mei banfa

Last Friday night, I noticed I was out of cash after dinner with a Chinese friend.  We were walking home, so we stopped at the first bank ATM, the Chongqing Rural Commercial Bank, a name that seems very funny to me, a perfect oxymoron.  Chongqing and rural, really? 

I put my card in, and …nothing.  No cash, no card, nothing.  Then after a minute, it spit out a receipt for what looked like the previous transaction.  We called over the bored night guard who went to the machine, pressed all of the buttons, and with no other interest or effort said, “mei banfa.”   

Mei banfa loosely means nothing can be done, often used to shut a conversation down, so functionally it means the mei banfa speaker has zero control or responsibility.  The ATM that ate my card at 9 pm was probably a mei banfa situation, but the use of that phrase seems to reflect something larger in the culture about dealing with problems, or rather not dealing with problems.

The Chinese are notorious for not wanting to admit there is a problem, either on a large scale: “What pollution? That’s fog,” or on a small scale: “Teacher, I don’t understand.”  The reason is saving face, a social custom where everyone avoids making themselves, other people, their family, or their country look bad.  The goal is to avoid any and all embarrassing situations.  Recognizing a problem, admitting to not knowing, owning a mistake, not following social protocol are some ways to lose face.  By this definition I’m a face losing mess; one of the first things I learned to say in Chinese was: “I don’t know!”

I also hear the mei banfa attitude when I talk to students about the stressful gaokao, ubiquitous plagiarism, or other student life topics.  They believe to their core that nothing can change, leaving me to wonder how economic, political or social problems can be solved here.

In contrast to mei banfa is the American problem-solving, make-a-difference attitude.  Do we even have phrase or idiom for that?  We all know what it feels like, what it looks like.  And it was with that attitude that I went back to the bank on Saturday to get my card.  It took much explaining, my passport, and lots of please help me smiles, but eventually card returned, problem solved.