The Sunday Six: Ways To Offend The Locals in Asia
1: Point Your Feet At Someone
In Thailand, Laos, and much of mainland South-East Asia, feet are considered “low” and dirty. So you need to remove your shoes to enter a house (and put them on again when you leave, rather than dirtying the next house you visit with your grubby feet). And never, ever point your feet at anyone… (Here’s more on the finer points of feet etiquette in Thailand.)
2: Have The Wrong Tattoo in the Wrong Place
Like Hindu/Buddhist symbols? Be careful where you tattoo them if you’re planning on visiting places where people practise Hinduism. That funky little Om tat on your ankle can cause immense offence to observant Hindus: it’s as offensive as tattooing it on your butt, and a hell of a lot more visible. Cover it up, or feel the wrath of villagers.
3: Pat A Child (Or Anyone Else) On The Head
Remember the bit in Gran Torino where Clint Eastwood’s character pats the little Hmong child on the head and the entire room goes silent but for a volley of abuse from grandma? Touching someone on the head is taboo in many South-East Asian cultures, most obviously in Thailand and Laos. Don’t do it. To children or to adults.
4: Beckon with an Upturned Hand
In Bali, and many other parts of Indonesia, the classic European sign for beckoning – with the upturned palm — is offensive. Beckon with palm downwards, not upwards.
5: Take Offence at Spitting, Swastikas or Staring
In Hindu cultures within Asia, the ancient symbol of the Swastika remains a sign of blessing, untouched by the use the Nazis made of it. Anywhere where folk chew betel, and plenty of places where they don’t, spitting is, well, just part of life. As is staring. In most small towns and villages in Asia, you can expect a curious audience. (Not to mention the odd bit of mobile phone photography.
6: Refuse to Answer a Personal Question
“Where is your husband?” “How old are you?” “Why don’t you have a husband?” All of these are perfectly acceptable gambits within the first couple of minutes of a conversation all over Asia. Refusing to answer them, or ducking the question, presents as rude and unfriendly.
What cultural challenges have you faced in your travels? And what’s the worst thing you’ve done to cause offence? Drop me a comment and let me know.
Thank you!! No matter how many times I tell him, my boyfriend will not stop patting everyone on the head all over SE Asia – even adults! I just showed him this. Let’s all hope it sinks in. (I have my doubts.)
You are joking, aren’t you, Evi? Oh god, I have a horrible feeling that you’re not…
Yep… Get ready for the personal questions! I don’t really mind, I have no secrets and you really get to know other people. You can also say almost anything, but in Europe you can’t. It’s like it’s easier to offend someone in Europe than in Asia 🙂
I don’t mind the personal questions, either. Though because I’m a single parent I tend to use shortcuts sometimes. “Where is your husband?” I answer with reference to Z’s father, because I don’t necessarily want to go into the whole thing for the next 30 minutes. Which used to piss Z off but he now appreciates why I do it.
I read somewhere in the last week that Thailand was going to try limit the types of tattoos foreigners were going to be able to get because using the Buddha symbols were insensitive.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2011/06/02/thailand_seeks_to_ban_tourists_religious_tattoos/
Thanks for the link. That doesn’t surprise me, at all.
Cultural faux pas are easy to commit even if you try dealt hard to be a reasonable person. I was at a big ceremony at one of the important temples in Bali and a I tripped over someone and crashed into box that the preist sits in. I was mortified, but I just told
myself that the locals were saying “stupid bule” and I felt Ok.
That’s a literal faux pas, rather than a cultural one, I guess, Adam… The Balinese will have been inscrutably pissing themselves. No fear there.
I didn’t know about the tattoo one!
We were on a train in Thailand and I had hopped up to the top bunk and let my feet hang over the edge of the ladder. The man on the bunk underneath gave me a scolding! It goes beyond pointing your feet and extends to wear your feet are in relation to those around you.
Yes! And the whole dirty feet on trains thing. It is a minefield…
and the thing is, it’s so different around the world. one of my favorite etiquette books is “going dutch in beijing” – a brilliant read.
thanks for these great tips!
I’ll have to look it up — thanks for the tip. Yes, it’s like belching being polite in some Arabic cultures, and the whole etiquette around eating with one’s fingers (always the right hand, of course).
