Eating with Westerners

[Nathaniel Brown]

As Anglo-Australian I can tell you why we do it :-)

It's the way we were brought up. I can't really speak for other people but I can share a bit of my childhood :-)

In Australia you generally get a large plate and your expected to have a full serving and then wait till everyone else has finished before you have anymore. So if you start eating first you have to wait till the last person finishes before you can go back for seconds. This generally means you load up your plate because it will be a while before you can get seconds if there are any seconds. Seconds being a second plate of food.

The same thing happens at virtually all gatherings. Family meals, BBQ's with friends etc. The food is all put on a long table and you go from one end to the other picking what you want and then you go back and sit down at a table or on the ground in groups and eat the food on your plate. Until the people in your group are finished eating you don't want to be rude and leave to get more food. Once everyone except the really slow eaters have finished you can go back up for more if you are still hungry.

I'm still getting use to having a really small bowl and not having my whole meal in a single serving and if I'm really hungry I'll fall back into my old habits of trying to fit everything I plan to eat in a single bowl unsuccessfully :-)

It's not that we are trying to be rude and take all the food it's that we are use to a different system. In Australia in my first serving I'd try to take as much of the food I like while trying to make sure that there was enough left for other people. If you only took a little bit I would assume that you didn't like it very much and when it came round for seconds. That is I've finished my first serving and so has everyone else then I can take another serving and since everyone else has had virtually nothing I assume that they don't like it so I can take a bigger serving, which I don't mind at all :-)

Anyway I hope you found this post educational and understand the logic :-)

[bianfuxia]

The point of the OP was that we waiguoren look rude when we eat this way in China. I'm not sure that it matters why we do. She was just pointing out the ramifications of it.

Still, now that we're on the topic!

I'm an "anglo-Aussie" too but I wasn't brought up like that. At those gatherings where there is a buffet-style set up, I think many people tend to politely take just enough to tide them over for a while and if, after everyone has done so, there's more, then yay for you, but if not, at least you can be sure that everyone got something to eat. I'd rather stop for a burger on the way home than walk around with a heaving big plate at a BBQ.

Still, the Chinese restuarant thing can be hard for waiguoren like me/us to learn in Australia if you don't know any better and your first experience is the local "Chinese/Australian" at the suburban shops. I don't think it's the hygiene issue, it's the "one-plate" and "serve-yourself-a-portion tradition". At home, if there's a lasagne sitting on the dinner table, each person serves themselves a slice, they don't take several small scoops over a period of time. They might add a portion of salad and a portion of something else. That's why I used to have a little bowl overflowing with sweet-and-sour chicken, honey prawns and beef and black bean before I a) realised that there was more to Chinese food than the "suburban specials" and B) looked around at what the Chinese patrons were doing and realised what was happening. Thankfully this happened for me well before I came to China!

I think the point that it often takes being told by someone who knows the "Chinese way" to help you work out how it's supposed to be done.

And once you know, it's a case of "when in Rome, try not to look like a dork".

[trevelyan]

Robert Hart, who ran the Chinese Customs during the late Qing Dynasty, once remarked to a Chinese acquaintance that he most enjoyed dining with Li Hongchang. He explained that Li served him simple and homely fare. Unfortunately, as Hart recounts in his diary, the next time he found himself at Li's home he was confronted with a 13 course banquet. Li's only remark was something along the lines of, "I'm not going to hear others say I feed you like a peasant."

Bearing this in mind, I refuse to side with the culinary turncoats and banquet apologists on this thread. Is not the the real villain Chinese social ettiquette? For who has not been to these banquets? And who can deny that as the exotic dishes pile up, the proportion of "edible" foods on the table shrinks alarmingly. Like a pack of hungry wolves circling a dessicated rabbit corpse, Hobbesian realities descend unavoidably on the dining mass: who will go hungry tonight? Searching eyes pass over the minced toad stomach and latch on the remaining curried chicken. Is it polite to have another spring roll? Must I really eat boiled chicken feet? Will the Xinjiang place still be open when I get home?

It will be admitted by all who have assimilated to Chinese dining customs that the mental exertions necessary to preserve social order at times become Olympic in refinement and complexity. Yet while I am capable of eating my share of dried bamboo, my intellectual heritage is that of the Enlightenment. We must solve these cultural issues through the prism of applied reason and logic.

And such a habit leads me to the deductive conclusion that the best solution to this problem is simply NOT force exotic but inedible dishes on tripe-intolerant foreign masses. Let banquets flow with hearty pre-emptive orders of chicken and peanuts, fried potatoes and garlic-flavoured broccoli. Reserve the expensive delicacies for the second or third round, and make careful plans so that the sudden arrival of shark-fin soup or 1000 year old eggs does not unleash a mad dash for the remaining chicken.

[Quest]

Now that kind of surprises me, as I've always been told to leave food (be it rice or, y'know, food) to indicate that you have indeed been filled to bursting point and that the host has done an absolutely splendid job of providing for you. At any kind of 'hosted' dinner I'd be surprised if there wasn't leftover food. Eating with friends is different, but if it's an employer, potential client, etc, there's almost an expectation of excess - and finishing your rice will just get you another bowl of rice, like it or not.

I thought I've pointed out the difference between a normal home meal vs. a feast.

锄禾日当午，汗滴禾下土.....

[adrianlondon]

The main problem I have when eating out with Westerners is that many of my Western friends here are expats and like to prove how cool they are, and how sophisticated they are, by spending 100y a head on food (usually Asian, but not Chinese) and order lots of wine and other drinks. I'm a bit of a food and wine snob, so it annoys me when some American engineer orders a shit bottle of French wine at 300y a bottle while pretending he knows what he's doing. It's just a "look at me, I'm a Westerner, not some poor Chinese person" attitude which annoys me.

I have issues

I prefer to eat with the Chinese here (or a mix of international students) who know how to order a good plate of oily slop for 15y a person. That's why I'm studying here and not back in my apartment in London.