Subject

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Table Manners and Hygiene-East vs. West

Mr. Wang

2008.3-15

6:30 PM

I started thinking about this issue at my brother-in law’s 60^th birthday party last Saturday. Before we ate the main meal we sat around a table that was loaded with large bowls of snack items, chocolate-covered peanuts, munchies（小吃）, cherries, and a few other things. The eater had to reach into the bowl and grab（抓）a handful of snacks and then convey them to the mouth with the other hand. A lot of people were strangers to me and I observed a cat being carried around, a dog being petted, and a number of noses being rubbed, between eating handfuls of snacks. Ughh!

I started thinking about Chinese table manners. My wife and I will share things from the same plate or cup but we always put serving spoons out with the dishes on the table. Often we don’t use them though. In my family we use our personal chopsticks to take food from the serving dishes. But we are careful and only touch food we will eat ourselves.

Miss

Brown

2008-3-15

7:50 PM

I hate that too. It’s not like it happens everywhere you know. At least in the ‘Netherlands you’re not supposed to touch other people’s food. And if you touch something, you have to eat it.

Basically a Dutch setup: 3 pans/bowls, 1 with meat, 1 with rice or potatoes and 1 with vegetables. Every pan/ bowl has its own “opscheplepel”(big spoon) and you’re not allowed to touch it with your mouth/ hands/ whatever. Only put the food on your own plate. Everyone has their own plate with their own set of spoon/ knife/fork.

Mrs. Black

2008-3-15

8:30 PM

In an English restaurant everything you eat comes ready allocated（分配）onto your plate. Usually you do not need to transfer things onto  your plate, for the kitchen did that already. In the flu and cold season even touching a spoon handle or chopstick that others have used to transfer food will dirty your fingers with these viruses, so English restaurant style is the most hygienic(unless the waitress had flu, but then the manager will not allow a waiter or waitress with a raging cold to serve.)

Ms.

Butterfly

2008-3-15

9:30 PM

If the communal（共用的）bowls contain foods you help yourself to by picking them up with a pair of chopsticks that no one uses for the purpose of eating, then communal bowls are not bad. Use communal chopsticks to transfer food from the communal bowl into your own bowl, and voila….

Sometimes people will use their own chopsticks to help themselves to items from communal bowls, thus transferring bacteria from their own body to the communal vessels. This can be seen in lots of hole-pin-the-wall restaurants. I personally favor silverware over chopsticks but that has nothing to do with hygiene（卫生保健）.One drawback of the use of chopsticks is: an inordinate（过多）amount of timber（木材）is misused in making disposable chopsticks. But I don’t like Mc-Donald’s dining style where you must pick up your French fries with your fingers! Nothing can be more elegant（高雅）and hygienic than using knives, spoons and forks properly.