The China Teaching Web

If I was a girl, I suppose a few tears would have rolled down my pale cheeks when I returned to work yesterday. Sitting on my desk was a colorful boquet of beautiful flowers that a well meaning supervisor at Metro had prepared in order to welcome me back from my appendectomy. There is just one problem; I am not sure I am comfortable with receiving flowers. It is just kind of strange.  For a moment, I closed my eyes and tried to remember if any guy I had known had ever received such a welcome back gift. Yes, there was one guy. Oh, it was me again. A well meaning Chinese girl had also bought flowers for me when I had returned to China after a long trip through southwest Asia. That was a bit different though. She left them inside my apartment; not on a desk in the English office for all of the foreigners to see. However, it does not change the fact that I, Robert Vance, have received flowers from people at least two times in China.

I always thought that the only time it was acceptable for guys to receive flowers was when they were laying in a casket at the funeral parlor. I guess my gender stereotypes kicked in on that notion. When I take a look around the web, I discover that men in Western countries do in fact receive flowers while they are still alive although many men, such as myself, are uncomfortable with the idea. What is ironic is that my Chinese friends tell me that giving flowers to men here is not a normal gesture. They are under the impression that in Western countries, this practice is much more widely accepted. Hence the beautiful flowers sitting on my desk yesterday morning when I arrived for work. Or, maybe someone just thought I was a ‘flowery’ kind of guy. Am I? It doesn’t matter; it’s the thought that counts, right?