Table sharing

Table sharing refers to sharing a table in a restaurant by customers or groups of customers who may not know each other.

Table sharing in Chinese culture

Table sharing
Chinese	搭枱
Transcriptions Yue: Cantonese Jyutping daap3 toi2

Table sharing is a practice that is common in old-style yum cha Chinese restaurants, dai pai dongs and cha chaan tengs in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and parts of China. By practicing table sharing, two (or more) groups of customers who may not know each other sit together around a table in the restaurant, and are able to get a table faster than waiting for the first group to finish.

Today, tables are also often shared at Western-style food courts, as these are very popular and fill up quickly.

(A metaphorical allusion to table-sharing in Chinese restaurants is the use of the term Chinese restaurant process to refer to any of certain random processes in probability theory.)

Table sharing in other cultures

Table sharing is also practiced in Germany, as well as in Japan.