Negotiating a bathroom and dinner timetable with a homestay family
You are a Year 11 student from Christchurch on a three-week exchange at a middle school in Suzhou, staying with the Wang family. Your school rugby fitness sessions run 5:45–6:45pm three evenings a week at the school gym, and you get home at about 7:05. The family eats dinner at 6:15pm sharp. There is one bathroom. Host grandmother uses it from 7:00 to 7:20 every evening for her medication routine, and host mother asked you at the weekend to help set the table at 6:00. When you arrived at 6:20 yesterday, host brother Wang Ming (16) said 你怎么又晚了？ and the atmosphere at dinner was flat. You have eleven nights left and want a timetable that does not make you the difficult guest. Host mother speaks quickly with some Suzhou-accented Mandarin; you understand most of it but speak slowly.
1. Write the first three sentences you would say to your host mother to raise the problem, and explain why you put them in that order.
Read the worked answer
Opening: 「阿姨，谢谢您每天做饭。我有一件事想跟您商量，可以吗？我每个星期有三个晚上要训练，七点零五分才到家。」
Why this order:
- Thanks first. It signals you are not complaining about the household, which is the fear behind 你怎么又晚了？
- 商量, not 要求. 商量 frames the timetable as a joint problem. 我要七点十分吃饭 sounds like a demand from a guest; 商量 invites her to co-own the solution.
- Fact before request. Stating 七点零五分才到家 first makes the request sound like a consequence of the school timetable rather than a preference you invented. If you ask first and explain second, it sounds like an excuse.
- 可以吗？ gives her a genuine chance to say no, which is what makes the request polite in a host–guest relationship where she holds the authority.
2. Wang Ming says: 那你别练了，吃完饭再练不行吗？ Give your spoken reply and explain the reasoning behind each move.
Read the worked answer
Reply: 「我知道吃饭要准时，你说得对。可是教练要求每个人都去，不去要请假，很麻烦。虽然我不能六点十五吃饭，但是我七点二十五吃完可以帮你们洗碗。你觉得这样行吗？」
Reasoning:
- Concede the value, not the point. 你说得对 agrees with punctuality, which is what he is actually defending. Disagreeing with the value as well as the solution turns a timetable question into a loyalty question.
- Explain with a system, not a feeling. 教练要求 is outside your control; 我不想去 carries no weight.
- Offer a trade. 我洗碗 costs you something, which shows you are not asking the family to absorb the whole change.
- Avoid 你不懂 / 这是新西兰的事. Both raise the temperature and make you the guest who thinks the host family is backward.
- Reopen with 你觉得. It returns the decision to him, so he is not the loser in front of his mother.
3. Produce a workable plan for 6:45–7:55pm that respects grandmother's 7:00–7:20 slot and the 6:00 table-setting request. Explain which element you moved and why that one.
Read the worked answer
Plan:
- 5:30 - set the table before leaving for training (the 6:00 request cannot be met in person).
- 6:45 - home, greet everyone, sit at the table with the family while they eat.
- 7:00–7:20 - homework at the table while grandmother has the bathroom.
- 7:20–7:35 - shower.
- 7:35–7:55 - reheat and eat, then wash up.
What I moved: the table-setting, from 6:00 to 5:30.
Why that one and not the others:
- Grandmother's 7:00–7:20 slot is fixed by medication - health beats convenience, and it is not mine to negotiate.
- The 6:15 family dinner is a ritual, not just a meal; skipping it entirely for three nights would confirm Wang Ming's complaint. Sitting at the table without eating keeps the social part.
- Table-setting is the only element with slack: it can happen earlier, or Wang Ming can do it and I take the dishes.
Note the trade-off I accept: eating at 7:35 means lukewarm food and eating alone some nights. That is the cost of training, and it should fall on me, not on the family.