Inspired by the “cultures in which people don’t line up” thread, I want to ask about cultural/national etiquette that started with some long-ago situation that no longer applies, yet the etiquette/tradition remains.
Two Japanese examples I’ve read about:
• Eating a bite of rice in between each bite of other foods. This allegedly started during a famine a couple hundred years ago, in which pretty much every crop failed … except for the rice crop. The failure of other crops also led to a meat shortage, because there was little feed for cattle. So began a habit of alternating mouthfuls of rice with mouthfuls of other items, the idea being that the rice would fill you up and you wouldn’t eat as much of the more-scarce foods.
• Talking “around” the topic, instead of speaking directly to the point. This is allegedly rooted in the old Japanese house style wherein, instead of walls, the “rooms” were separated by paper partitions. In such a house, privacy was an illusion, because everybody could hear everything being said/being done in the next room. This led to the polite fiction that you didn’t hear anything, as well as creating a conversational style that uses euphemism and indirect reference, so as to create “plausible deniability”. i.e. “No, that’s not what I was talking about (but yeah, that’s exactly what I was talking about).”
Assuming the above examples are indeed true (and I would appreciate it if somebody more familiar with Japanese culture would correct me, in the name of fighting ignorance), what are some examples from other cultures? Some etiquette tradition started with something that is no longer relevant, yet the tradition remains?
The eating thing does not really seem like etiquette–just a way to eat. Just as valid now as any time. I would think in times of famine you might want to have two mouthfuls of rice. I was under the impression that lots of people (not just Japanese) ate mostly or only rice during times of general famine, and considered themselves lucky to have something.
As to the other thing, I don’t see why this would be considered no longer relevant. It seems awkward to be sure, but if that’s how your culture does things, well then, that’s how it does things. Only perplexing to those not of that culture. There are still a lot of people in Japan and maybe not a lot of privacy. If it’s no longer relevant to the people who are doing it, they will change it.
In China, at a nice banquet rice will only be served toward the end of the meal, and it’s impolite to eat much of it. Taking a lot of rice would imply the host was being cheap and didn’t provide enough of the “good stuff” to fill you up.
I am sure there are some American examples. I think the theory behind not eating with your elbows on the table is that a working person’s elbows are likely to be petty dirty, and would quickly soil the table linens. Few of us have particularly dirty elbows these days.
Weddings have a lot of baggage from the days when marriages were more like property transfers. A father “giving away” a full grown women may be sentimentally sweet, but objectively it’s pretty bizarre.
The source I read (sorry, no link/cite, it was a physical book which I no longer possess, and I can’t recall the title) explicitly stated that the custom began in response to an actual famine, and then carried on until more modern times. Because, “that’s how it’s done.”
It seems like a needlessly over elaborate and implausible explanation of a behavior that is perfectly sensible in its own right. Are you suggesting that it would be “normal” to eat all the fish (or whatever) first, then all the rice, or vice versa? I am not Japanese, but I would be more inclined to do it the way you say they actually do. (Even more likely, I would take a bit of fish and some rice in the same mouthful, a behavior that is just as readily, or as poorly, explained by the “ancient famine” theory as the behavior you say it actually explains.)
That said, I expect any culture that is in a state of fairly rapid change, which means all cultures that are more or less part of the “modern world”, has many customs the fit the description in your thread title. Of course, it is relatively difficult to recognize such incongruities in our own culture, but there are probably lots of them. I suppose that is why so many things about Japanese culture, in particular, seem weird to us Westerners, as they are are modern rapidly changing culture, but one that started from a very different place from where we did. It is not just that they are an alien culture, but that they have hangover customs and attitudes that do not actually fit well with how they now live, but in a way that we can see much better than they can.(No doubt much about our culture seems equally weird and dysfunctional to them.) The thing about taking alternate mouthfuls of rice just does not seem to be a very good example, though.
One from the province of Quebec is the “banc de queteux”, or roughly “beggar’s bench”. Homes in the countryside would have a bench just inside the front door, in what we’d call the vestibule or mudroom, for a beggar to sleep on in case they came by on a cold winter’s night. This was not only an expression of charity, but also of superstition, because refusing this request was said to be very bad luck. Of course, people still have these benches to make it easier to pull on boots and such. They’re still called by the old name, but I doubt anyone would uphold that much hospitality today.
America has a gun culture that is totally different than any other country, and is rooted in now-inapplicable situations. The wild west was a short period in American history, but the effects on American culture and etiquette have lasted long after that period ended.
(note: folks, let’s not get into a gun debate here, okay? This is a thead about culture and etiquette.)
I picked up an interesting book, “Dancing With a Ghost” after hearing an interview with the author on CBC radio.
The Cree attitude (probably similar to others across the world) evolved to handle dynamics of a small group that needed to cooperate to get along. Our concept of revenge is fairly alien to them. Rather than argue, they sit down and talk until everyone agrees. Instead of physical discipline, social pressure and disapproving looks are the means to channel good behaviour. After all, when all the men have to cooperate in a hunting party, they cannot be coming to blows, ignoring each other, or challenging who’s in charge. When everyone has to pull their weight every day, you cannot have people moping or depressed - when someone dies, they make an effort to erase all reminders of them. Same when someone hurts another - there’s no anger or confrontation, everyone sits down and talks around the problem until it’s “forgotten” so everyone can get on with living. After all, they had no jails, and there were limited options for punishing - either kill the offender (only if it was very extreme) or forget about it. So they forget about something, and then a year or more later the white man gets around to his trial, they make everyone re-live and talk about something swept under the rug long ago, and then put a white man’s punishment on the guy, which makes no sense to them. Things we consider “honesty” like looking someone in they eyes, could be considered confrontational and challenging in their culture and so avoided.
