Then & Now | Hong Kong’s history of gifts and bribes, from waiter’s tip to comprador’s commission

How did Hong Kong’s wide­spread tipping culture first arise?

Virtually every restaurant now expects something to be left behind with the settled bill – whatever the service may have been like. In some places, serving staff request a tip. Service charges are routinely added to the bill in certain establishments, but whether this “gratuity”, ostensibly for staff, eventually reaches them is at the manage­ment’s discretion.

Some old stagers aver that restaurant tipping in Asia is an American disease that spread, like many other consumerist habits, as part of the post-war world’s cultural cocacola-isation. But as with most generalisations, this explanation only gives part of the picture.

For thousands of years, and across cultures, a fine line has existed between tip and bribe. Various terms have been used to describe the phenomenon – probably most commonly the Arabic-derived baksheesh, which spread through the Middle East into India and beyond. On the China coast, cumshaw was the usual term; this derived from the Hokkien kam-hsia, which means thank you. In Hong Kong, tip-see (a Pidgin English approximation of tip) became common parlance from the 19th century and remains in everyday use.

Whatever the name, the concept remains the same, one of a mutually agreed “gift” changing hands in order to get something done. In this sense, in Asia a tip was paid for services anticipated at some immediate or future point, rather than for services already rendered, as was usual in the West. From the late 19th century, the Indian Civil Service closely codified what was acceptable by way of an official gift, and the practice was followed in other British colonial territories. Anything other than fruit and flowers, or reason­able on-the-spot hospi­tality, had to be declined.