The Friendly Way to Call Other People in China

On Facebook I recently linked to a Ted.com article about how speaking different languages affect your brain. In the article they use an example of Mandarin and how people address the family. In China there is no generic grandma, grandpa, uncle etc. Instead every person has a different name based on their relationship to you. So the word for your mother’s mother is one thing (waipo) and your fathers mother is called something else (nai nai), but both mean grandma. Your older brother is called gege, but your younger brother is called didi. It’s the same for every family relation, with even differentiating names for a relative through marriage versus through blood.
As for me, when I introduce Color I sometimes introduce him as my gege. (It’s an easy way to establish our relationship is not only very close, but not romantic.)
But the interesting thing is I call him gege, which means older brother, despite him being more than a decade younger. He accepts it, and it just feels right to me as well and I think it says something about the level of trust we have with each other. When I was in the hospital and he was out of the room the doctors kept asking where my gege was.
To see the staggering amount of different words for family members just watch this video from Off The Great Wall. As for me I have only learned the words from siblings to grandparents. All the aunts and uncles and great-aunts and what-not is so confusing, I’m not even attempting to learn them. (Youtube video)

But it goes deeper than that. In China you address everyone either according to their age (in relation to you) or by their title. The words sir or ma’am are infrequently used. You don’t even use the word kid, instead, when you address a kid you call them xiao pengyou or literally, small friend.
And that’s why I like it, the system of addressing people here is so friendly, which is in stark contrast of the usual cold way Chinese people treat each other. If a street vendor or a middle aged man calls out me he’ll say mei nu, which means pretty woman, but kinda means young lady. (They would say that to even an ugly young girl so it’s not something to get excited about.) When a kid calls to me, or starts talking about me to his mom they often call me aiyi, or aunty. Laowai aiyi is a name I’ve heard a lot, foreign aunty.
I call a middle aged woman aiyi. (I know we are probably similar in age but I look young so it’s more respectful to call them aunty.) It’s how I address a woman on the street even if she is a total stranger, and I like it adds a level of instant friendliness that miss or ma’am doesn’t.

And it goes further. My students address other students, or people of similar age tongxue, which means classmate. I was with some students as they were preparing to surprise their classmate with a declaration of love and they wanted to clear out the gazebo area. “Tongxue, I’m sorry but could you please clear this area?” my student asked.
You might be familiar with the word comrade, tongzhi which you hear in movies depicting China in the 70’s. But these days it has morphed into a slang word for a gay person, so it is only older folk that say it.
Of course all teachers are called laoshi, and it is not just a catch-all when they can’t remember your name, but even my students who call me Becky still refer to me as teacher as a kind of respect. The other day when I was out at dinner with my students, the room was sweltering and one student asked (in chinese) if they could open the window. “Teacher has a cold!” the student by the window shot back. “We leave the window closed.” They didn’t know I could understand them and I waited a few minutes before delicately suggesting they open the window because I was hot too. Color’s family calls me teacher when they are directly addressing me, or just talking about me.
In a small shop you always address a person as laoban, or owner assuming it is a owner-operator kinda place. If it’s a bigger place, with lots of staff, you call the person fuwuyuan. You hear fuwuyuan a lot in restaurants, so most foreigners think it means waiter/waitress but it actually means “service person” so you can call a shop clerk or other jobs by that title.
Drivers aren’t simply drivers but shifu, which means master.  (This applies to all drivers wether on a public bus or a private car.) You can call other people who have a special skill shifu, like a shoe smith or something, but its less common, and it would be better just to call them boss. People like kung-fu masters could also be technically called master (which you can see in Kung Fu Panda in which the red panda’s name is Master Shifu, which technically means master-master.) But most younger disciples would just call them laoshi, or teacher.
As you can see, the system of addressing people in China can be quite complex and I don’t even understand it all. But I like it. I like waving back to a kid and saying, “Hi, little friend” or answer a middle-aged ladies questions with “I’m from America, Aunty.” It seems like such a friendly way of seeing the world. Your not surrounded by strangers but friends, relatives and pretty ladies.