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Q: what do you think about the Chinese dining habits?
Let me first set the scene.
You are in a restaurant with several good friends. The place is the perfect restaurant (if such a place exist) the waiter is polite and responsive, the prices are fair, the food is tasty, the surroundings are quiet (or noisy if you like that) and so on.
The question is about what is going on at the table. tens of dishes spinning around on the round table, everyone eating from the same plates as opposed to everyone having their own dish in front of them.
barbaric is how they eat, and I like the style, i just don't like the food.
Read that as "driving habits." I was about to agree with JungleLife on the "barbaric" part, but was a little confused when he mentioned food.
Yeah, barbaric dining and driving. Not a fan.
The smacking freaks me right out. Rubbing the belly is funny but I can't watch. I imagine them eating this way when they go abroad. Eating with Chinese people causes me great psychological stress as I try to hide my discomfort.
my family sometimes attempts to put serving chopsticks in each of the dishes...... so we are not contaminating the dish.....mostly it don't work, but they try.......as much as I try to think of their reasoning for not just having their own plate of food, with an opportunity to replenish it..... I just can't think of a reason why it makes sense....... the spinning service thing is great... the hacked up chicken is just plain stupid.... slurping soups and the bowl to the face for rice is silly..... they have spoons, use them...... oh, when will I get my way.
And how stupid are them plastic bag gloves.... finger lickin' good
It depends what part of it you're talking about.
I love the communal eating, lazy susan thing. I don't like that they put the chopsticks they eat from into all dishes. It's unhygienic and it's so unnecessary! They could easily do what the Thais do and put a serving spoon into all dishes.
I really don't like the open mouth chewing and slurping. It's nasty.
maybe.... and I am confused..... they think they can do everything with one hand, one pair of chopsticks, which they can with their method ....... I do the same thing with a fork, use it as a knife with my ham or whatever...... If I have a steak, it should be forkable, if \I need a knife, send it back.... but when a spoon is required, well use a spoon dammit......... chicken is a finger food ...... fish is best fileted and no bones, but not always, I can deal with a good fish and the bones ...... pork should be butchered to my standards, and then it is very edible... not hacked up to create slivers of bone....... a butcher back home gets a very reasonable wage and it is really quite a no brain profession after a while.......... cleaver cutting randomly is silly ....
TedDBayer:
At home you can recognise a cut of meat, prime rib, T-bone, sirloin. In China its a square piece of what. I drew a cow that showed the location of beef tenderloin and showed it to butchers. If what I got was correct, then beef in China eally really sucks.
Scandinavian:
best guess would be that beef comes from old diary cows (or as China copies everything, will be horse in the near future) and you can look at the very low protein contents in the milk and then make a guess weather a cow producing low protein milk is a happy cow that gets a nutritious diet (erhm, fresh grass) or it just gets random garbage like most in this country
Love it. Dinning in China is one of life's great pleasures. Just let your pre conditioned inhibitions go and dive in boots and all enjoying the sights, sounds and tastes. Of course when I am back in Australia in company where the culture expects and appreciates manners then things are different and there is nothing wrong with that either.
Best of both worlds for me.
I'd also have to say I like it!
The only thing that really bothers me is the noise... sure, some dishes you can't help but make noise while eating, but to do it to suggest that you're really loving your food... I'm going to smack you!!! (best Chinese mate is a noisy eater... thankfully, he's in Africa now... still think I can hear him eat 
)
Disgusting, can't handle the smacking and slurping noise, putting bones or what you don't like on the table or floor, putting ashes and butting a cigarette on the table or in a dish. I can eat noodle with chop sticks and not slurp it, why can't they?
While I must admit noisy eating or eating with the mouth open really irritates me, I think to come to another country and insist they change their habits or their cutlery to suit your tastes somewhat ridiculous and tbh offensive.
Wtf should the Chinese use spoons? If YOU want a spoon then ask. Slurping food, is said to increase the taste on the tongue, (I don't know as I won't try it), hacking up chicken (or other meats) means you don't need hightly skilled or qualified butchers, anyone can do it, this was a reason in the past and cultural inertia will explain why it is still widely practised now. Different nations have different ettiquette when it comes to eating and in an emerging nation such as China there are going to be a lot of poor or poorly educated people who cannot or do not know even what those norm's of local ettiquette are let alone aspire to levels of ettiquette foreign to them and their nation.
I've spent some time in Arab nations where belching after a meal is the absolute height of good manners, in some Indonesian areas eating with anything but your hands is considered very rude. It really is the height of arrogance to form the opinion that the table manners you were raised with are the only standards that should be used.
I was raised with strict table manners, and I still find some of the local customs quite irritating, but I always remember the golden table manner rule drummed into me by my late father, "It is absolutely NOT allowed to criticise someone else's manners (or lack of) at the table."
Some things still greatly amuse me in China though I have given up being surprised. I have just popped into KFC for a coffee. There was a male and female sat in the restaurant (probably in their early twenties - I would guess boyfriend and girlfriend). The female was using her fingers to break up a chicken burger and then hand feeding the male piece by piece. A sight more akin to a mother feeding a two year old.
