Never give a green hat to a Chinese businessman. Never give him a clock or a pair of scissors, either. Never wrap any gift in white or black.
At a Chinese banquet, never clean everything off your plate; always leave at least a morsel of food behind. Oh, and never, ever leave your chopsticks propped up in your rice bowl.
Doing business in China can be a minefield. Apart from wrestling with an unfamiliar language, culture and legal system, visiting Canadians also have to figure out how not to embarrass themselves by breaking the complex rules of Chinese etiquette.
Arriving in China with a case of jet lag, often under big pressure from home office to produce something, most visitors feel they simply don't have the time to master the abstruse customs of a foreign culture, on top of everything else.
Carla Kearns has some advice for them: Make time. Her Toronto Chinese-language school runs a thriving sideline teaching people how to avoid the little misunderstandings and slip-ups that can sour a business relationship before it starts. "It's like playing a new sport without knowing the rules," says Ms. Kearns, 36, a native of Burlington, Ont., who opened her school last summer after years of living in Taipei, Shanghai, Honolulu and San Francisco.
Consider the green hat. The phrase "wearing a green hat" in Chinese sounds like the word for cuckold, so a green hat on a Chinese man is said to mean that his wife is cheating on him. Not a good gift, then.
A clock is a symbol of time running out - in other words, impending death. The colours white and black are also associated with death, so better choose a different colour of wrapping paper. Scissors and knives symbolize the cutting of ties, not exactly the message to send if you are trying to forge ties with a business partner.
At a banquet, eating everything on your plate implies that your host didn't serve you enough food, a harsh insult. Chopsticks left in a rice bowls look like the sticks of incense that Chinese burn at family graves, another unpleasant reminder of death.
Ms. Kearns says a few hours spent learning simple dos and don'ts can save Canadian business people a lot of grief.
As well of running The Mandarin School, her language-training institute in downtown Toronto, she gives seminars and speeches.
She also offers one-on-one lessons on what she calls "cultural intelligence."
In China, she counsels clients, it's not just the nuts and bolts of the business deal that matter. "It's all about building relationships and saving face."
Learning a few words and phrases of Chinese helps. Chinese, she says, will be grateful and impressed that you bothered.
Mastering simple etiquette counts, too. Don't just take a person's business card and stuff it in your pocket. Receive it formally with two hands and study it with interest. It's a sign of respect.
Be prepared for the ritual of giving and receiving gifts. A book about Canada or a bottle of ice wine make nice gifts if you are going to China, for example.
"Chinese value ritual in business dealings," said Ms. Kearns.
The drug company Roche Canada hired her when it invited a group from its China arm to visit Toronto. After hearing her advice, it decided to put on a special greeting. Instead of sending a single person out to usher the arriving visitors into the office - the usual Canadian practice - the whole executive committee came down to the lobby to greet the delegation and introduce themselves. Afterward, there was a group picture.
Little things like that matter, says Ms. Kearns, but it's not just understanding manners that makes a difference when doing business with the Chinese. Understanding their attitudes is important, too.
Chinese business people, she says, have a very different idea about time. Canadian executives often travel to China, strike a deal and then expect to agree on an orderly timetable for making things happen.
Chinese generally don't work that way. Things happen when they happen, and Canadians have to learn not to fret when there is no agreed schedule of events.
They also have to learn how to tell when Chinese are saying No. Unlike bluff and open Canadians, Chinese don't like to give a direct negative answer, Ms. Kearns says. They might say "maybe" or "I'll think about it" instead. The answer is still No.
Ms. Kearns' client Guy Kieley learned the hard way about the perils of being too direct. A retired municipal administrator, he taught English in China, then started up a business recruiting other English teachers to work at schools there.
He talked to some partners in Shenzhen, the bustling industrial region next to Hong Kong, and they promised to drum up business for him. When he didn't hear from them for a while, he got frustrated. His e-mails were going unanswered. Nothing seemed to be happening.
So he wrote them a strong message saying they had to improve communication to make the partnership work. He hasn't heard from them since.
After taking Ms. Kearns' class, "I now realize that I've insulted them. I've made them lose face. I didn't understand the culture."
If he had to do things over, Mr. Kieley said, he would bring up the communication question more delicately and obliquely.
Another thing that Ms. Kearns teaches Canadians is the difference between socializing and doing business. In China, she says, there isn't one.
One businessman she knows went to China with high hopes. He spent his days talking deals and his evening in his hotel room doing desk work and communicating with his office back home. But nothing was working out in his deal-making and he wondered why.
The problem was that he was missing the after-hours socializing that is a key to building trust with Chinese business people.
"If you're not going out and doing the drinking, they don't feel they have a relationship with you and they won't tell you what's really going on," Ms. Kearns says.
The casual Chinese attitude about contracts is another sign of their reliance on relationship instead of written deals, she says.
"A contract for them is more a document for discussion. You sign the contract and then you talk."
Ms. Kearns says that for all the cultural pitfalls of doing business in China, business people should look on it not as a trial, but as a broadening experience.
As she puts it in a company handout: "Keep an open mind and an attitude of respect and willingness," she writes. After all, this is "an opportunity to learn about a new culture!"
Marcus Gee