Letter From Shanghai: Endangered Species? Not Tonight, Thank You

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For China's entrepreneurial élite, the new civility push is also a business opportunity. Private etiquette schools are proliferating to meet demand from yuppies who crave guidance on eating, dressing and working in an international environment. At Shanghai's June Yamada Academy, students pay $900 for a multiweek course during which they dine at a five-star hotel and learn the difference between a fish knife and a butter knife. Meanwhile, at a Shanghai etiquette workshop for HR managers, instructor Liu Wei plucks a man out of the crowd and castigates him for his multihued pink tie. "It's a well-known fact that President Clinton's good taste in ties won him many votes," says Liu.

Many Chinese etiquette instructors and authors of best-selling manners manuals are progeny of the high-class aesthetes Mao tried to eradicate. Professor Li of the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade is the descendant of a cotton tycoon, and grew up eating Western fare like rye bread and cheese for breakfast. His brother, a doctor, was killed during the Cultural Revolution. The fact that Li leads classes on Western etiquette says something about how far China has come since the days of Mao, but it is also a reminder of the gaps that still exist between China and the developed world. "It's only people like us who can teach good manners," says Li. "Nobody else knows anything."