- You first.
- No, no, you first.
- No, no you first.
- You first.
(aggressively grunts)
- Ah ha!
- No,
You first.
(jazzy hip hop music)
- Now if you are doing business in China
or you're doing business with Chinese
dinner is a very, very important part.
Because Chinese, we do business over dinners
not necessarily in the board room.
Now when it comes to eating and dining
with the Chinese, there are a lot of dos and don'ts.
Today I'm going to share with you just a few of them.
The first thing you ought to know, when you eat dinner
with a Chinese, you always want to serve others first.
It depends on the ranking around the table
or the seniority of the older,
you always respect the elderly first,
people who are more senior.
So we would let them eat first.
When the food is here you don't just jump into it,
I want this, I want that, no.
You should let the senior first
or you actually serve them first.
You actually serve them first.
You grab the food and you would serve them first.
Another thing that you don't want to do.
Let's say, imagine you're sitting in one of those
big round table where they have a spinner in the middle,
you don't want to, let's say you like that dish,
you don't just stand up and go all the way there
and try to grab the food, kind of cross the table.
That's very impolite.
You will wait until everyone finishes
and then it's you're turn then you
would grab what you want to eat.
Even though, let's say, you love beef
and you have a beef broccoli in front of you,
you don't eat first you serve.
You just turn and spin and let everybody
eat first until it's your turn.
That shows that you are polite.
Make sure when you are eating
with other people serve first.
I know you're hungry, I know you want to jump
into the food but it's better just to delay
to make sure and it's shows that you are
an educated person.
It shows that you are polite that you
understand the culture and Chinese etiquette.
Now, Vic, what about in terms of other things?
- The other thing that you want to know about
is the art of tea pouring and receiving tea pouring.
- Yes.
- So let's say that I was to serve dinner.
- Now sometimes, you see this a lot
and you wonder what is a Chinese doing
when someone is pouring tea for them
and they are kind of hitting the table or like this.
What does that mean?
It's doesn't mean, oh, give me more, give me more.
That doesn't mean that.
Now what does it actually mean?
- There are so many stories in regards to the source
of where this gesture comes from.
I'm going to share one with you.
The one that I've been told is that
way back when one of the dynasties,
the Emperor, one of the many emperors
wanted to go out into the village
and live like a commoner.
Of course, his advisors and his army,
We can't have that, we can't have you unprotected
just be out in the village.
Because he had wanted to live like a commoner
so that means he can't have an
entourage following him around.
He was very persistent, so what happened was
he got all the clothes to go out
and he even got a job working at a restaurant.
So he is serving now other people.
His people, his army and his advisors,
they want to stay close to him and protect him.
What end up happening is they pretended
to be the customer sometimes.
The Emperor is now pouring tea to them
and they are very embarrassed
because the Emperor is like don't expose
my identity otherwise I will get mad.
- Because back then when Emperor does something
or says something you always kneel and bow right?
- Mh-hmm.
So the tradition is you're supposed
to be lower than the emperor,
you can't be taller or even just receiving his gesture.
- Yes
- It's a big deal.
- Yes
- Obviously, they cannot bow because
it would expose him so they created this
miniature bowing, this gesture of thank you.
- So thank you.
- When the Emperor would poor them tea.
That's one of the many stories that's
floating around out there.
- So when someone pours your tea
you want to do something like this
but ideally something like that
and this is basically as a thank you.
- Sorry guys, I'm going to use the washroom for a moment.
- [Chris And Vic] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!
- Klaus, in Chinese tradition, we typically
want to avoid putting our chopsticks into
our rice that way.
- Yeah, like that.
- The reason why that is, is when our
ancestors or somebody in our family
or somebody close passes away,
we pay them respect by burning incense.
- You'll see those three incense sometimes.
- Right, typically three sticks of incense
and we would bow and we would place that into the rice.
So it's more for those who have passed away.
When we're eating at a dinner table,
we don't want to do anything that resembles that
kind of a look.
- What you want to do, you can either put it on the side
like that, right next to your rice and that's okay, right.
- Right.
Let me share another chopstick etiquette with you as well.
You see this little chopstick holder?
Many nice restaurants will have that holder.
In addition to putting your chopsticks
on your bowl like this you can also put
it on your chopstick holder on top.
With this pair you can see, it's different colors
from all the ones that we're using.
We're using these black ones.
The one that I'm holding here with
the special holder, these ones are brown.
So these are communal chopsticks,
because when we eat with our own chopsticks,
we put it in our mouth.
So it gets contaminated with our own saliva.
- Yes.
- So we want to reach for more food,
we're not mixing all of our salivas together,
and we really don't want to be-
- That is gross.
- Yeah, it's a sharing-
- I love my family, but not that much.
- So then you will see these chopsticks,
if it's not on a place holder like this,
you may see it resting just on one of the dishes right here.
- Yes.
- And usually it's more obvious,
because they will look different.
- Different color...
- Right, than the ones you are using.
- And sometimes I see people forget,
they're grabbing the food and they start
using that as their own chopsticks.
- And that happens a lot.
It's like oh- I'm so sorry.
- That's a big no-no.
Then they get a new one, right?
- Yes.
- So basically you use this, you grab the food,
you put it on your bowl or on your plate,
you put it back, and then you eat with your chopsticks.
So just like an extra layer of work, right?
- Yes.
- But again, it's part of the Chinese etiquette.
Very very important, right.
And then your chopsticks, make sure you don't-
And also, Chinese is interesting sometimes-
Japanese I think is a little bit different.
Japanese, they eat the rice, it's more like bits and pieces?
Because in Chinese we would do sometimes like that, right?
- If they're in a rush, like a typical salary
man in Japan, if they're in a rush they might be doing that.
But a lot of time it'd be like here
and they'd be doing the bits by piece, yeah.
- Yeah, bits and pieces, yeah.
And in Chinese etiquette it's also interesting,
you can see there's a chicken here.
Now this type of chicken you can see in pieces.
Sometimes they have the whole chicken,
cut in pieces with the chicken head.
In Chinese culture when you have the chicken head,
you don't- it's special, you don't want to
point the chicken head to certain people.
You point it maybe in the middle but
you don't point it to somebody.
Because in a company, or in an organization,
when the chicken head points to somebody
it means they're getting fired.
It just means they're getting fired,
so it's good that we don't have a chicken head here, right?
- Don't want to get fired.
- So it's not a good thing to do,
so make sure either get rid of the chicken head-
But some people do like to eat the chicken head.
It's just, don't point it to somebody.
It's very very impolite.
So those are some of the do's and don'ts
when it comes to eating and dining with the Chinese.
Now, maybe share with us some of the other
do's and don'ts that you know.
Comment below.
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