Toasts: rhetoric and ritual in business negotiation in Confucian cultures.

One of the baffling episodes for most North American business people who travel to China, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong is the ritual of the welcome banquet and its toasts. Bemused travelers return with accounts of banquets in every port of call, each with its fiery liquid (euphemistically called

Some Americans who are experts on conducting business in Asia forewarn the sojourner about the banquet and toasts. In China, Inc.: How To Do Business With the Chinese, Roderick McLeod describes a welcome dinner of 15 courses " ... and many, many toasts ... |of~ generalities about friendship and 'old friends' and mutual benefit and the like."(1) Arthur De Menthe describes the format: "At more formal gatherings, the host generally will make a brief speech welcoming the guests and making other suitable comments and then lead the group in a gan bei |"bottoms up"~ toast. The chief guest normally responds with a few comments of his own and a toast, but not until after the second or third dish has been served."(2)

But these are only a few examples from business travelers who have been there and experienced the custom. Many other compilers of "do's and taboos" lists for travel in China and other Asian countries often fail to mention banquets and toasts. Even L. Copeland and L. Griggs merely say, "Don't drink alone--make a toast so that others will join you."(3)

Some intercultural trainers (I was one) offer seminars for business sojourners. Typically, they give notice of the toast ritual with this sort of explanation: "After about the third course, the host will stand and talk about friendship, hands across the sea, mutual cooperation and benefit. Then everyone at a table will stand and clink glasses with everyone else before drinking. After the fifth or sixth course, the leader of the guest party will do the same. It is important to repeat these vague phrases--bridge across the Pacific, old friends, and so forth--because they seem to have special meaning for the hosts." North American travelers usually are less concerned about the wording and more concerned about whether they really have to drain the glass after each toast. (They are assured by their trainers that they will be conscious only for two or three toasts if they do.)

The significance of toasts to North Americans is not deep; it is a friendly invitation to others to join the toaster in a drink. This pleasant but shallow meaning is the one Chinese advisers identify for Chinese businessmen who may find themselves at North American banquet tables. One writer, whose name, when Westernized, becomes "Hugh O'Young," reports that banquet toasts in the U.S. are very simple, usually just to the health of the guest of honor, to the prosperity of the U.S. |!~, or sometimes is just a simple "Cheers!" Occasionally, he declares, the toast is to the "new dish."(4) Another author from Taiwan writes to advise business people about how to conduct themselves outside Taiwan. He assures his readers that Westerners do not emphasize toasts. They do, however, emphasize conversation during meals, says this author, so Chinese must be wary and conduct themselves as if on a battleground with victory at stake."(5) Clearly, the significance attached to this toasting business is greater in Chinese culture(s) than in the West. Nor are Western business travelers reluctant to understand; there are simply no guides to explain what is going on. This article will show that toasts are nothing less than the opening statement by the Chinese of their negotiating position, and Western business guests who dismiss them risk losing a key opportunity to understand their Chinese hosts. To appreciate the meaning behind toasts, we will first look at the historical use of toasts, then at the present-day use, with a modern example. Long History of Toasts

To understand the significance of toasts in Chinese banquets, one must first review the history of toasts in that tradition-rich culture. Earliest accounts describe ceremonial toasts or libations to heaven and earth (and the spirits of natural phenomena such as rivers, rocks, mountains, and trees) and to the honored ancestors. Wine was splashed in a semi-circle around the libation-pourer, who when splashed three more drops, as exemplified in the Chinese character for heart. The ritual, therefore, was identified with sincerity: coming from the heart. The classical history of the Han dynasty describes wine as a beautiful gift from heaven, used by emperors to govern all under heaven. Because benefits are received from wine, all of the hundreds of ceremonies must include wine.

Banquets and wine were used as a reward for service and as a recognition of rank. Scholars who passed the Chinese examination system were honored at a special ceremonial banquet. Wine and banquets were used to encourage military performance in special ceremonies.(6)

The word "ceremony" is translated from the Chinese word li--a specific concept in Confucian thought because the proper comportment of a true gentleman is a matter of considerable attention. Correct behavior, respectful demeanor, irreproachable conduct--all of these are concerns of Confucianism. Perhaps a better translation for li would be "protocol"--in the sense diplomats use it, not its computer-specific usage. It is public etiquette, formal in nature.

Wine, in Confucian terms, was a liquid for giving form to li. At the same time, wine was recognized as an undeniable source of pleasure. Gradually, the emphasis shifted from ceremony to pleasure, and the spiritual invocations metamorphosed into complex drinking games. The Toastmaster was the Master of the Drinking Rules. Two classical texts, 300 Poems and Minor Elegance, both written about 500 B.C., mention "officers" who executed the drinking rules.(7) The aim of the Master of the Drinking Rules was to maintain among the guests the proper behavior (li) of a true gentleman. The first flagon of wine had no effect on a true gentleman (jun zi). After the second, he still could conduct civilized conversation. After the third flagon, however, he was expected to excuse himself and retire.(8)

