The class of fine dining (2)

Footing the bill

He and his six friends are asking three teachers to join them for the evening and the students will split the bill. "It won't cost much for each of us. And our parents will foot the bill anyway."

Wang's parents, who are both executives at multinational companies in Shanghai, are supportive of their son's idea to treat his teachers to a celebratory dinner. "A meal or a gift hardly expresses enough gratitude for the teachers' hard work. But we figure it will be a sincere gesture from the parents," they said.

Offering teachers meals or gifts is not uncommon in China today. Stories of Chinese students and their parents treating teachers to lavish banquets, fancy gifts and even hongbao (a red envelope containing cash) have been making headlines in Chinese newspapers for several years.

According to a 2012 Shanghai Business Daily report, six domestic group purchasing websites offering teacher appreciation banquets in Shanghai garnered 1,700 bookings worth more than 800,000 yuan in June last year alone.

Other Chinese cities also reported a thriving business during the annual graduation season when students and their parents flock to local restaurants to book teacher appreciation banquets which can cost up to thousands of yuan a table.

Although traditional Chinese culture has always put great emphasis on students showing respect and gratitude to their teachers in various ways, it has not been until recently that teacher appreciation banquets began to grow in popularity.

"With the rapid economic development of China and the growing spending power of Chinese people over the past decade, treating teachers to expensive meals or gifts has become a trend for many Chinese students and their parents," Chen Guoqiang, a social researcher and a professor of the School of Journalism at Shanghai University of Sport told the Global Times.

Chen thinks that the teacher appreciation banquet serves three purposes. "The dinner's primary function is for the students and their parents to display their gratitude and respect to the teachers. It's also a polite and sophisticated way to inform a teacher of the achievement that his or her student has made under the teacher's care and guidance. Finally it can also be regarded as a proper farewell dinner - to bid goodbye to a student's early school life and move on to the next chapter of his or her life."

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