Business Dinner in China
For more than three years, between 2003 and 2007, I have attended hundreds of business dinners in China. They were a mandatory predicament on the trips to audit suppliers with my Chinese teammates. This blog describes experiences to be expected in such events. I normally visited companies in small Chinese cities, with just a couple of million inhabitants and the infrastructure of a village. Once, my friend and I declined the dinner invitation and were happily relaxing with a good bottle of wine in the hotel lobby. A hurried Chinese came to the hotel asking us to follow him for dinner, explaining that important people were waiting. We tried the wine tasting as an excuse, but the person invited himself to join us. As soon as we filled his cup, he gulped down all the wine showing us the empty glass with the "Gan Bei!" toast and urging us to do the same. In Chinese, Gan Bei means empty glass. We failed our attempt to skip dinner. At the entrance of the restaurant, we were norm...