Mind our manners!

We're off to FotoFest Beijing in a few days time, where Alan will be reviewing the portfolios of some of China's best photographers, while Steve and I explore the city and environs. I hear they have a really big wall.

In a search for China etiquette do's and don'ts, we've discovered that there are quite a few seemingly innocuous ways to say, "I wish death upon you." Particularly troubing is the fact that we are arriving when, according to this report, "Beijing's Communist Party leadership has called for a full-blown campaign to improve etiquette and politeness ahead of the expected deluge of foreign visitors." Talk about pressure. It's enough to give Miss Manners hives!

Here are a few of the ways you can tell your Chinese hosts that you want them dead:

• The following gifts and/or colors are associated with death and should not be given:

• Clocks
• Straw sandals
• A stork or crane
• Handkerchiefs
• Anything white, blue or black

• Never place your chopsticks straight up in your bowl. By placing your sticks upright in your bowl your will remind your host of joss sticks which connotes death. [LINK]

• The colors black, white and blue and the #4, or four of anything, are negatively associated with death or funerals. Also included in this category are clocks, handkerchiefs, and straw sandals. [LINK]

• Don't stick your chopsticks upright in the rice bowl.Instead,lay them on your dish. The reason for this is that when somebody dies,the shrine to them contains a bowl of sand or rice with two sticks of incense stuck upright in it. So if you stick your chopsticks in the rice bowl, it looks like this shrine and is equivalent to wishing death upon a person at the table! [LINK]

• Don't let the spout of the teapot face towards anyone. Make sure it is directed outward from the table or to where nobody is sitting. Apparently a pointed spout symbolises death. [LINK]

• Though four is an even number, it reads like death in Chinese thus is avoided. So is pear for being a homophone of separation. And a gift of clock sounds like attending other's funeral so it is a taboo, too. [LINK]

--JENN