Chinese hospitality etiquette 01 (China)

Nick used to take British trade delegations to China on outward missions.  At the end of each visit, the Chinese side would throw a banquet, which is typically a ten-course meal for ten people.  “Course” here is not in the Western-meal sense of a whole dish each for every diner.  Rather, in the Chinese banquet tradition, all the diners partake of each dish when it is served up, but not necessarily one tenth each.

Chinese-hospitality etiquette requires the host to keep pressing the guest to eat more, and the guest has to decline, at least three times, and, even after that, to eat small amounts only.  The host must not be seen to be stingy with the food, and the guest must not be seen to be greedy.  So the game is played out every single time, with each side knowing how many times to press/decline and when to give up—usually it’s the guest, simply by dint of his role.

One of the tools of persuasion employed by the host that is practically fail-safe is, “你得給我面子 nǐ děi gěi wǒ miànzi / You must give me face.”  At this, the guest cannot say “no” anymore.  The ultimate trump card.

Alongside suckling pig, king prawns, fish, lobster and dried mushroom served up at Chinese banquets is another expensive ingredient that the Brits insist on calling “sea slug”.  I grew up with the term “sea cucumber”, because bêche-de-mer does look like cucumber.  For some reason, the people in Britain choose to call it “sea slug”, which is revolting.  This is probably deliberate, to make it off-putting as it does have an acquired taste.  It’s rubbery in texture, and practically devoid of any discernible taste to the uninitiated.  It has very high nutritional value, though, and is gastronomical gold dust, which makes it a “must serve” item at banquets and parties.

At one farewell banquet in China, someone from the Chinese side, treating Nick as “one of them” since he could speak Chinese, said candidly, in Chinese, “We know you Westerners don’t like sea slugs, but we like to serve it to you all the same.”  And he sat back and smugly watched this being digested.

Having to put up with eating the stuff is bad enough if it’s just a matter of how highly prized (and priced) it is, but for the host to deliberately inflict it on the guest whilst knowing how much the guest dislikes it is something Nick finds hard to stomach.

At the end of the banquet, Nick picked up a banana from the fruit bowl and offered it to the chap, who rubbed his tummy and said, “No, I’ve had a lot of food already, thanks.”  Nick applied Chinese-hospitality etiquette moves and pressed him: once, twice, then finally went for the kill, again playing by the rules the Chinese use: “You must give me face.”  The man accepted the banana.

Nick waited for a couple of minutes, then offered him a second banana.  They went through the same ritual, and Nick used the same trump card: “You must give me face.”

Three trump cards and three bananas later, the man’s face was the same colour as the bananas.

Nick sat back and thought, “Now you know how we feel when you keep forcing us to eat those damned sea slugs, you b…..d!”

(China, 1984)