It's one of the oldest civilizations on earth—and one of the most diverse, too. Here's how to keep your cool whether you're at a banquet or in a boardroom, and how to negotiate the wild ways of a society as keenly Confucian as it is capitalist

Maybe you picture China as a traditional Asian culture beholden to obscure rules of etiquette. Forget it. "There's a greater difference between Americans and Japanese than Americans and Chinese," says former Washington Post Beijing bureau chief John Pomfret, whose book Chinese Lessons traces the lives of five of his Nanjing University classmates from the 1980s to China's hyperkinetic present. Indeed, the Chinese are remarkably free of behavioral taboo, though beneath the easygoing attitude runs a century of upheavals—one of which, the Cultural Revolution, decreed that "being polite was counterrevolutionary," in the words of James McGregor, a Beijing-based consultant who wrote One Billion Customers, about business strategies in the country's New Economy. Then, of course, came a new, capitalist revolution and economic growth that left the country reeling, with few moral or cultural traditions to fall back on. One traveler calls today's China "the most individualistic society I have ever seen, with zero sense of community or volunteerism." But considering what they've been through, you have to cut them some slack. If you can (and you stick to the rules they do have), you might find you've got a lot in common with the inhabitants of that large, prosperous country on the other side of the world.

Dining

A country that's only recently opened its doors, China is a nation of diners out. The most common and traditional form of feasting is the storied banquet—less formal than in decades past but still hewing to some basic rules you'd best be acquainted with. It may just mean the difference between an awkward meal with strangers and the launch pad for a new venture.

PART I: Rules of the Banquet

The host will always take a central seat opposite the door, and his place setting will usually be adorned with a specially folded napkin, perhaps in the shape of a tall cone.

The secondary host (as at a business dinner with clear hierarchies) usually sits opposite the main host or in an analogous place at another table.

Guests are arrayed, sometimes by rank, to the right of the host, with interpreters interspersed as needed. Reporter James Traub once wrote a piece revolving around his misunderstanding of this basic rule. He was offended when the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations refused to sit facing him, only later realizing that negotiators sit side by side.

Dishes are almost always ordered communally and shared. In formal situations, the food will generally have been ordered in advance.

Often, food will be placed on your plate by solicitous hosts, using either a larger pair of communal chopsticks or the fat ends of their own chopsticks. If you don't like what they've given you, just move it around on your plate.

Toasts are usually given on every sip of alcohol—first by the principal host, then by the principal guest, and down the line of rank.