The 6 Unwritten Rules of Chinese Family Dining (Eating Out Edition)

Given the past few weeks' festivities and non-stop eating spree, I've officially validated my hypothesis for these rules. So if you're ang moh or of a different heritage, the information below might be useful if you are ever to date a Chinese boy/girl.

1. Make reservations between the peak of the dining session

• For lunch, that’s: 12:00-13:00 and for dinner it’s 18:30-19:30You never want to show too early because then you’ll be eating yesterday’s leftovers. And if too late you’ll be eating someone else’s leftovers, or they’ll run out of the good stuff. Just too much to deal with
  

2. Know your place (where you sit literally) in the family

• There’s a hierarchy when it comes to seating at the round table. There are no placeholders, so if you wanna impress, you better know where you rank in the family.
  
• The rule is simple, for nuclear size family dinners (btwn 8-14). Men is before women. The man always seats to the right of a woman. The eldest and if you’re a man then you get to sit next to the most important person in your family (#1, or the oldest one alive). The second eldest gets to sit next to #2, following eldest goes after the family of the eldest, so on so forth. If you’re an in-law, always sit next to your spouse because otherwise it’s very lonely at the table

Mainlander Chinese Family from Stockphoto (where general rules is irrelavant because of One Child Policy)

• Now, for more modern families, if gender equality is ever a thing, you can assume that it’s ranked by how much bread you bring into the family (a.k.a. How much money you make). If your salary is the highest in the family, you’ve earned yourself a seat next to your family #1.
• For your semi annual clan size dining (15+ family members- where you discuss who’s first, second or third cousins and who’s related to who and how), you sit at your generation table.
  
• If you’re a guest or you can’t be bothered where you sit, a high ranking member will tell you where your appropriate place is.

3. Never order based on what you crave for, but what is the freshest

• Ask the captain (head waiter who’s taking your order)- what’s the catch of the day. Nobody wants to eat a 3 day old fish. This is especially true for when you go into a seafood restaurant. The quality of the food depends on the ingredient just as much as on the chef

Sea Diversity at Restaurant Aquarium- "Great entertainment for kids, great tastes for adults"

4. Animal drumsticks and claws are RESERVED by the #1 and the #1’s favorite person

• The first drumstick always go to the grandpa or (the #1), and who ever grandpa favors at the time. And you need to wait for them to say YOUR NAME that before you take the other drumstick. Otherwise- your family will give you so much shit for it for it until the next person makes a rookie mistake.
• Although it sounds like I’m complaining but honestly I think the system is quite fair since the #1 is paying for the meal, they should be able to pick who deserves to eat the highlight of the meal the most.

Somboon Curry Crab Claws Highlighted for Noobs

5. It’s free to take general items from the dining table home

• Those ‘general items’ include things like straws, wet tissue paper, toothpicks, prewash and trimmed spring onions. Don’t feel embarrassed to take it home. Treat it like a buffet! Don’t be surprised when your grandmother pulls out a ziplock bag out of her LV purse during lunch.- She would never do it herself because she doesn’t want to be perceived that being cheap, but SHE WILL make YOU do it.

Spring Onions Free for Grabs

6. Never complain about the restaurant while you’re IN the restaurant

• We civil Chinese would not complain to the restaurant owner/manager/chef, but just never go back to the restaurant to solve the problem. And maybe tell 10 other people we know never to visit the place to show where we stand.
  
• There’s a few logical reasons for this
• It eliminates the chances that your next plate of food or chinese tea top-up will come with the chef or the waiter’s spit
• It’s to avoid being awkward if you ever come back to the same restaurant in the future
• It’s more fun when you complain full stream as soon as the car door closes with your family. Then you don’t have to paiseh and freely speak your mind.- it’s just more fun like that

Happy New Year everyone!

Also, Eating In Edition is to come post this year's CNY.