Our Land, Our Culture

Our Land, Our Culture

Team members:
1. Paramasivamurtee A/L Saravanan (1B)
2. Koh Wei Liang (1C)

Chinese Cultures

Chinese Cultural Practices

DO’s
➢ We must reunite every new year’s eve to eat together.
➢ In rural areas and for older people, the New Year gift giving

tradition is still strong, but increasingly younger people prefer
just to receive red envelopes (by hand or electronically).
➢ We must decorate the house and public with red colour banners,
quotes and lanterns for good fortune and happiness, and also keep
away us from bad lucks.
➢ Opening windows and/or doors is considered to bring in the good
luck of the new year.
➢ Switching on the lights for the night is considered good luck to
'scare away' ghosts and spirits of misfortune that may
compromise the luck and fortune of the New Year.
➢ Sweets are eaten to ensure the consumer a "sweet" year.

Chinese Cultural Practises

DON’Ts
• We can’t use a broom to sweep

a floor in the first day in New
Year’s eve because this
represents sweeping luck away.
• We can’t behave badly in the
first day in new year because it
will cause bad luck.
• It is believed that we must
avoid taking / consuming
medicines in New Year’s day as
we will get sick/ill for the whole
year.

More Cultural Practices

Practical Guide: How to Celebrate the
Chinese New Year

Chinese Eating Habits

Do’s
• In Chinese culture, foods have been used as symbols of meaning in

many occasions, to impart different information.
• Chinese often use chopsticks to eat their meals.
• The rice and the dish are separate respectively.
• The luckiest Chinese New Year foods (and their symbolic meanings)

are:

✓ Fish (an increase in prosperity)
✓ Chinese dumplings (great wealth)
✓ Glutinous rice cake (a higher income or position).

• Let old person eat first and treat them good.

Chinese Eating Habits

Don’ts
❖Don’t make much noise when eating or drinking soup.
❖Don’t talk when there is food on the mouth.
❖Don’t point someone with chopsticks or play with chopsticks.
❖Don’t sit disrespectfully when eating food.

Local DON’Ts when using
chopstick

5 Tips of using chopsticks

• Hitting your dishes with chopsticks - beggars and homeless.
• Stick your chopsticks into your food or rice - curse in Chinese culture (This is taboo and said to bring bad luck

because it reminds people of the incense used a funeral. Out of respect, you especially do not want to do this as
a guest in someone else’s home. Instead, simply lie your chopsticks together and flat across your plate or
bowl).
• Whenever you are out to a meal with family or friends, and you want to hand someone else chopsticks, you want
to double check the chopsticks: make sure the two chopsticks are equal in length, same colors, and same
materials. This is a sign of respect and table manners at the dinner table.
• Point at people with chopsticks – rude and similar to the rude action of pointing to a person / something with
one finger (China). To avoid this, keep your chopsticks relatively low to the table when picking up and eating
food.
• When eating a meal and perhaps being indecisive, you cannot use chopsticks to pick up food randomly that you do
not intend to eat. In other words, you cannot pick up a piece of food from a shared plate and then put it back
down.

Chinese greeting habits

Do’s
• We greet the people who are older than us.

• To show a high level of respect, friends might use the terms ‘lao’/老 (old) and ‘xiao’ 小 (young)

with or instead of titles.
• When we meet someone in a rural area, we’ll often ask them to join for a meal.

Don’ts
• Don’t offer too firm of a handshake. A firm handshake could be construed as a sign of aggression.
• Don’t go straight for a hug. Especially when meeting someone for the first time. Any body

contact, apart from a simple handshake, may make your new Chinese friends feel uncomfortable.
• Don’t address elders using ‘ni hao’ (/nee haow/). Instead, use ‘Nin hao’ (/neen-haow/ ‘you good’).

This is more polite, formal and respectful.