Further to the previous post, I have solicited opinions from various parties to help unravel the mystery, because I obviously have tons of free time to obssess over puzzles.
Some were perhaps not interested enough to invest any real thought, but most reactions were along the lines of not being able to understand or explain such behaviour. Could he be a chronic liar, a sociopath, a manipulator?
A couple of respondents suspected romantic feelings were involved. Unfortunately, there were none on my part. I tend not to be interested in married men, and he identified himself as one from the very beginning. Could he be romantically interested in me? Seeing as he was already seeing someone, I'd hope not. And even if he was, surely anyone could see that continuing with the 'I'm married' charade wasn't going to make him more endearing or wrench things off the purely platonic track.
Could he have thought I was romantically interested in him and thus pretended to be married to nip the interest in the bud? That sounds reasonable, except I'm certain I didn't express any unnecessary interest, especially not at that juncture when I hardly knew him at all and he introduced himself as being married.
Then I got a bright idea. I polled a mutual acquaintance. He thought the story was 'strangely amusing', then proceeded to defend the person with 'he was prob'ly just having a giggle and didn't mean any harm' and 'he's just naive'. Apparently a bunch of 21-year-old Chinese students possess social awareness, understanding and maturity equivalent to a bunch of 16-year-old British students.
Quite enlightening, but a person in his late twenties who is soon to be married still stuck at that stage? Scary.
Embarrassingly, the debacle has exposed me as a person who would form preconceived notions about a person based on assumptions based on personal information such as age and marital status. I sought his opinion and advice on things like housing, interaction with Chinese people, Chinese law, Chinese food, travelling in China, because I thought being older, he would have more experience and knowledge and thus give better advice. Even when he proved not to be as knowledgeable or experienced as I thought, I just put it down to different spheres of interest between a local and a Foreigner.
Even when he kept harping on how the supervisor praises me, followed by "what's so good about you?", criticism "you're always late!", "you're so stupid!" when I would ask a work-related question, while I thought it was odd, I took them as jokes or just ribbing, always safe in the belief that he is older and have been at the job longer than I have and was thus entitled.
Yes, it appears you can get away with a lot of things if you just convince me you are somehow entitled. Woe is me.
