Billiam Rizzle Explanations #2

Here is the newest and final installment of Cross Cultural Misadventures. These movies were incredibly fun to make, and we had others planned, but we ran out of time before Todd (Billiam) headed west for deputation.

Cross Cultural Misadventures #4 from Aaron Herrema on Vimeo.

In this episode Billiam makes four mistakes. They are all things that would be considered to be poor manners. First, when entering his friend's home, he leaves on his shoes. In many Asian cultures, it is considered very impolite to enter someone's house with your shoes on. Many times, you are expected to remove and leave your shoes outside. His second mistake is playing with his chopsticks. On top of being impolite, there are places in Asia where playing with your chopsticks signifies that you're looking for a fight. His third mistake is hogging the main dish of food. In China especially, when eating from communal dishes, proper etiquette is to only take enough of a dish for a single bite. By taking a lot of a dish you are expressing that you don't trust the others at the table to leave any for you. The final mistake he made was implying that the Japanese are better people than the Chinese. This is a very touchy subject amongst Chinese, who have a deep sense of national pride, and deeply dislike all things Japan.