Every two weeks I “teach” an English class at my office to anyone who is interested. There’s lots of enthusiasm for English at my office so I usually have a good turnout. The first lesson was really just an introduction. I wasn’t sure about what to do (the director just suggested talking about one of my hobbies) so I picked something with some good visuals – climbing! So, I gave a quick introduction with the climbing trip that Aidan and I took to the Bugaboos last year.

After that, I decided to commit to an official schedule and teach something interesting about American culture or the English language. Here are the topics we’ve talked about so far:

1) Common Greetings: We talked about the proper and common ways to greet people, why certain greetings developed, “handshake theory” (I include the word “theory” only because we spent so much time on it, analyzing it from many angles), and so on.
2) Body Language Basics: This is a topic that I’ve become interested in the past year or so and it was a lot of fun presenting it. We talked about the various unconscious signals that we send with our bodies, how to read basic gestures and groups of gestures, differences between China and the West (I’ve experimented and discovered there is a lot of commonality), and flirtatious signals (got lots of laughs).
3) American Table Manners: This may have been more fun that discussing body language. I was able to talk about all the various rules that I learned growing up and pointed out the important ones when visiting the US. Having so many complex rules (especially in the traditional American system), I got lots of questions. I also asked questions about the differences in China. There are many, but thankfully China is pretty simple.

Here are some pictures from the discussion on American Table Manners:

I’d like to share some of the biggest differences of table manners between China and the US (some are completely opposite!):

1) Napkins – no concept of putting the napkin in the lap, or the napkin to signal the end of a meal. In fact, napkins aren’t very common (the Chinese have fewer opportunities to dirty their hands).
2) Serving dishes – In China, almost every portion of food is in a common serving dish and it’s normal to dip straight into the dish with your chopsticks, fish around for a good piece, and deliver the food directly to your mouth. This is very different from the American system where there’s a serving fork or spoon and you transfer food from the serving dish to your plate and eat from there.
3) Noise – Here’s the big one. The Chinese (and even moreso the Japanese, so I’ve heard) can be loud at the table. Overall, we are much more quiet. So, for example, I pointed out that instead of slurping soup to cool it, we blow on it and sip it. Some had heard of this, others thought it was hilarious.

I got thirty minutes of questions after the discussion. We finished around 8:00pm. That made it nearly a 14 hour day for me. I had to come into work at 6:30 for a meeting w/ the US. So, tonight I don’t want to go anywhere. Just gonna hang out, update the blog, and watch some Prison Break.