Following the Rules

Drinking rules were elaborately wrought among the educated: scholars, poets, Mandarins, and magistrates. The games involved puns, homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, classical allusion, and knowledge of poetic forms. They required a quick wit and a broad knowledge of the classics. The object was to create a vivid, congenial atmosphere in which both host and guests would enjoy themselves to the greatest extent possible. A famous drinking rule recorded from the Tang dynasty required that each guest utter a line of poetry, created spontaneously but within the narrow requirements of specific verse forms, depicting a hair-raising horror. After the Master of the Drinking Rules started, a famous scholar responded, "A hundred-year-old man climbing a rotten vine." Then another scholar picked it up with, "A child sleeping under a rolling millstone." A third chimed in, "A blind person riding a blind horse in the middle of the night approaching a pond." Each utterance rhymed and conformed with either the five or seven syllables of traditional verse. Guests who could not come up with a clever line of well-fashioned poetry on the appointed theme in the few seconds allowed would have to drink. In another Tang game, guests wrote lines of poetry on slips of paper which were put into a tube. Each guest drew a slip and then was required to identify a guest by the oblique poetic description. For example, "A person's face; don't know where it has disappeared," meant that anyone with a beard had to drink.

Women who were educated could show off their wit and learning in drinking games; it was one of the few outlets for literate women. Li Qingzhao, a very famous woman poet of the Southern Sung dynasty, composed a book of complex drinking games. It was said that she and her husband passed their afternoons drinking in their very good library. One would quote from a classical work or poem, and the other would identify the volume, chapter, and page. If the identification was correct, the one who made the quotation would have to drink. If the identification was wrong, the identifier would have to drink. In the famous 18th century Chinese novel A Dream of the Red Mansions, the Mistress of the Drinking Rules set even more elaborate requirements, and participants had to go away to compose their verses. She required one quotation from ancient literature, one from ancient poetry, one from the ancient Chinese game of dominoes, and one from the almanac.(9)

Because the Master/Mistress of the Drinking Rules enforced the rules for drinking, he or she became the administrator of formal behavior at banquets. Even today, the formal banquet is regarded by Chinese as having "ceremonial regulations."(10) One of the duties of the Master of the Drinking Rules was to punish those who drank too much and veered away from li. Drunkenness is frowned upon by modern Chinese, and this disapproval has a long history. In fact, prohibition was enforced 41 times in the 2,400 years between the first dynasty (Zhou) and the last (Qin).(11) Correct behavior in front of others, li, means never losing control of one's actions. But poets are expected to drink to excess. One school, the "Drunken Dragons," was especially reputed to be besotted. One of its members, the famous poet Li Bai, drowned when he attempted to embrace the moon while gazing at its reflection from a boat.

Use in Diplomatic Negotiation

In addition to the ceremonial origin of toasts and the accretion of elaborate rhetorical games over dynasties, a third aspect of toasts is relevant to today's business traveler. This is the historical use of toasts and wine with food to accomplish diplomatic ends. The ancients regarded diplomatic negotiations as "conflict resolved between the meat and wine," meaning that during a banquet, advantages could be gained.(12) Chinese history is full of examples of peace between warring parties being negotiated at a banquet, dynasties being solidified because of the protected behavior at a banquet under the watchful control of the Master, and emperors being spared dissension among their administrators because of good banquets.

The references to historical tradition are not merely amusing anecdotes; they resonate with deep meaning for Chinese today. Banquets are the first move of the Chinese on the chessboard of business negotiations, and the toasts, far from being empty phrases and hot air, are the opening salvo in the negotiating process. They are fraught with the historical significance of wine-drinking which has "long been associated with establishing new relationships, personal, political, and business, and in celebrating business and political events.(13) Toasts are worthy of the close attention of Western business travelers because they reveal the opening position of the Chinese in business transactions. The usual procedure for a team inquiring into the possibility of future business relations is to be received by a host organization some time during the day. A meeting takes place, usually in a room with chairs lined up against the walls. Visitors are ushered to specific seats, and the host is seated in the place of greatest authority (usually facing south). Lesser luminaries seat themselves in a column around the host in diminishing order of importance. Then the host begins to speak, and the stated objective of this meeting is to "introduce" the host organization. The introduction involves statistics about the organization and its physical environment and little about the structure of authority. Frequently, Western guests are bewildered by the generalized data that seem to have nothing to do with the business at hand. Then, when the host finishes, the chief spokesperson for the guests is expected to respond with a similar description of the guests' home organization. Typically, tentative openings or references by the Westerners to the subject of the visit (a projected business association, for example) will not enjoy a response. This is a fact-exchange, of considerable formality, and is the appropriate first encounter--from the Chinese point of view--between important organizational representatives who are meeting for the first time. That evening, the guests will be welcomed at the banquet. Only then will they have a chance to hear the host group's negotiating position. When the visit is not the first encounter, and when contracts are to be negotiated, for example, the first encounter (apart from those that occur at the airport or train station) will be the banquet.

