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Miss intrusive types in lonely times

By Hong Liang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-10 07:46

In Hong Kong, if a casual acquaintance was bold enough to ask me how much money I was making, I would most certainly have thought that he or she had crossed to the other side of the thin red line of sanity. But such inquisitiveness is quite common on the mainland.

It's not so much in Beijing. Maybe it's because I don't go out very often. I did venture out a lot more when I was in Shanghai. I remember that at cocktail parties or other corporate functions, many people I met and talked to gave me the impression they were moonlighting for the census department.

I was sure they weren't being rude or had any ill intentions. But their curiosity could be most off putting.

After the ritual of exchanging name cards and polite greetings, I was programmed to expect the next question.

"Oh, I see, you're working in Shanghai," the person would say. "What's your salary?"

When I was new in Shanghai, I was usually taken aback by such an act of unabashed intrusion. With more experience, I came to learn to play the probing game.

If the person who asked was a fellow journalist, or a scholar in academia, I would always quote a figure in line with the average income in their respective professions. That would almost immediately win their sympathy and comradeship.

But if whoever asked was a car salesman or a stock broker, I usually just rolled out an astronomically large number, which they found to be either impressive or unbelievable. Now if I'm asked the same question by this group, I guess a much smaller number because their incomes must have deflated in tandem with the massive erosion of asset values wrought by the global financial crisis.

Once the question about my salary was dealt with, other questions, some even more personal, would invariably follow. I still can't figure out why anyone, other than the would-be matchmaker who was either too crazy or stupid to see some potential in me, would want to know my personal details.

My age, for instance, seemed to be a topic of great interest to many of my new acquaintances. The more considerate people tried to satisfy their excessive curiosity in a round about way, like asking when I graduated from college, or if I had covered the Vietnam War.

After delving into my net worth and my chronological age, they would start grilling me for information about my health and marital status.

Most of my new acquaintances seemed to assume I was suffering from some hidden illness despite my outward appearance of good health. Desperate to vindicate themselves, they would ask probing questions about the condition of my heart, lungs, liver, stomach and various other organs, making my family doctor in Hong Kong seem decidedly sloppy and uncaring.

The only way to stop the tedious health check was to simply invent an ailment. A simple ulcer would usually do the trick. Just don't get too carried away, or you'd be inviting endless free advice on medication and herbal formulas.

In Shanghai, I was frequently invited to corporate dinners and functions. No invitation had ever included a wife or partner.

But the question about my marital status almost always came up at those parties. After learning I was divorced, the inquisitors would usually follow up with questions about my children and my future plan. More than once, I was told, in all seriousness, to start looking for a partner.

At that time, I found such invasions of my privacy to be most annoying. Now that I am not meeting that many people, I am beginning to miss those inquisitive strangers in Shanghai.

E-mail: jamesleung@chinadaily.com.cn