Residents of the Celestial Empire sleep during working hours, do not make gifts in the form of umbrellas or watches, and soup is served for sweets. They're not doing like others!
If you see an even number of flowers in a Chinese bouquet, don't rush to condolences, even if they turn out to be artificial. Parity is just a sign of symmetry, as part of harmony, which is highly respected in this country.
Peonies in the Middle Kingdom symbolize wealth and love, and therefore are the most respected flowers. Chrysanthemums symbolize the lightness of being, joy, enjoyment of life. What else will surprise our Asian neighbors?
Lunch time, and tea party hour
The Chinese do not combine these two important events. It's one thing to satisfy your hunger, it's another thing to enjoy tea. Chinese citizens eat this divine drink before a meal (thirty minutes) or after it.
Their national medicine is convinced that drinking food is harmful and tasteless. The liquid reduces the concentration of juice in the stomach, slows down the process of digestion of food, prevents the opening of taste buds. So they even serve the soup they serve at the end of the meal.
Tables for meals from the Chinese are round in shape. On top of the countertop is a spinning "cake" with dishes: you twist it and you can easily get any dish. The democratic shape of the table - it seems that everyone feels on an equal footing. But only at first glance! The table hierarchy is strictly observed: the owner of the house or the inviting party sits facing the door, guests are seated on both sides near the host, and the more important the guest, the closer.
The banquet is paid by the inviting party. But it happens that friends argue among themselves who will pay for lunch in a restaurant. Everyone puts money on the table and encourages the waiter to accept payment from him. They even shove money back into each other's pockets!
Away from the "four"
In Chinese usage, the use of the word "four" is minimized to "no". This numeral in their language is consonant with the noun "death". There are no floors in the houses whose numbers would contain 4, and there are no rows numbered with this figure in airliners. The Chinese compensated for their dislike of the "four" with an increased piety to "8" - this number contains a symbol of infinity and wealth. Do you want to live in a house or apartment with such a number? To drive a car, to talk on the phone with such numbers? Pay extra for a lucky number.
Tired – rest
Sleeping during the working day in China is not a joke, but the organization of production. From an hour to two in the afternoon, you can leave all attempts to call the work phone - everyone went to sleep.
If the office is not equipped with a place to relax, employees go outside, sleep on benches in squares or right on the lawns, laying a newspaper under themselves, or simply dropping their heads on a table in a cafe. And lovers of comfort go from the furniture salons of IKEA. Yes, the Chinese consumer is allowed to take a nap for an hour on the sofa or bed for sale!
Beware – feng shui!
Color in China is treated with special piety.
In clothes, entourage, you will not find objects that have a color "from a lantern", simply because you like this color. Everything has to make sense.
- For example, yellow symbolizes eternity, success, stability, fertility. It is the main color in China. For a long time, only representatives of the imperial dynasty had the right to include yellow color in the wardrobe.
- Red is joy, activity, the power of life. At the wedding, the Chinese wear red clothes, and in the houses there are necessarily objects of red color to scare away hostile spirits.
- But you will not see guests in white at a Chinese holiday. White is a symbol of withering, the color of burial.
Feng Shui is not a folk pastime for the Chinese, but part of centuries-old traditions. You can believe that the water running away from the beautiful fountain symbolizes the leakage of money, or you can laugh at it. But once the American architect who designed the Hong Kong tower complex "Koala Trees" was accused of bankruptcy of tenants of office space. They say that fountains are to blame for everything.
But Terminal No. 3 of the Beijing International Airport is designed according to all the rules of Chinese traditions. The building, resembling a dragon in shape, is designed in gold with a red scale. The design of the building implies the most natural light. The fact is that Foster Norman, the European architect who designed the terminal, once got burned on feng shui. He had previously designed the building of the Bank of Shanghai and Hong Kong, and he had to redo the project at the request of customers from China in accordance with their understanding of the organization of any space.
Despite the fact that the Chinese invented wallpaper from paper, in their own interiors you will not see any. They don't hang curtains on their windows — they don't want the lighting to be distorted. Everything should be natural.
Make gifts wisely
The Chinese are scrupulous in matters of gift. God forbid the object causes negative emotions in the giftee! Watches, for example, symbolize death, so they are not given. In the same company got umbrellas as a symbol of separation (and not yellow tulips at all). White chrysanthemums can also not be gifted, because they symbolize the funeral ritual. Only an object of green color can be worse, because it symbolizes the betrayal of the spouse in China.
The value of family traditions, the continuity of different generations for the Chinese is sacred. Marriage should be concluded before the age of 30, otherwise the Chinese is considered a pathetic worthless person: he lived to such an age, and did not have a family or children. It is a common custom to give children to older relatives (grandparents) in order to give parents the opportunity to go somewhere else in order to earn money.
