A pukka cuppa China’s new cultural revolution
HALF a century after their leaders dismissed good manners as a bourgeois cultural affectation, China’s new elite are flocking to Western-style finishing schools to be tutored in the arts of politeness and how to serve British afternoon tea.
Demand for tutoring in deportment is soaring among the country’s nouveau riche, whose incomes have taken off during China’s economic boom of the past two decades.
Run in many cases by British consultants, the courses offer everything from holding a cup and saucer properly through to how to wear a hat like Kate Middleton and how to swap their US-tinged English for a refined British tone.
Beijing-based Institute Sarita charges ¥80 000 (R190 000) for its two 10-day programmes: a “hostess” course for the married, and a “debutante” course for single women.
Among the wealthy pupils is Shu Ting, 49, who remembers how Mao Tse-tung attempted to end a 2 500year tradition of etiquette in China.
“If anyone dared to pay attention to etiquette they would be called capitalists. But the time has come for manners again,” said Shu as she sat in a “beauty and grooming” class.
The men and women who attend such courses are among the first generation of Chinese to travel abroad extensively.
However, rather like the US tourists who flocked to Britain at the dawn of mass air travel during the ’60s and ’70s, they have acquired an unwanted reputation for being rude and uncultured, especially among their Asian neighbours.
Last year, China’s National Tourism Administration said the country’s image had been “tarnished” by bad-mannered tourists and that a record of offenders would be kept.
As for students worried about what Chairman Mao would think of it all, the schools have a polite answer.
“You are in control of your own image and you can control how others see you,” said Rebecca Li, another teacher at Institute Sarita, who went to a Swiss finishing school herself. She added with a smile: “I am from Changsha, in Hunan, the same city as Mao Tse-tung.”— ©