This fell apart when the social groups became reserves of hundreds or a few thousand. Problem group members instead of being part of the common group, would hang out together and be out of the control or guidance of the elders, so they did not get the social pressure to conform; but the tribes could not bring themselves to use more coercive measures like corporal punishment, so gangs became a problem. Instead of disapproval from the community majority, problem kids hung around with others and became out of control. He mentions a case where the parents were asked what steps they tok to control their seriously delinquent son, and the only thing they said was “we hid his shoes” so he could not sneak out at night. No confrontation, no discipline.
Communal property was a concept for a small group. If you aren’t using your knife and someone else needs it, they take it. Groups that moved camp every few weeks did not accumulate possessions. That lack or respect for personal possessions did not translate well with a permanent community of thousands and modern material possessions.
If you think repressing these feelings and problems was unhealthy - well yes. When Indians get drunk, it releases their inhibitions, and all the socially repressed resentment bubbles to the surface and they will stab each other during drinking parties and regret it the next morning. Then… the white man’s justice steps in and see the first paragraph…
He mentions a classic case, where northern natives came down to stay on a reserve near Montreal for a hockey tournament. The northern hunting tribe’s feasting tradition was to eat everything put in front of you, because food was scarce and not to be wasted. The southern tribe had a more agricultural tradition, so in their feasts you dishonoured the guest and appeared cheap or petty if you did not put out more food than they could eat. So they start the party, and the hosts keep bringing out food, and the guests feel obliged to eat it. (Much like when you visit your Greek or Italian grandmother…) At a certain point resentment starts to bubble up. The northerners feel “OK, were done, stop forcing food on us” and the southerners figure “hey, at a certain point you’re supposed to politely decline any more…” Eventually someone figures out what’s going on and eases the tension, but it was a definite clash of cultures.
Private gun ownership is the only thing preventing jackbooted thugs from kicking down your front door in the middle of the night and offering you an affordable health plan that covers pre-existing conditions - you know, the type that Jesus specifically forbade when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
I traveled to China on business and the host company took us out to eat - quite informal and not particularly expensive. We were served as a group with several dishes and a bowl of rice brought to the table. They seemed amused when I took the last 2-3 items from from a large serving platter. I noticed that none of the Chinese ever “cleaned” any of the serving dishes.
I was never sure if I was impolite or that they were surprised that a westerner really liked their food.
In Hong Kong, people still have a “rat board” in their doorway. It’s a cut piece of 1x10 fitted flush with the floor inside the front door, presumably to keep rats from running in the door when it is opened. My friend, a young single man in his 30s, living on the 40th floor, had a rat board in his doorway. People have to step over it to get through the door, and foreigners forget (to which I can attest).
In China, a lot of etiquette consists in making offerings to appear generous and in refusing them to avoid appearing greedy. Taking the last items risks making someone appear greedy.
I do wonder what happens to the systematically-left-on-the-table food items. In a country like China, it seems people wouldn’t want to waste food. Perhaps they’re eaten in private later by the host?
Is it the same in restaurants in China, people systematically leave food on their plate to avoid appearing greedy?
If you don’t want to start a debate, I’m not sure why you would bring up the subject at all. In any case, I’ll reiterate the final sentence and ask not to begin any debate on the subject.
People still shake hands, even though everyone knows that’s how the majority of infectious diseases are spread. Come to think, the shaking hands custom came about as a way to show the other guy that you’re not about to kill him with a weapon – which, these days, may actually still be appropriate.
The theory is that taking the last portion implies that the host is a bad host, as a successful host serves so much food that it is impossible to finish. A good banquet will have a near constant flow of food, with the waitstaff constantly removing and rearranging dishes as the table becomes so full even stacking the dishes won’t accommodate everything.
Leftovers at banquets may be discretely boxed up. My old boss used to feed his dog quite lavishly on banquet leftovers, which was a running joke among his peers. I’m sure anything not taken home is consumed one way or another, even if it ends up being fed to the pigs.
At restaurants with family or personal friends (not people you work with or are otherwise trying to impress), it;s pretty much okay to clean out a plate (though if you are routinely clearing plates, you probably need to order a bit more.)
There’s another explanation or the china thing (although less relevant to the OP).
Eating from a shared dish is much more common in China than in the West.
And taking the last portion of a shared dish is slightly awkward everywhere because you are taking away the option of eating any more of that dish from other people.
In English, one generally uses the terms “sir” or “madam” to politely address a superior or a friendly stranger, despite it being unlikely that either one is a member of the nobility.
Miss and Mrs. are pretty outdated as well. There was a time when a woman’s marital status was THE essential bit of information on them, and would guide your interaction. Now, outside of romantic settings, it’s unimportant.