Moving Seats in a Restaurant
My absolute favorite restaurant in the world, bar none, is Joy Hing Roasted Meat in Hong Kong. If you find a better restaurant at its price point, you’re either lying or you’re literally just eating at Joy Hing, the cheapest Michelin-rated restaurant on the planet. It has lines all day long for people to order in or take out. Seriously. All day long and around the corner.
It’s got maybe two dozen seats inside at six tiny tables. Every seat is filled because they have to be. You walk in, get sat next to a stranger, start eating, and then leave. It’s a typical Hong Kong experience. To order, you basically just name an animal: chicken, pigeon, pig. Out comes the best roast meat you’ve never had on a bed of white rice. Blast it with the house sauce on every table, and you’re golden like the crispy skin.
This is no-frills dining at its finest.
Sharing Tables
So here is a situation: Two tables, two people at each. You walk in with a party of three, and there’s a total of four empty seats at two tables. There’s no buzzer or greeter screaming “Laowai, party of three.”
It is implicit, understood. Two plus two is four at one table and they move to make room for three. This sort of musical chairs is common in Hong Kong where space is limited, but bellies remain the same as they have for 300,000 years. We all need to eat; make space for your brethren.
This is also common across the mainland, but I’ve seen Americanization of seating habits in some spots in Guangdong: Tiger Prawn in Guangzhou and Chaukee in Foshan. I’m sure there’s others, but it would be a fairly inane project to catalog exhaustively the list of restaurants in the PRC with buzzers for initial seating arrangements.
That said, moving seats is normal across the Middle Kingdom.
As for the US
Ehhh, not so much. I sat in a fairly packed restaurant the other day in Hartford, Connecticut as the thought struck. We do *not* do this stateside.
Our construction of space and distance is different than the Chinese, both in a literal and conceptual sense. (Daily caveat when using generalizations; they are sweeping, broad brush strokes which glosses over the differences between individuals. Read with caution, thanks!)
The Chinese can be a very close, touchy people. This runs counter stereotypes perhaps, but yes, they can be a touchy folk. Grown women lock arms and cross the street. A gaggle of drunk dudes lay all over each other on a subway bench like monkeys in a barrel, hands on thighs and chins on shoulders.
This isn’t necessarily a manifestation of latent and suppressed homosexuality, though it might be in part. Straight men definitely are touchy all the same.
As for space in general, just walk on a Beijing subway during rush hour and let me know how you feel about your personal bubble. Spatial and population constraints just dictate their proximity in public.
Literally Can’t Own Property
There’s something to be said about not owning your own land. Much of Chinese life occurs in the public sphere, not necessarily the private. In the US it tends to be opposite.
Folks from the US can be pretty territorial. I mean we had/have Manifest Destiny for Christ’s sake.
If we get a table at a restaurant that is our f***ing table, damn it, and not no one is taking it.
For my Yankee brethren, would you honestly share a table at a restaurant?
Further, there is no real sense of taking too long at dinner in the US. If we finally get a table, it’s ours regardless of the endless wait for others. 45 minutes can bleed into 90 minutes if we damn well please, because – again – that table is ours. God forbid if the waitstaff ask you to move, that’s considered rude.
(Side note: In Southern Europe, dinners go on way long, too, as in two hours. But that’s culturally ingrained. That’s standard. Things are slower.)
For my Yankee brethren, would you honestly hasten a meal if there’s a huge wait?
Told a Waiter I’d Move
As I sat down to write in Tissane’s Café in Hartford on a Sunday morning, I occupied a large room of empty tables. But the waiters were all busily setting up, so I figured maybe they packed the place regularly for brunch.
I let them know, if you’d like me to move when the crowd rolls in, I’ll go solo at the counter.
Flustered as if I’d asked to see his undies, he awkwardly said it was okay. No, no, no, no. You’re fine.
But as the crowd filled in, I realized my next hour at the table would net the restaurant a mere extra $2.50 for a mug of coffee and a young couple would have to impatiently wait for another table, while I wrote up on The Cultural Chronicles. Lame.
So I upped and left, because of course I did.
Honestly, I would’ve shared the table, but again. Who does that?
Let me know in the comments below. Do you agree? Disagree? Think I overthink?
Like what you’re reading on China? Check out some other related articles in: The China Chronicles!!
