The Round Tables
09/04/08 15:56
Perhaps my favorite anecdote about China is the prevalence of round tables in restaurants. I almost never saw square tables, and I quickly learned upon entering a room -- even for a relatively casual meal — to turn to a ranking Chinese colleague and ask, Where do you want me to sit?
Almost invariably we were seated in private rooms with our own set of dedicated serving staff. A rotating lazy susan sat in the middle of each table. All of these features are quite different than in the West, of course. But the seating rank was perhaps the surprising element. Asking where to sit was important because these seating positions are carefully ranked. Some restaurants even had numbers at the seats, and two very nice private dining rooms actually had a small LED screen in front of each chair that could be recalibrated for groups that were smaller than the total number of seats available.
Almost invariably we were seated in private rooms with our own set of dedicated serving staff. A rotating lazy susan sat in the middle of each table. All of these features are quite different than in the West, of course. But the seating rank was perhaps the surprising element. Asking where to sit was important because these seating positions are carefully ranked. Some restaurants even had numbers at the seats, and two very nice private dining rooms actually had a small LED screen in front of each chair that could be recalibrated for groups that were smaller than the total number of seats available.
Two seats were extremely important: the #1 position ("most honored guest", located the farthest from the main entrance to the room) and the last-ranked position ("lord of the manner," located closest to the door). Ranks declined from the #1 seat, alternating right and left until you reached the lord of the manor seat; this person paid the bill. A very easy way to give offense as a foreigner is simply to take a seat, especially a high-ranking seat. Or to sit someplace else than where you have been directed. I normally took a high number, but only once or twice over a week did I take the highest position.
In contrast, most of our non-meal formal meetings with institutions in China (as at universities) were at long rectangular tables. At one short end of the table was a screen where powerpoint slides were projected. The two groups (us and them) faced each other, with seating highly correlated with rank -- the highest ranking person on each side normally closest to the screen. This system seemed less rigid, but it was quite common. At very formal meetings, only the people who were high-ranked spoke. If there were insufficient seats for all of the people one side to be at the table, they might spill over to the other side or sit in a second row, against the wall. Also quite important was having the higher-ranked person from a group of speakers begin a talk, with additional, later speakers of descending rank.
I thought a lot about how these arrangements differ in the West. I gave offense and caused embarrassment at a meeting recently by suggesting a junior Chinese colleague speak before a more senior colleague. In North America, speaking order has only a weak association with rank. Perhaps this a flaw here in North America -- it might be difficult to tell who is "meant" to be the most important for the audience. And we certainly have a vigorous effort to appear egalitarian and democratic, erasing the evidence of rank whenever possible, but the perhaps we doth protest too much. I suspect we often care quite deeply about rank as well but we seek evidence through less obvious cues than I saw in China. Or -- even more intriguingly -- we might engage in a struggle to establish rank among parties through discussion and competition.
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