Banquets Galore
(photo of banquet by Flickr user JustineD)
One of the perks of being an honored guest at the Jinggu competition was being invited to several Chinese banquet dinners. For the unitiated, banquet dinners are quite different for anything we have in the West (excluding Chinese diaspora communities).
So what is a Chinese banquet like? Picture a large dining room with several circular tables. Each table is already set prior to the guests' arrival, and in some cases even the food sits before anyone sits down. Most banquet rooms have a stage and a public address system, used by dignitaries to make speeches or for an artistic performance of some sort.
Food, to be certain, is abundant. In Chinese culture, throwing a dinner party in which all the food is eaten is a loss of face, so most hosts mitigate this by ordering or preparing far more than anyone could possibly eat. So much for the old Western notion to clean your plate because of the starving children in China.
At a large Western dinner gathering, guests slowly sip beer or wine and chat at a normal volume; shouting, use of a cell-phone, or other distractions are frowned upon. Not in China. The Chinese even have a term, çƒé—¹ (re4nao) literally meaning "hot and noisy" describing their preferred method of dining out. People shout, sing, and cry. Rather than guests drinking at their own pace, those seated around the table are required to stand up and deliver toasts (or be toasted) by other guests, punctuated by shots of beer or 白酒 (bai2jiu3), which a type of spirit found throughout the country.
There is no shame at getting drunk, and in fact, most of the men are expected to partake in binge drinking sessions or else risk derision from friends and colleagues. One doesn't ordinarily associate Chinese culture with machismo, but for men, those able to drink to excess are considered strong and manly, while those who can't (or won't) are considered weak and womanly. I have seen several people at Chinese banquets drink so much they've passed out or vomited, and yet nobody seemed to find this inappropriate.
In addition, cigarettes are offered to all male guests, and as a non-smoker I'm occasionally embarrassed when I constantly refuse them. In the past, Chinese men who did not accept cigarettes were accused of causing a loss of face, though finally today there's some evidence that the virtues of not smoking are seeping through the public consciousness.
Westerners new to China sometimes feel overwhelmed by these banquets, as we're used to a more relaxed style of eating and drinking. Yet I often wonder whether Chinese people would find our custom hopelessly boring and uptight. Funny how that works.
