Table Manners Across Cultures

With the developments of china’s opening-up, more and more west cultures get into our sight. With facing unfamiliar civilizations, some cultural conflicts might happen in the communications inevitably, which would be really harmful to the relationships. What I want to talk about today is the Table Manners. Since the Table Manners have a decisive position in the communications between west countries and China, then I’ll focus on the differences of Table Manners across cultures, and I’ll try to analyze the reasons that cause the differences.

Firstly, one of the differences is the meal serving. In a Chinese way, we load one meal just with a single dish, in another word, one meal one dish, so that we have dinner together. On the country, the western people prefer to individual serving when they have meals. That means one person one dish.

Secondly, the view on arriving time is another difference. The western people value their time very much. They do have a good habit that going to the dinner on time. If they are invited to someone’s home for dinner, they would rather to get there 5 minutes earlier. But in the same case, Chinese may get there a bit late intentionally, since in our opinion that means polite to the host. We are supposed not to behave so eagerly for the dinner.

Further more, the concept of dishes is also a difference about Table Manners. The Chinese think much of our image in our friends’ mind and we think the richness of the foods represents one’s hospitality. We emphasize on the meal itself when we treats friends. So the foods and wine at the banquet should be rich and colorful. It might be better if the foods delicious and expensive. Otherwise, we will not consider it as treat. Differently, the western people think nothing is more than the nutrition of the foods they have. They pay great attention to the nutrition of rather than color, flavor, or shape. They diet mainly focus on health.

Actually, There’re a variety of reasons to cause the...