Setting the Stage

The first toast is the significant statement. In subsequent toasts, the pleasure of drinking in conviviality with new acquaintances determines the rhetoric, which usually turns on a phrase or episode or person that can become the basis for a joke. The conviviality is important, of course, even if manufactured; it is a sign that a relationship is being established and nurtured. A contract cannot be signed unless a relationship exists to support and sustain it. The first toast will not be read, but it will have been prepared with careful thought. It will emphasize friendship. As in other Asian cultures, friendship in China means obligations before it means rights. Further, friendship outlasts a single generation, so the relationship being established has the prospect of being ongoing far longer than the involvement of the people at the banquet. In the sample toast that follows, the speaker reminds the guests about both of these qualities of friendship. First, the speaker emphasizes "cooperation." Each side will be expected to pull its weight and, more important, each side will need to use its strengths to support the weaknesses of the other. This is an important statement. Asians lose face--which is to be avoided at all cost--when they are forced to admit to an inadequacy. As if to insulate both parties from a dreaded face-losing eventuality, the speaker suggests that even if this venture isn't successful, the friendship will carry on and enable them to cooperate in another venture. The speaker also states that commitments from the outsiders' party means they may occasionally have to give generously of their strength. The speaker's side has strengths, too, that are worthy of the Westerners' respect. "The critical point is mutual respect and trust," the speaker says. "You are not the only ones with something to offer." In the third paragraph, the speaker has covered another key point: the future venture will require special perceptions and analyses because the way isn't clear. Difficulties are evident. The guests should not assume a trouble-free effort. Specifically, they should not expect too much because quality is demonstrably hard to achieve. This hints at some previous difficulties. High quality in products, service, and workmanship is virtually taken for granted in Western organizations. But the problems that beset Chinese organizations often make quality elusive. These problems are unlikely to be identified to Westerners, however, because of the potential shame and loss of face on the part of the Chinese if they were to admit that doing business in China is so encumbered.

The toast ends with the traditional "bottoms up!"--or, literally--"dry cup." Now the chief spokesperson for the guests has an opportunity to respond. The Chinese will be listening carefully to determine the implied message of their negotiating position.

Although business negotiations with the Chinese are prolonged, and other opportunities arise for understanding "where they're coming from," the welcome banquet toast offers Western business teams a chance to hear the opening statement of the negotiating strategy. If Westerners can focus beyond what seem to be platitudes and empty phrases, they can be better prepared for subsequent discussions across the bargaining table.

1 McLeod, Roderick, China Inc: How to Do Business With the Chinese, New York, Bantam, 1988.

2 De Menthe, Boye, Chinese Etiquette and Ethics in Business, Lincolnwood, IL, NTC Business Books, 1989.

3 Copeland, L. and L. Griggs, Going International, New York, Random House, 1985. 4 O'Young, Hugh, International Etiquette, Taipei: Zhong Bao, 1984.

5 Huang, Weixuan, Communication on the Banquet Table (trans. by author), Taipei: Zuo Ye Wen Hua Shi Ye, 1988.

6 He, Manzi, The Drinking Culture (trans. by author), in series: The Chinese Art of Living, Hong Kong: Shangye Publications, 1991.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Tsao, Hsueh-Chin, Kao Ngo, A Dream of Red Mansions (translated title), Vol. 2, Foreign Language Press, Beijing, 1978.

10 He, Manzi.

11 De Menthe, Boye.

12 He, Manzi, 64.

13 De Menthe, 182.

A Sample Toast

Respected ladies and gentlemen: it is often said, "There's a special affinity that extends a thousand miles, making it possible to meet face to face." It is a great honor to have everyone here. Of today's gathering, we cannot say there is not a special affinity between us.

To obtain cooperation, first, let's be friends. The affinity between us is just the beginning. We must continuously increase our understanding and ceaselessly improve our friendship so we can elevate our working relationship to a higher order. Even if the business at hand is not successful, our mutual feelings still remain. If this time we don't succeed, there's always a next time. We become business associates and newfound friends. Therefore, we can clasp hands with united hearts and concerns and walk together toward future success. To engage in business, we must face reality because we are in a very competitive world. Therefore, our outlook must be furnished with strategies and overall, comprehensive approaches. Furthermore, we have to observe points that other people do not see and understand the contemporary situation with profound insight. We must see the advantages; we must also see the difficulties. We must look to immediate profit as well as long-term gain. We need to learn how to gather information, to analyze and synthesize data, to determine policies and set terms for quality. When faced with the law, "in quality lies success; in lack of quality lies failure," only our great skill can produce the strength to achieve success.

In order to conduct business successfully, we also have to rely on cooperation, on solidifying the relationship in united effort thrusting toward cooperation and on mutual communication closely managed. It can be demonstrated that it is very important for each side to put forward its strengths and to compensate for the other's weaknesses. The critical point is mutual respect and trust. Then we can move forward together with relentless effort. This is the way toward the bridge of success.

In China, we have an ancient saying, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." Now, please allow me to speak for myself and my colleagues in raising a toast

* to cooperation,

* to friendship, and

* to success:

Bottoms up!

* to everyone's health,

Bottoms up!

LINDA BEAMER, Ph. D., is an associate professor of office systems and business education in the School of Business and Economics at California State University, Los Angeles. A researcher in intercultural business communications, Dr. Beamer has lived in China and has conducted intercultural seminars for the Canadian government.