Chinese tradional culture comes from a very long history. It includes quite a lot of details, so that it’s not so easy to understand all. The above three tips can only help you to mainly understand the Chinese tradional culture taboos. That’s only a superficial knowledge. If you want to know more, a long way to learn must be done.
It is like any other race，Chinese has their fair share of taboos, some of them are related to the language and culture. The following three tips of Chinese cultural taboos has been existed through many years for Chinese people. Like most deeply rooted ancient Chinese traditions, the younger generation is paying less and less attention to these kinds of habits, but foreigners living in China would still do well to avoid the following Chinese taboos.
Chinese Table Taboos
1. In China, dishes are put together in a table and all the diners sit around it and share the dishes. You should help yourself to the food. The host may pick up food with chopsticks and put the food in your bowl. It is a sort of hospitality. You should take it as a sign of honor and offer thanks.
2. With chopsticks, you should always place them horizontally over your bowl. Do not lay them on the table or stick them vertically into the rice bowl as this is a sign of offering a sacrifice.
3. While dinning, passing the food to your elders before taking it for yourself is considered good manners. Also, if someone proposes a toast, make sure that the rim of your glass is lower than the rim of the person more senior. It is a sign of respect.
4. The host will continuously pour drinks and wine to guests to make sure that their cups are not empty for a long time. If you don’t want drinks any more, you can simply say no and offer thanks. If you are thirsty and no one has poured you a drink, you can offer to pour for a neighbor first and then yourself, never just yourself as this is another impoliteness.
5. The Chinese prefer to talk happily while dining and after dining. Jokes as well as daily funny happenings are always a good topic. You should not feel bored.
Chinese Greeting Taboos
In China, a popular way to address each other is to add an age-related term of honor before the family name, such as you can add the word “lao” (honorable old one),”xiao” (honorable young one) or “Da” (honorable middle-aged one). Chinese form of greeting is usually a brief handshake. While meeting elders or senior officials, your handshake should be even gentler by a slight nod. Sometimes, as an expression of warmth, a Chinese will cover the nomal handshake with his left hand. Chinese usually lower their eyes slightly when they meet others, it is as a sign of respect.
Chinese Taboo Words
In the old China, the Chinese regarded the names of their emperors and elders as taboos. It was forbidden to write the name of an emperor when quoting anything old or composing anything new. To avoid such problems, later emperors were given names with characters invented for them — characters that were utterly useless for any other purpose. Since a Chinese character has different elements, or morphemes, and most Chinese names mean something, there were some ways to avoid tattoo words for ordinary people. For example, a person can use any word element morpheme of a taboo word as his/her name; replace the taboo word with its synonyms or parasynonyms; use homophones or words with similar pronunciation as substitutes of the taboo word; change the pronunciation of the tattoo word when using it; use characters in similar shapes; add components to the taboo character to create a new one and so on.
