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Journey to the west (In Manners)

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IN 1984, BUSINESSMAN Lee Kai-hung was on a flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Sitting next to him was a senior Chinese structural engineer who was heading to a conference in Germany. 'He had never been outside the mainland before,' Lee remembers. 'And nobody had bothered to explain to him western customs and manners.'

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Lee, who has lived in Manchester in the north of England for 25 years, watched in amazement and dismay as the sophisticated professional in the next seat approached the airline meal. 'He had never seen butter before,' Lee says. 'He had no concept what it was for. He obviously thought it was something like chocolate. He started to scoop it out with his fingers and lick them.

'I explained to him what he had done and how embarrassing that would be for him in Germany and how his hosts would be extremely upset. He was very concerned,' Lee says.

That incident, minor in itself, set Lee on a campaign dedicated to help explain daily life and habits in Europe to Chinese who planned to live, work, study or travel overseas. 'People left China in those days to go abroad and had no idea of how to act,' he says. 'They were simply not aware they were causing offence to their hosts by acting in the wrong way in the wrong place.'

It is difficult now to realise how two decades ago China was emerging from deep isolation. During the Cultural Revolution, the nation was cut off totally from the rest of the world. There was no television, movies or books that told Chinese how other people behaved. So when a chosen few began to travel in the 1980s, they were venturing into unknown territory where people acted in a manner different from home. 'Nobody told them how to act overseas,' Lee notes. 'That was because nobody knew.'

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Lee was thoughtful as he continued his journey home to Manchester. He worried how the rising tide of Chinese going out into the world would be received if they acted like mannerless, ignorant ruffians. And go out into the world they did. In Manchester and surrounding areas, young Chinese began to appear, mostly students at universities and technical colleges, or workers attached to factories.

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