what was going on. He admitted that yes, guanxi was involved in this situation and they would lose some face if we said no to the dean.
Cultural Difference #3: In America if you do a personal favor for the boss just because they ask it makes you look like a kiss-ass or brown noser. In China, if you don’t do the favor you look rude and demanding.
Of course we don’t want to embarrass anyone but we also don’t want to get screwed. So we agreed to at least look at the other available apartments with the possibility of us refusing to move.
The first apartment we looked at was disgusting. I won’t go into detail but let’s just say no way, no how, not ever.
The second apartment was located directly above us one floor up. It was the same layout, the same decorations, the same appliances. Even the curtains and the blinds were the same style.
Finally, after 2 days of talking and negotiating we said that we would make the move. (We thought briefly about holding out until they bribed us with two ipod touches but decided against it. Ha ha!) We looked at the apartment on a Friday and by Tuesday we were all moved and settled in.
The funny thing about our new apartment is everything is identical, yet slightly different. The lighting is just slightly different, the bathroom tiles are crooked in a different way and the hooks are in the same place just 2 inches above or below. It is almost creepy like someone went into your house and changed teeny tiny things. But give us a week and I think we won’t even notice anymore.
Our old apartment:
Our new apartment:

So there we had it, our first real sticky cultural situation and I think we managed it well. We stood up for our values without being too pushy and obnoxious and learned more about our temporary homeland and how things work.