Losing Face at Chinese Banquettes

‘The whole thing is about losing face. Any relationship is built on a succession of challenges: whether you are doing business, are at a banquet or with a friend. Everything is based on challenging the next person. At a banquet there are various targets. The banquet lasts about four or five hours. The first impression that you have is that they are as keen as you are to have a good time. But it’s not as simple as that. They are keen to have a banquet, because they have been through very hard times—that’s human. But the various targets might be to extract information from people, test their reputation, test their endurance. Because in a banquet, basically, you drink a lot. In a negotiation various parties are present, and at the banquet it might be appropriate for one party to be extinguished half-way through the banquet so that the other parties can talk more freely.

‘I have been at banquets where not-so-desirable parties have been targeted and extinguished—in fact, once it was a political bureau. I’ve been in situations where it was quite clear that I was the party that had to be extinguished, and I had to fight. There were 30 people around the table, and you learn very quickly that each party is represented by three or four persons. If you have 26 other people consistently challenging three or four persons for three or four hours, you know who is on the hot spot. That’s the name of the game. It is put in a way where the people who are consistently being challenged are presented as the most important ones at the table. They have the highest grade in some kind of hierarchy. You might start to feel you are important, but as they consistently challenge you, you may end up with your head in your rice-bowl. That’s when you work out that the predominant feeling around the table wasn’t friendliness and hospitality, but the opposite!

Experience of a Foreigner in China Business World

‘You need to show you’re not a dumb Westerner. They had set up the competition by talking about their boss being such a great drinker. I couldn’t have cared less, but they kept emphasising this, as if they were throwing out a challenge. If you walk into their trap and you do it their way and don’t win, basically you are down-graded in their eyes. If you avoid the challenge altogether, you’ll lose their respect. By working out how they do it, and winning, you get a lot of kudos. They think, “This guy’s got standing. He’s smart”.’

The toasting isn’t the only challenge this executive has to deal with. Another is food.

‘They serve up all kinds of food. I’ve eaten rice sparrows. The sparrows eat the grains of rice at the rice harvest. They puff up and can’t fly. The farmers net them and drop them, as they are—feathers, beak and all—into boiling oil. They come out like black squash balls. You chew the whole lot up. The Shanghai fairy crab is another special dish. First they’ll have the big white worms you dig up from the sand. Then they bring on the crabs. Once in Shanghai I was sitting next to a Chinese lady engineer. She picked up the crab, pulled its feet off and twisted the top shell off the bottom shell and sucked up the meat, roe and everything. They serve tortoise in its shell. They take the lid off and you tear into it with your chopsticks. Snake, duck feet, chicken feet, pig intestines chopped and fried in chilli …’

Banquets As Part of Chinese Business

There is a certain formality about banquets in China. Everyone sits in an anteroom first; if you are the honoured guest you will be seated next to the most important people, with others ranked around according to the hierarchy. Tea is served. After ten minutes of chit-chat, everyone gets up and walks into the banquet, which is usually held in a private room. The honoured guest sits facing the door.

There might be fifteen courses, and there will be maotai: the host makes a toast, and then you respond with a toast. As the banquet proceeds, you start to notice that some people are becoming very raucous. They are mixing scotch and other wines together. They are obviously set on drinking a lot of maotai, releasing their inhibitions and having fun. So far, so good. I will now let one executive tell of his experience.

‘Once they said, “We are bringing along Mr X. He is the big boss man of the corporation. He’s a great drinker, a really big, big drinker.” They kept saying what a great drinker he was, how he could drink everyone under the table. I thought, “No way, fellas. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

‘When we got to the banquet, the “great drinker” turned out to be about five feet [152 centimetres] tall, seven stone [45 kilograms], and twenty years older than I was. I thought there was no way he could beat me, given my body weight and experience in drinking. I soon learned how he got a reputation for being a good drinker: he would have his minions toast the guest one by one, so that the guest would have to drink after each toast. When someone at the other end of the table stood up and said, “Mr Mitchell, I welcome you to our country. Ganbei”, I replied, “No, I can’t drink with just one of you. I always drink with all my friends”. So, for every toast that individuals proposed to me, I insisted that everyone join in.

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