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Andrea Lo

I have always felt confused by early arrivals at dinner parties.
My family always show up hours before the meal is supposed to start. When I joined my mum at dinner parties hosted by a close friend, we were encouraged to arrive early.
Any guests who enter my home before the appointed hour, however, will find me in a state of barely concealed hysteria – sauce still reducing, candles unlit, playlist half-finished. You’ll be handed whatever wine I panic-bought at 7-Eleven and deposited on my sofa with the kind of fixed smile that says, “Please don’t look in the bedroom where I’ve thrown everything.”
But here’s the thing: when it comes to guest etiquette in Hong Kong, we’re all operating under different rules and nobody wants to admit they’re confused.

Take my friend’s Lunar New Year family gathering at their village house in the New Territories. Lunch was to be served at around 2pm, and we showed up at 12.30pm to find the aunties already three rounds deep into mahjong, someone’s cousin eyeing the karaoke machine with intent and their dogs running circuits around everyone’s ankles. Lunch didn’t materialise until 2.30pm. This wasn’t poor planning – this was the plan. The gambling, terrible singing and gradual accumulation of relatives armed with dish after dish meant arriving at 2pm would have been missing half the fun.
Meanwhile, at a carefully orchestrated cocktail party, arrive early and watch the entire timeline collapse – the bartender hasn’t arrived, the host is still trying to figure out the Bluetooth speaker and those “quick-assembly” canapés are proving neither quick nor assembleable.
The gift situation is equally puzzling. You must always bring something – this is non-negotiable – but what? Wine works for most occasions, unless your host is a wine snob, in which case your HK$200 bottle will be quietly relocated to the kitchen for “cooking”. Fruit baskets scream “visiting someone in hospital”.
Their kids are probably having a meltdown, and they want you gone as much as you want to leave

If there are small children and specific occasions involved, such as the child’s birthday, lai see is expected, but the amount requires PhD-level calculations based on your relationship, the child’s age and current market conditions.
Then there’s the shoes-off minefield. In Hong Kong, the default is shoes off, always, unless explicitly told otherwise. But “explicitly” is relative. “No need to take them off” could mean anything from “genuinely keep them on” to “I’m being polite, but please, take them off, I just mopped”. The safest bet? Take them off anyway and let them insist three times if they really mean it. Though if they produce disposable hotel slippers from 2018, you’ll know exactly where you stand in the guest hierarchy.
Kitchen politics deserve their own treaty. Apart from Lunar New Year gatherings, where communal dumpling-folding is expected, do we stay out of the kitchen? Your offer to help wash dishes will trigger a complex dance – hosts will refuse vehemently while secretly judging whether you’re sincere, given the number of passive-aggressive social media posts about guests who “just sit there while I clean up”. The safest move? Clear your own plate to the kitchen and retreat. The exception: if you’re under 30 and at an auntie’s house, you will be conscripted into service whether you offer or not.

Phone etiquette has evolved dramatically. Some years ago, I’d read that you shouldn’t ask a host for their Wi-fi login details. Now, hosts pre-emptively share their Wi-fi passwords on decorative cards next to the orchids. Speaking of phones, not documenting your host’s cooking on social media has become tantamount to saying the food was mediocre. But there’s a line; three photos maximum before you eat, and no requests for “just one more angle” while everyone’s food goes cold.
The goodbye ritual is perhaps the most culturally specific minefield of all. Ghosting is social suicide if you’re at someone’s home. But the 45-minute traditional Cantonese departure ceremony – a production involving multiple false starts, forgotten items and lift summons – can trap you indefinitely. I’ve seen people announce their departure at 9pm and still be discussing the relative merits of different wet markets at 10.15pm. The abbreviated version, for hosts with young children: one announcement, one round of thanks, swift execution. Parents understand. Their kids are probably having a meltdown, and they want you gone as much as you want to leave.

What nobody tells you is that these rules shift depending on endless variables: generation, location, level of Westernisation and whether Mercury is retrograding. What works at your colleague’s wine tasting crashes and burns at your mother-in-law’s hotpot dinner. The confident friend who navigates cocktail parties with ease becomes paralysed with uncertainty at a traditional banquet. It makes sense, given we’re a city that thrives on contradictions – we queue politely for the MTR then shove our way onto the train, worship punctuality but run on “Hong Kong time” and insist guests don’t bring anything while secretly keeping score of who brought what. As long as you come with decent wine and praise the food excessively, most sins are forgiven.
The only real faux pas? Not playing along with the beautiful, chaotic theatre of it all.


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Culture

In Hong Kong, dinner party etiquette is less about following rules and more about guessing which version of the rules your host subscribes to


In Hong Kong, dinner party etiquette is less about following rules and more about guessing which version of the rules your host subscribes to.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}In Hong Kong, dinner party etiquette is less about following rules and more about guessing which version of the rules your host subscribes to

In Hong Kong, dinner party etiquette is less about following rules and more about guessing which version of the rules your host subscribes to