CHINESE ETIQUETTE.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1419, 23 October 1923, Page 2

CHINESE ETIQUETTE.

Judging from an article quoted in the China Express and Telegraph on Chinese customs, it is conorivable that the bandits who recently captured .Europeans on a train and took them to the mountains, merely wanted to put their prisoners through a short course in etiquette, so that they would know how to meet those embarrassing situations whicu arise while one is travelling in t'u Far East.

Be that as it may, even the most diligent readers of text-books on social usages make the most atrocious faux pas when coming into contact with Orientals. Bassett Digby, F.R.G.S., writer of the article, says that the average Englishman would be amazed and horrified if he had an inkling of what the Chinese thought of him and his supposedly good manners. Mr Digby cheerfully declares: — "Barbarians we were when we came jostling into China SO years ago, and barbarians we are to-day. In the eyes of this ancient race, set in the ways to which it has been accustomed for 2000 years or so, we simply do not know how to behave. We are hectoring and uncomprehending boors, steeped in sins of omission and commission.

"We use newspapers and other paper bearing printed characters for wrapping up parcels. To. degrade the dignity of print like this is as Philistine as to take a Wedgewood bowl from the drawing room table and put it in the stable yard as a drinking receptacle for the dogs. We do not even take off ,our spectacles, and keep them off, when we meet and talk to a Chinese gentleman who is our elder. If he, too, wears glasses he "Will take them off while the conversation lasts. We 'look magistrates and high officials straight in the eye when we talk to them, thus exhibiting a churlish effrontery. We should,, of course, look at their chest, not their face. "We have a boorishly off-hand way of asking our way of a passing Chinese. Rarely, if ever, do we bow. raising our hands submissively to our breast, and address him as 'venerable sir.' We make ourselves a nuisance to officials who are ,our friends by catching their eye when they ride by in their sedan chairs. This obliges them to halt their bearers, climb out, and exchange tedious ceremonial greetings. If the very seeds of courtesy were in us we should turn the other way or veil our faces with a fan rather than cause this inconvenience. It would never occur to us to behave like Chinese gentlemen of high official rank, who are frequently accompanied on their peregrinations by servants carrying huge fans, with which they run forward and screen their respective masters when another chair-riding high official looms up ahead. By this means a formal recognition and ensuing ceremonies ordained are skilfully avoided." Apparently there is no hope of redeeming us, for — "We are even so disrespectful as to pass a book, a cigarette, or a photograph to another gentleman with one hand. We should, of course, use both hands, unless we wish to insult him by insinuating that he is our social inferior. When a friend's house has been burned down we are such mean folk that we do not all hasten to send him a present so that he has something with which to resume housekeeping. (There have been cases, notoriously one in Amoy, where officials with whom a large section of the public desired to curry favour have found themselves, after a fire had gutted their dwelling, possessed of so many gifts of money and furniture that they set up establishments on a far more imposing scale than before).

"We give offence by mismanaging our legs and arms. We fidget with our arms instead of letting them hang straight down our sides when we are standing, and we cross our legs when we sit down, instead of keeping both feet neatly ,on the ground. Walking, we swing our arms and hold our head high, glancing around at what interests us, instead of letting our arms hang limply, as if they were broken, and staring straight ahead of us at the ground. We do not belch at dinner time as a polite tribute to our host's bounty and the delicacy of his viands. We do not attempt to conceal our winces and other symptoms ,of distress when a Chinese noisily clears his throat. To the Chinese there is nothing more disgusting about clearing the throat loudly than in a loud sneeze. He simply cannot perceive the difference, and, after debating the point with a Chinese friend, I must admit that he has the logic on his side."