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muckefuckWe have guests from China coming in this weekend, so I'm boning up on small talk in the meantime in order to repeat the phenomenal success I had speaking Dutch to out-of-town visitors a couple weeks back. I also burnished my gift-giving etiquette with Laoshi last night as my classmates were busy copy vocab down or out.
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monshu had picked up some small gifts for the family of the calligrapher we'll be meeting and I was worried when I looked up the word for "brooch" and found it glossed as 別針. 別 means "to part, to take leave of (esp. friends)" and so seemed an inauspicious gift for a first meeting. (It can also be a negative imperative, and I was entertaining him with all the homophones for bie2zhen1, like "do not give moral advice" and "do not do espionage work".) But Laoshi told this more properly refers to a safety pin and "brooch" would be 胸針 ("breast pin").
She also confirmed what we'd been reading online: The gifts should be wrapped and we shouldn't expect the recipients to open them in front of us. The exception would be if the gift requires some kind of explanation. For instance, it would be proper for us to view any calligraphic scrolls he might gift us with since "he might have to tell you what it says". As for timing, before the meal is fine.
Thanks to my friends for their suggestions on a brunch place downtown.monshu decided to go with the Atwood Café. Its emphasis on local ingredients fits well with the traditional Chinese aesthetic of hospitality. I just hope the strict vegetarians will find enough to eat amongst all the applewood-smoked bacon and artisanal havarti.
monshu had picked up some small gifts for the family of the calligrapher we'll be meeting and I was worried when I looked up the word for "brooch" and found it glossed as 別針. 別 means "to part, to take leave of (esp. friends)" and so seemed an inauspicious gift for a first meeting. (It can also be a negative imperative, and I was entertaining him with all the homophones for bie2zhen1, like "do not give moral advice" and "do not do espionage work".) But Laoshi told this more properly refers to a safety pin and "brooch" would be 胸針 ("breast pin").She also confirmed what we'd been reading online: The gifts should be wrapped and we shouldn't expect the recipients to open them in front of us. The exception would be if the gift requires some kind of explanation. For instance, it would be proper for us to view any calligraphic scrolls he might gift us with since "he might have to tell you what it says". As for timing, before the meal is fine.
Thanks to my friends for their suggestions on a brunch place downtown.
monshu decided to go with the Atwood Café. Its emphasis on local ingredients fits well with the traditional Chinese aesthetic of hospitality. I just hope the strict vegetarians will find enough to eat amongst all the applewood-smoked bacon and artisanal havarti.Tags: