Cultures and traditions. Eating habits.

Pubs are popular places in Britain. If you have been invited to the pub then your friend will buy your first drink. If you want to go on drinking then he or she will probably expect you to buy the next “round” of drinks, and it’s worth knowing this custom. It’s very common for a group of people to take it in turns to buy all the drinks and that can be quite expensive. If that is the custom your friends are following then, unfortunately, you must follow it too. If you really have just arrived from another country they may excuse you. You can buy non-alcoholic drinks in a pub … but you’re still expected to pay your round.

The British are happy to have a business lunch and discuss business matters with a drink during the meal. The Japanese prefer not to work while eating: lunch is a time to relax and get to know one another, and they rarely drink at lunchtime. The Germans like to talk business before dinner. The French like to eat first and talk afterwards: they have to be well fed and watered before they discuss anything.

Eating seems to be the most popular pastime in Hong Kong. Actually more than 1, 5 million people eat out every day in Hong Kong, the highest percentage in the world. Restaurants in Hong Kong are rated very high on a worldwide scale, with the cuisines of Canton, Peking, Szechuan, Shanghai, Chiu Chao, Hakka, and Hunan represented in over 6, 000 eateries. Most of them are filled every night and for weekend breakfasts and lunches with multigenerational Chinese families who dine out together as well as live together. Instead of grandparents baby-sitting while Mom and Dad go out to dinner, grandparents and children go along too, as well as great-grandparents and, judging from the size of the groups at the tables, every other relative as well.

In the East or the Middle East you must never use the left hand for greeting, eating, drinking, giving presents or touching someone, as it is considered “impure”. The prejudice against “impurity” is very strong.

In conformity with ancient and still very strong religious traditions and beliefs, Hindus won’t touch beef, Moslems feel the same about pork.

Vegetarians eat neither meat, fish, nor eggs. Vegetarianism is a theory or practice of living solely upon vegetables, fruits, grains, and nuts, generally for ethical, ascetic or nutritional reasons. Meat, fowl, and fish are excluded from all vegetarian diets, but some vegetarians use milk and milk products; those in the modern West usually eat eggs too, but most vegetarians in India exclude them, as did those in the classical Mediterranean lands. Vegetarians who exclude animal products altogether have taken the name vegans, and those who use milk products are sometimes called lacto vegetarians. Among some agricultural peoples the eating of flesh has been infrequent except among the privileged classes; such people have rather misleadingly been called vegetarians. It would be useful and interesting but very difficult and nearly impossible to list hundreds of societies and their customs to get a complete and detailed picture of their food customs and laws.