Within one week I shall leave my present institution, where I felt severely mistreated around salary payment and work conditions for 2 years, as a postdoctoral fellow.
The PI who signed my contract (theoretically my supervisor) has played passive-aggressive "not-here" all my stay while consistently demanding honorary, corresponding authorship status in any piece I happen to publish, from any source. In fact I had never heard of this person prior to signing my contract from abroad, over which I was dealing with another local professor. They had made some kind of agreement.
Soon I will leave, at the official end of my contract. I am wondering whether I should give this person a symbolic departure gift, especially in front of the other lab mates. I am not culturally hierarchy-oriented but displaying respect to hierarchy is seen as a strong moral virtue, where I am, in China.
Relevant: I am not staying in China, but I might keep in touch with one or two current lab mates after I leave. I am afraid that an act of offering him a gift will communicate a wish to continue "guanxi" which is his understanding probably means I will forever offer him credit over my work, favors.
Please, what do others suggest?
* UPDATE * 02/04/2018
I have finally departed and left a bottle of fairly good French wine behind, sitting on my desk among the student's office, with a note clearly stating it was for the Professor. With a "Thank You for the opportunity, and provided unforgettable experience to share".
As mentioned, my main objective was to displaying respect for other labmates by thanking the professor in the local hierarchy and presenting a gift.
I had, however, no direct dialogue with this person upon my departure. The final days were particularly tense, where finally the supervisor openly failed to pay for a long-delayed amount of 1k USD of salary agreement. The details of this conflict are described in another question in SE Academia.
Thanks to all for suggestions; I believe this was the best I could do.
Answer
I don't know much about Chinese culture, so take this answer with as many grains of salt as necessary, but it seems like the best thing to do here is find out what is the minimum socially acceptable gift you could give the advisor without it burning bridges with your lab and the other people you work with, and then give that. If you can get away without giving anything, so much the better.
If you do find yourself socially obligated to give some kind of gift, when you give it perhaps you could emphasize to the advisor how much you're looking forward to doing your own, independent work as a polite way to discourage any further involvement.
Even if this person demands honorary authorship over your work after you leave, it will be much easier to tell them no when you're not working in their lab. The worst they could directly do to retaliate is refuse to give you a reference or letter of recommendation to future employers, and someone who gets their authorships by abusing their students and not doing any actual work is unlikely to be able to do much damage to your reputation anyways.
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