How to Eat in China? An introduction of Chinese Dining Culture
Eee…? How to EAT in China? People use nose or ear rather
than mouth in that place? You may wonder. Well, I think there may be some other
blogs introducing how to eat with nose or ear, and dining culture isn’t all
about food. I will cover some basic and interesting facts of Chinese Dining
Culture that will make your visit to China more enjoyable.
From the tremendous types of Chinese food, you may already
understand food/dining plays an important or even essential role in Chinese
culture. In daily dining room and in some special occasions, some rules, which
evolved thousands of years, apply, including but not limited to aspects of, how
to seat, what to eat, how to drink and toast (toast back), and how to leave the
table when you finish.
The dining culture has a long historical in China. The
historical records suggested that in Zhou Dynasty (around B.C. 1000), dining
culture became one of the official regulations, and was appraised by Confucius.
I am not sure whether you read the book Dream
of the Red Chamber (or TV show, which you can watch for free at Youtube, in
Chinese though), which was wrote by Cao Xueqin. This masterpiece describes the rise and fall of sediments represented
by the four most prominent families, reveals the complex contradictions of the
feudal family, performance of the feudal marriage, morality, culture, education
and decadent, degenerate and create a series of nobility civilians and the
tragic image of a slave woman who has demonstrated an extremely broad typical
feudal society living environment. In this book, there are a lot of
descriptions about the dining culture, such as how they are seated, and how
many courses are served in different occasions, such and such. Also, you can
watch the movie, Raise the Red Lantern (directed by Zhang Yimou, you can watch on Youtube), which
contains quite some traditional Chinese cultures including dining culture, and also you will see a lot of red element as I introduced in the previous topics.
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| A Historical Painting Showing Traditional Chinese Dining Culture |
This is a fact that Chinese dining culture has spread out globally, especially in East Asia, and also evolves along the exchange with other cultures. For instance, the round table is not native to China, and it changes some of the dining culture, especially how to seat around a round table. However, many traditional ways are still preserved, especially in some remote areas in China. Similarly, different areas in China also have different dining culture. However, the dominant principle of these Chinese-derived cultures is more or less the same, and that is the tradition to respect the elders and guests. Due to the fact that this is going to be a broad topic, I will split this into the following sub-topics and introduce them separately.
How to Seat around a Chinese Dining Table? Square and round.
This is going to cover the traditional and modern ways of dining table seating
custom.
What to eat on a Chinese Dining Table? This covers the
different courses in different occasions, and the general protocol.
How to drink and toast on a Chinese Dining Table? This is
about drink alcohol in formal settings.
Other aspects you should know on a Chinese Dining Table.
