Culture change - one person at a time

Wasting food vs. being a good host. A good Chinese host always provides an abundance of food, regardless of the number of guests. There must be leftovers to show that I can afford to feed you till you can't eat any more. Official banquets must be lavish. Tables must overflow with expensive and exotic food. Even if I'm eating alone or with 1 other person, I must order 2-3 dishes. We eat less than half of each dish, finish all our rice, and leave. The leftovers get thrown away. Normal practice in China.

Enter Operation Empty Plate. Here's what it is (taken from www.businessinsider.com):
"Beijing has launched a campaign (People's Daily) against waste and official gluttony. It began with "four dishes and a soup" and has progressed to "operation empty plate". "Operation empty plate" apparently was started by netizens earlier this month, Sina Weibo has promoted it and today it is on page one of People's Daily--人民日报-吃光盘中餐　今日不剩饭 “光盘行动”得到热烈响应. The People's Daily says that "operation empty plate" has been forwarded "50 million" times around the Internet (记者追踪“今天，你吃光盘中食物了吗” “光盘行动”被转发5000万次).

Whether it is really a grassroots movement or something coordinated by the Ministry of Propaganda with assistance from Sina, it is desperately needed here as the amount of food waste is quite shocking (South China Morning Post): Agricultural scientist Yuan Longping has called on Beijing to stop people wasting tens of thousands of tonnes of food each year by issuing fines.

Yuan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering who is known as "the father of hybrid rice", said he had seen too many sumptuous banquets that ended up with many leftovers. The People's Daily cartoonists are quite talented and today they have a good one (Screenshot) depicting officials pigging out under a table in response to the campaign to stop waste and gluttony. Today's paper also has a commentary about special privileges and waste--人民日报-吃空饷背后的身份特权."

What good is a campaign if it's just on paper? Enter Mr Cheng Guangbiao, Chinese billionaire and philanthropist. He led by example (as shown in the picture above). "Better to take action than to say it 1000 times!" He may be a controversial figure in Chinese society, but, hey, at least he's doing something about not wasting food, rather than just paying lip-service! I label him a trend-setter.

Doing business in China is sometimes a mystery. You can read all the books (which is a really good thing to do), yet it never really prepares you for reality. Just make sure you are ready to eat good food and drink lots of hard liquor.

Have fun doing business in the world's #5 Fastest Growing Country - China!

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