Table Manners

This is a picture of my girlfriend finishing off her bowl of rice. It's funny how in the Chinese, and indeed most of the east Asian cultures, it is seen as bad manners to leave your plate/bowl on the table and to bring your food all the way up to your mouth, whereas in the West, the complete opposite is true. For example, if we were to see someone in a half decent restaurant lifting their bowl of soup up to their mouths and drinking it directly from the bowl, we would probably think they were rude and had no manners. But the same would be true in a Chinese restaurant if someone was using their spoon to bring the soup all the way up to their mouths!