chinese people have never ever bowed to each other. in fact, for saluting someone, in old china, chinese people do an action which is called “作揖” in english, it means "make a bow with hands folded in front" however, it totally has not a close relation with "bow" because normally, 作揖 just need a very very slight bow. u can even dont make any bow---just make ur hands folded in front. for some very very official cases, to 作揖, u need a bow. that's all. 作揖 has become rare today, no matter in mainland of china. hong-kong . tai wan etc... that's because the foreign culture has given a huge influence to china. before the Cultural Revolution, chinese has changed a lot. after the Cultural Revolution, chinese made "shake hands" or "say hello to each other" to replace 作揖. however, before the Cultural Revolution, 作揖 has become more and more rare. in Taiwan, the Cultural Revolution has never happened but they still lost 作揖. the Cultural Revolution is an extreme action. at that time, the chinese leader found a fact which is that "EVERYTHING in life is changing according to foreign countries, if we cant stop this, well, let's make this process faster". if u can't feel clearly what I have said, go to china and feel what they are doing now. today, china is doing what the foreign countries have done before. and china is doing faster than the foreign countries..... why can china do faster? because china has thrown almost everything old-----good things and bad things.....china lost everything old, so nothing can limit it....chinese people has no limit on everywhere including on morality and china is totally a very fresh country even it has a long and rich history........why did the chinese leaders do this? because they decided to refresh china and create a new country.

Ditto.

as a chinese, I like something old, such as 作揖 etc. however, I have to learn english but english people dont need to learn chinese. today, what we wear, what I eat, what I watch, what I hear, what I feel, everything comes from western countries. I know I have lots of things but western countries dont need to learn my things...... in one word, china has no capacity to make the world to learn chinese. well, so I decided to learn from them, become one of them, "fuck" them......after this, they have to learn from me~~~~~~ OK, this is what china has been doing since 1949. one more word: what china has lost is not 作揖, traditional character, etc. what china has lost is culture. what is culture. 作揖, traditional character all of these are just some phenomenons. the question is why chinese use character instead of ABC. the reason is "culture" culture is a kind of way of thinking------the standard of beauty, the standard of agly, when we meet praise, what we do etc. every kind of way of thinking of chinese people including people in hong-kong and in taiwan has totally changed.... so no matter how u think of this world, this is true.....

I have no idea why this question gets so many negative points. It seems to me a perfectly legitimate cultural question to ask.