Chinanews, Beijing, Mar. 13 – A recent survey shows that most (70.9%) people think that social dining, or dining with one’s business partners or colleagues in order to promote social relations, has become even more common these days. 14.4% of the respondents say the issue hasn’t changed much over the past few years, while 10.6% of them say such social custom has changed for the better these days.
In China, people follow the traditional custom of settling everything at the dining table. It seems that if one wants to do something in society, one will have to treat his or her colleagues, bosses, business partners, etc. well at the table. Such tradition is manifested especially at the Spring Festival holidays. During these and other important holidays, some people are busy arranging dinner parties to expand their social connections, while some think hard to find a proper excuse to turn down such invitations. There are some people who are even sent to hospital for having had a cup too much.
In the survey, 23.1% of the people admit that they attend a lot of social gatherings during the Spring Festival holiday and 70.0% say they don't have too many social gatherings. Another 6.9% of the people find it “hard to say.” In their usual time, 26.9% of the people say their social gatherings are relatively few; 1.4% say they never attend any social activities; and 71.7% say they have “lots of social gatherings.”
When asked which group of people do they think will have the most social gatherings, most (82.6%) pick “businesspeople or entrepreneurs”; 62.4% say it is the “public servants” or “people in the entertainment circle”; 33.9% say it is “media people”; 22.1% choose “doctors”; and 11.9% pick “teachers”. Only 6.6% of the people pick “technicians.”
The survey also shows that about half (44.9%) of the people think that such custom has taken root in China and it is difficult to change it.
In addition, 46.1% of the respondents say that it is a good thing for people to have many social gatherings since they will "provide an opportunity for them to make new friends". 65.2% of them think such social activities can bring both positive and negative results, and people should try to control their social gatherings to a moderate degree.
