Blowing Water | It’s nice to respect different cultures’ table manners, but I won’t stop slurping my soup noodles

Whenever I travel to Europe, the same dilemma always crosses my mind, which is: to slurp or not to slurp when I eat in the company of Westerners or anyone unfamiliar with Asian cultural norms.

When travelling abroad, it is reasonable to assume the need to respect and follow certain universally accepted table manners, like not talking with your mouth full or chewing loudly, and rightly so because these habits are rather unsavoury in most countries.

However, certain rules must be enforced. Given that table manners differ from culture to culture, it is necessary to follow a reasonable level of dining etiquette to avoid giving offence or committing any undue faux pas.

For example, eating with your left hand is taboo in India. The culture rarely uses cutlery, so the right hand is reserved for eating while the other one is strictly for doing your business in the toilet. In Chinese culture, it is ominous to put the chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice because it resembles incense sticks being burned in memory of the dead.

Having stayed in France for the past several weeks, I have been aware of my table manners, but I decided to slip back to more familiar ways once I felt settled. I made myself a bowl of noodles and ate it in the traditional Chinese way, which meant I slurped through it unashamedly till my bowl was completely empty. I felt great afterwards, or, dare I say, liberated. All this was done in the presence of my French host, but only after I sounded the slurp alert to forewarn him.

Every culture has its own rules at the dining table and what is considered acceptable in one culture might be perceived as disrespectful in another.