Shi zhuo and the feast
What this section holds
In Chaoshan, asking guests to eat is called shi zhuo, and the side that lays the feast is zuo zhuo. What this section collects is the rule of the table: how the tables are set, how the seats are ranked, in what stages the dishes come, how the numbers are settled, and what differs across five kinds of occasion. The detail of seating, serving and the count of dishes is in shi zhuo, the banquet rites; the words ba xian zhuo, duan cai wei and xiang chu have a page each.
Five kinds of occasion
- Wedding feasts: the most tables, with the relatives of the bride’s and groom’s sides seated apart and the senior generations at the inner tables. There is a layer beyond the feast — the sisters’ table and the shared dumplings on the day the bride comes in are not the same thing as the feast, see Chaoshan traditional marriage rites.
- Birthday feasts: the bowing first, the table after. Only once the bowing in the hall is done do people sit; the first dish is usually the birthday noodles, and the peach buns stand in the hall and are not counted as a dish.
- Funeral feasts: plain dishes, no sweet and no red, no urging to drink, and a seating and a mood of their own.
- Gods’ birthdays and processions: the offering table first, the feast after. The chickens and cakes that have been set before the gods are taken down and served, and this meal is given only once the gods have been honoured.
- Full month, moving into a house, thanking a teacher: few tables, a fixed list of dishes, and what matters is that the occasion is held at all.
One feast from beginning to end
Before the day is fixed, two things are settled: the number of tables and the number of dishes. The tables are counted by circle of kin — so many for the clan, so many for the wife’s side, so many for friends — and the household has that list in mind first; the dishes follow the tables and the means, and both are given to the cook together, with the shopping done to the count.
Cooks are asked in two ways: in the villages a xiang chu, a country cook, takes the job by the occasion, brings his helpers and his pots and stove to the house, and comes the day before to look at the ground and fix where the stove goes; in town a restaurant is asked and the courses run off a set menu. Tables, benches, bowls and plates are hired from someone else and set out the day before.
On the day the first thing is the fire. The shopping is finished the day before and the fire is lit before dawn, with one man on the cutting, one on the braising, one on the steaming, one on the stewing; the guests arrive one by one and are greeted at the door, given a cigarette and their gift recorded, then shown to a seat at the square table.
When the feast breaks up the household sees people to the door and the leftovers are shared out among the clan and the neighbours to take away; a Chaoshan household does not keep them for itself.
Three things to watch
First the seating: who takes the head of the table is the map of relations for that feast — whether the head seat goes to the most senior, or to the one who came furthest, or to the closest, shows at a glance whose favour the household is repaying. Second the count of dishes: even is the rule, for good things coming in pairs, and the number follows the occasion and the means. Third the order of serving: the first and last have their fixed forms, and in between it moves through cold dishes, stir-fries, the large dishes and the sweet soup; once the order goes wrong, face is lost.
Two lines, town and country
Within one county there are two ways. In town a restaurant is asked: round tables, set menus, a fixed number of courses. In the village a country cook is asked: square tables, food bought to the count, the old arrangement kept. Where the two meet in one feast — townspeople going back to the village to hold a table — the compromise is usual: round tables, but the seating ranked as before, so that the place by the door for handing in dishes fades.
Entries in this section
- Shi zhuo, the banquet rites: seating, the order of serving, and the count of dishes
- shi zhuo: the side the guests eat at
- zuo zhuo: the side that lays the feast, its shopping and its menu
- ba xian zhuo: the square table and its seating
- duan cai wei: the place at the lower end, by the door
- xiang chu: the cook who comes to the house and lights the fire
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Last revised: 14 November 2026