Wrong end of the stick

Some friends from the UK came to visit last week and I took them to our usual restaurant. Despite ordering a great number of dishes, the staff chose to give us disposable chopsticks rather than the pucker ones you’d normally expect. It was a bit like getting plastic cutlery in a posh restaurant back home.

I looked around and noticed that every other customer had proper ones – so it wasn’t simply a case of them running out. The only explanation was that we’d been picked out as the only foreigners in the place.

I was furious. What do we have to do to be accepted here?

Talking to a Chinese friend at lunch the next day, it turns out I was half right: yes, we had been picked out as foreigners but not in a bad or offensive way. Pre-packaged, disposable chopsticks are guaranteed to be clean whereas the restaurant’s own ones probably only ever get washed in cold water.

It was a sign of extra care and a courtesy to my visitors to give us the throwaway ones. And a sobering example of how easy it is as a foreigner to get the wrong end of the stick out here.