您正在看的文化英语是:Everyday Eating Customs in China。 directly from the communal plates using their chopsticks. Soup is also eaten from the common bowl. Rather than for serving oneself a separate portion, the saucer is used for bones and shells or as a place to rest a bite taken from a communal plate when it is too large to eat all at once. It is perfectly acceptable to reach across the table to take a morsel from a far-away dish. To facilitate Access to all the dishes, Chinese dining tables are more likely to be square or round, rather than elongated like their western counterparts.

　　Who Eats When and How

　　Eating begins in order of seniority, with each diner taking the cue to start from his or her immediate superior. Children are taught to eat equally from each ts'ai dish in turn, never betraying a preference for a particular item by eating more of it, never seeming to pause to choose a specific bite from the plate. In order to cool the soup a bit and to better diffuse the flavor in the mouth, soup is eaten by sipping from the spoon while breathing in. This method, of course, produces the slurping noise that is taboo in the West. To eat fan, a diner raises the bowl to her lips and pushes the grains into her mouth with chopsticks. This is the easiest way to eat it and shows proper enjoyment -- eating fan from a bowl left sitting on the table suggests dissatisfaction with the food. The diner must finish all the fan. To leave even a grain is considered bad manners, a lack of respect for the labor required to produce it.

　　Accompaniments

　　Neither beverages nor dessert are commonly served with a meal. People drink tea nearly all day, but at meals soup is usually the only liquid provided. At special events there may be wine or liquor, but the water that westerners drink with their meals is never present. Sweet foods are usually reserved for special events, where they are served between courses, or for small meals at tea houses.

　　(2) A Chinese Banquet

　　Banquets are held to celebrate the New Year, the Moon Festival, weddings, and other special occasions. Each event is associated with particular treats -- filled moon cakes for the Moon Festival or New Year's pudding, for example -- but there are also many common characteristics and ceremonies involved. A banquet acquires much of its festive character through 2 elements: the release from some everyday eating customs (usually those that impose restraint) and the exaggeration of others. At a banquet, for example, rice doesn't need to be treated as the center of the meal, but the respectful interaction between guest and host, a commonplace, must be performed with extra gusto.

　　Getting In

　　The meal begins with the entry of the revelers into the banqueting room. An elaborate ceremony of deference may take place at the door, where the most honored guest is supposed to enter first. Two or more guests may hold up this entry for some time, each insisting that the other is more worthy of this honor. The ensuing debate can, among good friends, lead to a bit of pushing, as the struggle