Table Manners in Chinese Dining

Most table manners in China are similar to in the West. Don't be deceived by what you might see in a local restaurant or on the streets. Chinese manners don't consist of slurping food down as quickly as possible, and shouting loudly!

Concentrate on the meal and your companions. Watching television, using your phone, or carrying on some other activity while having a meal is considered a bad habit.

You should try to refill your bowl with rice yourself and take the initiative to fill the bowls of elders with rice and food from the dishes. If elders fill your bowl or add food to your bowl, you should express your thanks.

Consider Others

When helping yourself to the dishes, you should take food first from the plates in front of you rather than those in the middle of the table or in front of others. It's bad manners to use your chopsticks to burrow through the food and "dig for treasure" and keep your eyes glued to the plates.

When finding your favourite dish, you should not gobble it up as quickly as possible or put the plate in front of yourself and proceed to eat like a horse. You should consider others at the table. If there is not much left on a plate and you want to finish it, you should consult others. If they say they don't want any more, then you can eat proceed.

Elegance

It is not good manners to pick up too much food at a time. You should behave elegantly. When taking food, don't nudge or push against your neighbour. Don't let the food splash or let soup or sauce drip onto the table.

When eating, you should close your mouth to chew food well before you swallow it, which is not only a requirement of etiquette, but is also better for digestion. You should by no means open your mouth wide, fill it with large pieces of food and eat up greedily. Don't put too much food into your mouth at a time to avoid leaving a gluttonous impression. Neither should you stretch your neck, open your mouth wide and extend your tongue to catch food you are lifting to your mouth.

If you need to remove bones or other inedible parts of the meal from your mouth, use chopsticks or a hand to take them and put them on a side plate (or the table) in front of you, instead of spitting them directly onto the table or the ground.

If there is food around your mouth, use a tissue or a napkin to wipe it, instead of licking it with your tongue. When chewing food, don't make noises.

It is best not to talk with others with your mouth full. Be temperate in laughing lest you spew your food or the food goes down your windpipe and causes choking. If you need to talk, you should speak little and quietly.

If you want to cough or sneeze, use your hand or a handkerchief to cover your mouth and turn away. If you find something unpleasant in your mouth when chewing or phlegm in the throat, you should leave the dinner table to spit it out.

Eating

Guest should start eating after the host or elder gives a sign to start eating.

Let older people eat first, or if you hear an elder say "let's eat", you can start to eat. You should not steal the show on the elders.

You should pick up your bowl with your thumb on the mouth of the bowl, first finger, middle finger the third finger supporting the bottom of the bowl and palm empty. If you don't pick up your bowl, bend over the table, and eat facing your bowl, it will be regarded as bad table manners. More importantly, it will have the consequence of compressing the stomach and restricting digestion.

Don’t pick up too much food in your bowl at once, and you should eat up the food in the bowl first and then pick up more food.

Quiet and slow chewing will suggest your good manner.
When you pick up food, don’t touch people next to you and remember, it’s not polite to push the food out of the plate and spill the soup.

Talk to other people with a full mouth is also impolite.
Don’t eat the food which is dropped on the table.

When you pick your teeth, use your hand or napkin to cover in front of your mouth.

Rules and Conventions Relating to Chopsticks:

Do not stick chopsticks vertically into your food when not using them, especially not into rice, as this will make Chinese people think of funerals. At funerals joss sticks (sticks of incense) are stuck into a pot by the rice that is put onto the ancestor altar.

Do not wave your chopsticks around in the air too much or play with them.

Do not stab or skewer food with your chopsticks.

Pick food up by exerting sufficient inward pressure on the chopsticks to grasp the food securely and move it smoothly to your mouth or bowl. It is consider bad form to drop food, so ensure it is gripped securely before carrying it. Holding one's bowl close to the dish when serving oneself or close to the mouth when eating helps.

Some consider it unhygienic to use the chopsticks that have been near (or in) one's mouth to pick food from the central dishes. Serving spoons or chopsticks can be provided, and in this case you will need remember to alternate between using the serving chopsticks to move food to your bowl and your personal chopsticks for transferring the food only to your mouth.

Knives are traditionally seen as violent in China, and breakers of the harmony, so are not provided at the table. Some restaurants in China have forks available and all will have spoons. If you are not used to chopsticks, you can ask the restaurant staff to provide you with a fork or spoon.

Dining Taboo's

• Do not lick the food attaching on the chopsticks and don’t use them to move the bowl or plate.
• Do not use your chopsticks to strike the bowl or tea cup.
• Do not stick your chopsticks vertically into your food owing to a Chinese practice of leaving such dishes for the dead.
• Do not “dig” or “search through one’s food for something in particular. This is sometimes known as “digging one’s grave” and is extremely poor manners.
• Do not use chopsticks to point at other people or to wave them around.
• Do not spear food with the chopsticks.

How to use chopsticks:

Drinking

Toast is a very important part in a Chinese banquet. In formal banquet, alcohol should be consumed during toasts. A modest toast may be followed by a single sip of wine or swallow of beer, but a baijiu toast is often ended with Ganbei (an exhortation to drink all the glass). Normally, glasses are refilled immediately following a toast in preparation for the next round.
The normal sequence of toast is:

First: The host proposes a toast to the guest of honour.

Second: Peike (a guest invited to help entertain the guest of honour) proposes a toast to the guest of honour.

Third: Then the guest of honour proposes a toast in return

Finally: Peike will toast to each other.

Remember: as a guest, don’t usurp the host’s role to toast everyone, that’s an disrespectful gesture to the host.

Remember be polite and respectful at all times.