“We used to think that ordering more dishes when treating guests gave us face. Now the waiters remind us to order moderately, and that is good. Now we take pride in a clean plate.” A diner named Yan said this in a Beijing restaurant in August 2020, during the Clean Plate campaign against food waste.
A People’s Daily commentary that September described the habit. Some people are frugal at other times, it said, but when they host, “even three or five people order a whole big table.” In some places, if the guests eat every dish, “the host feels he has no face.” Its headline gave the answer. Wasting food “is not having face, but losing face.”