Chinese Dining Etiquette: Seating Arrangements

Video Transcript

Hi, my name is Mark Kemsley. We're talking about meal etiquette in China. Seating arrangements is something that is more important to the Chinese, than it even is to westerners. Westerners usually will sit at a long table, maybe, for example: in a home, the head of the household, would, would, sit at the long end of the table, or what they call the "head of the table." But, what's the head of the table in China? Because tables are round. Have you ever been to a Chinese restaurant, or been to a restaurant in China? The tables are always round and when you go to a meal, often it's in a VIP room, or a secluded room that's in a restaurant with a, with a nice, round table. So, what do you do? How do you seat? Well, the guest of honor is positioned in the place that is facing the doorway. Now, this comes through five thousand years of history because there have been a lot of tremulous times in China, where people have enemies. And, there's a lot of government up rises and things going on and nobody really wanted to be facing away from the door because, they really didn't know what was happening behind them. So, your guest, you would invite him to sit facing the door, which would be the most, the most, I guess, you would say the place of honor or respect. The host then, should sit next to the guest so, If I'm, if I'm the guest here, the host can sit next to the guest and, on either side, this is not important, it's a round table so it doesn't matter whether it's on the left side or the right side. But, then normally, if there's a translator involved, that translator would have to sit nearby, so that he or she could do the interrupting, but, beyond that, we just move around the table in order of importance and I hate to say that, but it's really order or rank. So that, the guest of honor is, is facing the doorway then the host is next to him, and then next highest ranking person is sitting over here, and the next highest ranking person here, and the next highest ranking person there, so that, that is goes around the table so, opposite of the guest of honor would actually be the least highest ranking person in the room.

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