Your responce is a good description of how things work here with personel trelationships. I don't think it's a good culture that puts personality and flattery ahead of work performance in a serious matter like a teaching reference, which should be honest. Now I have gotten such a great teaching report that in my eyes it makes a mockery of references here. My foreign colleague deserved that one, and I deserved his, well just about, anyway! I'd rather have an enflated one than a dissatisfactory one, so I shouldn't be dissapointed. But I'd have rather had a mediocre one that was more reflective of my work performance.
Back home, you could not get good reports for buying dinners and liquor for your supervisers. But here, dishonesty is the norm.