THE CHINA SERIES
Week 1
Learn about the Beijing bikini, cheers etiquette, traffic protocols and more!
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BEIJING BIKINI
You might be wondering what exactly a Beijing bikini is. My travels to China have often been in the hot summer weather. While many places have air conditioning, there's a peculiar fashion trend that some men like to wear. When it's hot in North America, it's common to wear short and a t-shirt. In China, men fold up the hem of their shirts to under their armpits and expose their bellies. It's super common to see men dressed like this in the summer.
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Now you know! Thankfully this is still a casual clothes trend, but who knows when it will make it into the boardroom?
Sadly, China tried to ban this look in 2020.
CHEERS
Drinking is a big part of business culture in China. It's how you prove your sincerity. The good news is that women aren't expected to keep up with as much as men. Some of male colleagues carried around empty pill bottles to claim they were taking medication and therefore unable to drink.
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When someone says "ganbei" (cheers), it literally means "bottoms up"...as in emptying your cup. You also need to master a tricky hand manoeuvre whereby you must clink your glass rim BELOW your counterpart's glass rim as a sign of respect. While usually more junior folks should aim to be the lower rim clinker, the senior person will usually try to outdo your low clink as a gesture of humility. You will also need to "cheers" each person separately at the table during each round of cheers.
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It takes practice but I think I was only once successful at clinking below someone else's glass rim (and I was very proud). There is a last-minute sneaky hand swoop/flick of the wrist that locals have mastered so that they are always the lower clinkers. Somehow between jet lag, hand agility and keeping your wits while drinking, you too might be able to one day master Chinese drinking etiquette!
HONK HONK
Beware of road traffic in China. Driving conventions are unique, and drivers often follow "right of speed" (who is moving faster) instead of "right of way".
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My favourite local driving custom is honking! It's used for a variety of reasons, but often in lieu of signalling to change lanes. So if you're driving on a highway, cars that pass you will honk to let you know that you're in their blind spot and also that they plan to overtake your vehicle. As you can imagine, this makes for a fun experience on a multi-lane highway where you have to figure out who is honking.
The convoluted rules even confuse local drivers. I was once in a taxi that was rear-ended by a city bus in a multiple left-turning lane situation. After a bit of arm flailing, the taxi and bus drove off and my coworker and I were left to find our own taxi in the middle of rush hour in Shanghai. Bonus fact: Chinese taxis don't usually have seat belts in the back seat.
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The front seat of a long car journey is better than any thrill ride in an amusement park - not for the faint of heart and honking!
AUTOMATIC SUSAN
Chinese customers are very hospitable and often treat you to large lunches as a way to build relationships.
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The food is bountiful, with a wide assortment and array of dishes placed on a Lazy Susan. Dining tables are almost always large round tables, so to facilitate sharing, the gigantic Lazy Susan is motorized. That means that a bunch of dishes slowly rotate automatically around the table, and you have to be fast with your chopsticks to put some of the desired dish into your own plate. Chopstick skills are a must, and unfortunately my colleague who ate holding one chopstick in each hand didn't fare too well.
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On the bright side, you get to taste many new dishes. The not-so-great news is that you need to have fast chopstick skills while anticipating what other dishes could be coming around the bend. Nothing is labelled and there are usually unique delicacies. Some of my favourites were boiled peanuts, various tofu-based dishes and fish stews. The scariest items to serve and consume were the soups (there was typically tripe in the broth) and also meat dishes. I'm not an adventurous meat eater, so when I see small bones in a stir fry with meat, I don't automatically assume it's chicken. I narrowly escaped a turtle stew, delicately declined goose feet (the locals went wild for them!) and also organ stew.
In case you were wondering, if your plate is empty, it means that you're still hungry and more food dishes will be served. So, if you're full, you should put some food on your plate, otherwise your never-ending meal will literally be going in circles!
XILAIDENG
What major hotel name could I be referring to?
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Xilaideng (pronounced SHE-LIE-DUNG) is how the Chinese say... Sheraton! While you'll encounter a basic English language proficiency in hotels and airports, you can't really get by with only English in most cities except Shanghai. To make matters more confusing, words of foreign origin are often pronounced in different ways (Canada = Janada!). I lost the card with the hotel address written in Mandarin, so imagine my surprise when repeating "Sheraton" wasn't resonating with my taxi driver. When I blurted out "Xilaideng", he knew exactly where I wanted to go.
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And so begins my haphazard Chinese vocabulary. Like any proud business traveler, I can say: go left, go right, ice, tea, this, that, thank you, you're welcome, no thanks, and counting to 5 among other random words. Speaking of which, if you're lucky enough, you might get a Chinese name given to you by your colleagues. Mine was a phonetic version of my name, but a colleague of mine ended up with a name that meant "Strong Tiger from the Tang Dynasty".
The bad news was that I couldn't read one side of my business cards, but I am still happy to have a Chinese name as an alter-ego!
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