282 Be Late

Do you feel it is important to be on time? What does your culture consider being late, is it over 5 minutes after the agreed time, or after 15 minutes, or more? Josh Edbrooke from Transition and ShaoLan discuss the way to describe being late in Chinese, as well as how you are supposed to deal with the situation of being late in a Chinese business context. Sometimes being late is unavoidable so ShaoLan teaches how to apologise for arriving late, but interestingly, it is also important to apologise if you arrive early!

In Chinese, the way to describe being late is 遲到/迟到. The first character 遲/迟 means “to delay” and 到 means to “arrive,” so when you have a “delayed arrival” then you are “late” 遲到/迟到.