You have to have pretty thick skin to get past the personal questions thing! Being told that you are far too old to marry and have children when you are 25 can get irritating, as can the women who invite you into their clothes shops by yelling “We have BIG BIG size” at you from across the street (I was a UK size 6/US size 4 at the time!!).
In Japan I was told that it is extremely rude to blow your nose in public, which is pretty tough to deal with when you have a cold and streaming nose!!
Ooh, god, yes, the nose blowing thing. And, don’t get me started on the weight. I had a very traumatic “trying-on” session in Cambodia where, as a UK 10-12, US 8, nothing, but nothing, would go over my breasts and down to my hips, even the XXXL T-shirts. Not helped by having Z in tow…
Oh yes #6 “where you go” “what you do” “how much you pay” “how much you make” “why you too fat”
Yes! I’d forgotten the “where you go, how much you pay” schtick. Would “why you too fat” be a popular one in Vietnam, by any chance? (We have yet to visit China. But I guess you get that a lot there too, right?)
great tips and great style as always…:)
#4 applies to Thailand also. SPITTING! Even where betel leaf isn’t chewed, e.g. Beijing, China…women and men spit freely (dry reach). It’s hard to keep your breakfast down when sharing the dining table with a guy slirping, burping and sucking back nazel fluid.
I smiled at signs in a Borneo eatery, asking customers not to spit or throw food on the floor!
The worst thing I’ve done is ask our door guy, ‘what is his mother’s name?’ while pointing at a soi dog…he’s forgiven me.
I keep getting the INdonesian for pork and beef muddled up (sapi and babi). Which is fine in most contexts. Just not in a Halal restaurant…
And, yeah, the big old slurp, snot, spit thing grosses me out. Why it should gross me out more than someone blowing their nose loudly into a hanky, I know not. Because it’s the preceding slurp, not the actual spit on the floor, that really gets me about it.
*nazal*…I’m sure you knew what I meant 😉
Well I guess I better start thinking of answers to these questions. I am heading to Thailand in 2 weeks 6 days (but whose counting) with a male friend of mine. So how do I tell them I am not married (now), his only a friend and I am fat because of my three children? And to remember all the do’s and do not’s is going to confuse this blonde Aussie (which isn’t hard). Just reading your description of slurpy noises and spitting is making me dry reach. I have no hope…
Ummm… Are your three children going to be with you? Or are they grown up? Because being a mother (gasp!) away from three young children with a platonic male friend who is not their father is going to be pretty much incomprehensible. I’d just order the separate bedrooms and see what gives…
I just moved to Japan as an English teacher and definitely ran into some of these issues! The first time I was becokened with the palm facing down I thought I was being told to go away! Also, I am asked on a regular basis why I am not married. I have even been told “you are 23, soon you will be like old Christmas cake and thrown out!”
We were doing shopping talk in Chinese class earlier this week. And the expression “Is he as fat as you or less fat?” came up. And, no, you don’t use a euphemism. You are fat. Or not fat. It’s, umm, just a statement.
I actually quite like the directness, in some ways, compared to the passive-aggressive way we conduct such interrogations in British English. In other ways I don’t like it, because, of course, you cannot escape and hide behind politeness.
In Japan the tattoo thing goes even further. Because of the traditional tattooing of Yakuza members most public baths will deny entry to someone who’s been inked. That’s a real shame as you’d hate to miss out on some of the hot springs and relaxing bath houses.
OF COURSE! Thank you, Chris!
I live in China for school and have certainly experienced most of these. I live in the western side of Shanghai, so the fact that I am non-Asian has been an… adventure. I’ve had my picture taken literally countless times and videos taken of me just talking on the subway. I’ve been asked to hold a woman’s baby while she filmed me, when I travelled up to Beijing.
And don’t get me started on the spitting. The sound of mucus hitting the pavement is every other sound in Shanghai.
Yes, the mobile phone photography thing takes a while to get used to. We weren’t that bothered by the spitting in China, weirdly. Probably because I’d expected it to be so much worse than it is — in the old days, apparently, the buses used to be a centimetre deep in mucus during the winter.