dining culture 晚餐文化.docx

dining culture 晚餐文化Chinese people love to eat and China boasts one of the world's greatest cuisines. During the long development of Chinese eating culture, many practices have evolved that foreign visitors may find quite different from what they are used to and even consider weird. These pages have been written to help those from other parts of the world to understand Chinese eating culture. China is a country with a long history of ritual and etiquette, and eating is highly important feature of Chinas culture, so naturally dining etiquette has developed to a high degree. Dining etiquette is said to have its beginnings in the Zhou Dynasty (1045-256 BC). Through thousands of years of evolution it has developed into a set of generally accepted dining rituals and practices. However, there is still variation in table etiquette according to the character and purpose of a banquet and great differences regionally. Eating Ambience (环境) Being surrounded by much loud talking and laughing is a typical ambience at a Chinese restaurant. (This goes against what you will see on the dining etiquette page about talking little and quietly and laughing reservedly, as will many other things you see in restaurants.) Chinese people like a noisy and upbeat atmosphere when having a gathering and meals are no exception. People regard it as a rule of thumb that if the dishes of a restaurant are good and tasty then the restaurant will be noisy and busy. The crowds at a restaurant indicate the deliciousness of the dishes. If you want a quiet place to enjoy your meal, some restaurants provide private rooms with one or more tables. Dining Etiquette Chinese Dining Etiquette As a guest at a meal, one should be particular about ones appearance and determine whether to bring small gifts or good wine, according the degree of relationship with the master of the banquet. It is important to attend and be punctual. On arrival one should first introduce oneself, or let the master of the banquet do the introduction if unknown to others, and then take a seat in accordance with the master of the banquets arrangement. The seating arrangement is probably the most important part of Chinese dining etiquette. This is actually this part of a larger difference between Chinese and US dining culture, namely, in China the guest and host roles are much more significant and traditionally engrained. In the US, each person gets their own menu, because each person orders for him or herself. If you go out to eat in China, often (and traditionally) one person orders for the whole table, because that person, the host, will be picking up the check. Treating someone to a meal is a form of social currency in China, acknowledged and redeemable within the moral economy of interpersonal relationships. Another difference about ordering food in China that catches many Westerners off-guard is the timing. In the US, a waiter usually gives you a few minutes alone with the menu before you order, but in China waiters usually expect you to start ordering as soon as you receive the menu. When I was a newly arrived foreigner in China, on unsure footing with the language, it was always anxiety inducing when a waiter would hand me a long, all-Chinese menu and then stand there expectantly, with pen poised, waiting to take my order. I felt rude making the waiter stand for a long time while I contemplated my order, so after a few moments of fruitlessly scanning the menu, I would often just stab wildly at any dish featuring a recognizable character for meat, hoping for the best. This strategy produced mixed results. Food, an essential prerequisite for the existence and development of mankind, remains a close relation with culture, for food culture varies with nations. Therefore here are great disparities between China and the western countries in ideas, attitudes, contents and functions of food cultures. This paper endeavors to analyze the cultural differences and their rooted causes in Chinese and Western food cultures from the perspectives of concept, etiquette and content, and points out that with the development of cross-cultural communication, more factors and new variables in food cultures will arise through communication, interaction and imitation. The main difference between Chinese and Western eating habits is that unlike the West, where everyone has their own plate of food, in China the dishes are placed on the table and everybody shares. If you are being treated by a Chinese host, be prepared for a ton of food. Chinese are very proud of their culture of food and will do their best to give you a taste of many different types of cuisine. Among friends, they will just order enough for the people there. If they are taking somebody out for dinner and the relationship is polite to semi-polite, then they will usually order one more dish than the number of guests (e.g. four people, five dishes). If it is a business dinner or a very formal occasion, there is likely to be a huge amount of food that will be impossible to finish. One thing to be aware of is that when eating with a Chinese host, you may find that the person is using their chopsticks to put food in your bowl or plate. This is a sign of politeness. The appropriate thing to do would be to eat the whatever-it-is and say how yummy it is. If you feel uncomfortable with this, you can just say a polite thank you and leave the food there, and maybe cover it up with a little rice when they are not looking. There is a certain amount of leniency involved when dealing with Westerners. So you won't be chastised. In China, any of the feast, whatever the purpose, there will be only one form, that is, we were sitting around, sharing one seat. The banquet must use the round table; this formally has created one kind of unity, politeness, altogether the interest atmosphere. The delicacy delicacies put on table of people's centers, it not only is the object which table of people appreciates, tastes, also is a table of people sentiments exchange intermedium. People propose a toast of each other for food, vegetables, in the face of good things, reflects the mutual respect between people, the virtues of comity Freedom westerner is individual serving when they eating, the first is the point of all the food, they can eat what something, and it also showed respect for the West on the personality. After serving up, people eat the entire various one and their random add spices, the second course dish to eat after eating, before and after the two never 8 mixed vegetables to eat. The most popular form of buffet in western is individual eating, incompatible interference, and lack of the emotional appeal for chat with each other. The differences between Chinese and Western food dietetic culture is obvious, and they have their own strengths. Followed the economic globalization and the accelerated flow of information changes, Chinese and western food culture will be continued integration in the collision, complement each other in the fusion. Chinese food now has begun focus on food, nutrition, health, the science of cooking, western food also begun to develop from the realm of Chinese foods color, smell, taste and meaning. Chinese and western food culture will be developed in common communicate. This will play a significant role to promote the communication of culture in the world.