Eating is a big part of Chinese culture and a lot happens around the dinner table from business, to family get together’s and most if not all national holidays. If you go to China to visit a friend or on business here a couple of tips on what you should do when you dine and also what you shouldn’t do!
Do
Shout loud to call the waiter. Fuwuyuan! 服务员！Yelling for a waiter in the west is considered rude, however if you don’t yell in China then it’s likely that you’ll be waiting a long time before anyone comes to see you.
Wait for whoever’s paying the bill or the oldest person on the table to take the first bite. Chinese pay high attention to status or age. So do try to restrain yourselves from digging in to those succulent spare ribs until your host or elder diner begins to eat.
Don’t
Stick your chopsticks in the rice. Sticking your chopsticks in rice is something that often happens when you offer food to the spirits of your ancestors, so sticking chopsticks in rice represents death and which is not something you want to bring up at the dinner table, especially when trying to secure that multi million dollar sales contract.
Blow your nose. In fact this is something you should try to avoid in public all together. Although this is something that probably no one in the world finds pleasant, the Chinese tend to find this more rude and disgusting than westerners.
李华
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