Who pays at a Chinese dinner, and the quiet trip to the cashier

At a Chinese dinner the bill is rarely settled at the table. More often someone paid it ten minutes earlier after stepping out to take a call, and the only sign is that the waiter never brings the folder.

The quiet trip to the counter

Most mid-range restaurants have a cashier's desk near the door, called the shōuyíntái (收银台), and nearly everyone pays by scanning a QR code with WeChat Pay or Alipay. Paying takes a few seconds, and nobody at the table sees it. A host who means to treat will often slip away during the last dishes, pay, and sit back down without a word.

The tussle, and when to stop

When two people both mean to pay, the scene at the counter can look like a quarrel: phones held up to the scanner, a hand on a forearm, a repeated wǒ lái (我来), "let me." It is a show of goodwill, and everyone knows how it ends. A guest should make one sincere offer and one follow-up. Pushing a third time starts to take the gesture away from the host.

A promise, not a payment, ends the exchange. The phrase is zhè dùn nǐ qǐng, xià cì wǒ lái: this one is yours, the next is mine.

这顿你请，下次我来。

Splitting, among the young

Among students and younger colleagues, splitting the bill is ordinary and nobody is embarrassed by it. It is called AA zhì (AA制). Usually one person pays the whole bill, then sends a group payment request in WeChat with each share worked out to the yuan. Insisting on paying for everyone at that kind of table tends to cause more fuss than it saves.

Either way, people remember who paid for the meal. Hosting the next one, whether a hotpot or a plain breakfast of dumplings, settles the debt more gracefully than any contest at the counter.