Mail on Sunday: “The woman who wants to cure China of its bad manners by importing a touch of British class
It is still acceptable behaviour in China to spit on the street, blow your nose in your hand, slurp your soup and unashamedly push ahead in a queue.
Hong Kong born Sara Jane Ho was brought up in London and has imported British manners to Beijing with her school of etiquette. Ms Ho charges up to £10,000 to improve manners in China’s high society.
They buy more Bentleys than the British, fill their luxury homes with more Swarovski crystal than the Swiss, and spend more on Louis Vuitton and Versace than the French or the Italians. But one precious commodity has eluded the Chinese in their extraordinary rise from peasant nation to superpower: good manners.
Officials are so exasperated by the tendency to spit, shout, slurp and push in at queues that they have taken to pleading and cajoling. It is not long since Shanghai launched a ‘Seven Nos’ campaign: no spitting, no littering, no vandalism, no damaging greenery, no jaywalking, no smoking in public places and no swearing. It was a dismal failure.
During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a squad of 1,500 supervisors was sent out to discourage fighting at bus stops. Paper bags were handed out by volunteers in uniforms emblazoned with the Chinese characters for mucus.
But when a Beijing university set up a ‘civic index’ to calculate the level of politeness, researchers concluded glumly that the city was still a long way off international norms and the index was quietly dropped.
Now, however, a school of etiquette is about to open in Beijing with classes based on the deportment of the British aristocracy – and the decorous behaviour of the Duchess of Cambridge.
Sara Jane Ho, a Hong Kong businesswoman who grew up in London, is offering lessons in being classy to an exclusive clientele for an appropriately princely sum: courses at her Institute Sarita, based in the five-star Park Hyatt Hotel in Beijing, cost from £2,000 to £10,000.
Dozens of society wives have signed up for lectures on how to use a knife and fork properly, how to peel a piece of fruit, how to greet a prospective mother-in-law, how to walk in heels and how to eat soup without slurping. High-powered bosses of Chinese state-owned companies are also hiring Sara Jane for lessons on how to conduct themselves at business meetings in Europe and America.
She says a subtle pro-British snobbery is driving the desire of wealthy Chinese to improve themselves socially: ‘There is an aura of mystery about European royalty that Chinese people can’t resist. Any aristocracy in China was wiped out, so the Chinese are fascinated by the idea of a royal dynasty that stretches back hundreds of years.’
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