After having poked around the web about bows, and discovering lots of different conventions, I had decided that simple is good. 1) Face the other person. 2) Bring palms together. 3) Bow slightly. Look friendly by making eye contact and smiling during the bow.
February 29, 2020: I published my article about bowing in late 2015. In light of recent coronavirus (Covid-19) news, bowing to greet seems even more appropriate to consider. My Google news search results for "banning handshaking" shows concerns in workplaces and sports.
Stats, Maps, Graphs: "Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE"
Another tracking resource (Reuters): "Tracking the spread of the novel coronavirus"
In the last few years, people have more reasons to bow instead of shake hands, more so in greeting. Note the proliferation of hand sanitizers.
- Avoid physical contact that spreads illness-inducing germs.
A few months ago (at time of writing this article), I had a bout of digestive illness. Thankfully, the severity lasted only a few days. Web info indicated that contagiousness could last a few weeks. It seemed prudent and considerate to greet people with bows rather than handshakes. OTOH, I haven't quite resolved how to greet long-time friends with whom I've greeted more heartily since forever.
- Avoid awkwardness of the level of appropriate physical contact. Limp handshake? Strong handshake? Strong handshake accompanied by the other hand? Embrace? Kiss? Air kiss, which can resemble a gently blown kiss? Fist bump? Dap? (Eh, should skip the hands-clasp dap during these contagious times.)
- At events where people are eating, exchange greeting bows instead of engaging in food smears or needing to wipe hands first, which tend to be less than cleanly effective.
From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowing
Bows are the traditional greeting in East Asia, particularly in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and Vietnam. In Taiwan, China, and Vietnam, shaking hands or a slight bow have become more popular than a full bow.
Bows can be generally divided into three main types: informal, formal, and very formal. Informal bows are made at about a fifteen degree angle and more formal bows at about thirty degrees.
While researching bows, I've run across various differences among different nationalities. For example, the "wai" bowing in Thailand involves exhaustive social settings and societal hierarchies.
Some other images share similarities: the slight bow and palms together, some hands closer to the face than others.
Team sports, which I sporadically watch on TV, display additional contact, such as high fives and butt slaps, particularly communicating "good job", "congratulations", and "thanks". For more demonstrative celebratory contacts, actions include individual embrace and hoist, all-hands team hoists of the hero, and Gatorade keg hoist and dump onto coach.
For demonstrations of contact and no-contact greetings, watch "
20 Handshakes". (Glimpses of bows are at 0:54, 1:00, and 1:07.) Watch "
Professional Fist Bump" for an MD's advocacy of fist bump over handshake.
One charming gesture of thanks is Justin Yoon of Notre Dame bowing to two teammates when he successfully kicks a field goal. A video snippet of the ritual is in "
FB vs Navy Highlights". The field goal segment starts at 1:08, with the ball clearing the posts at 1:10 (?). The bows and narration occur from 1:13 to 1:15. (Whew! I hunted high and low on the web to find any video that I could cite!)
Alas, Notre Dame's season ended November 29 (2015)—no more field goal bows till the following season. During my searches for images and videos of post-field goal bows, I did manage to scrape up some articles that had such bow pictures. An article that includes a good Justin bow is "
Notebook: Kelly getting a kick out of Notre Dame freshman Justin Yoon".
Another article with a good bow picture is "
This Guy Plays Notre Dame Football: #19 Justin Yoon":
Justin is known for his bowing celebration with both the holder and the snapper.
More bow info from "
Confidence kick-starts Yoon's success":
The cheery freshman quickly built a rapport with his blockers, holder DeShone Kizer and long snapper Scott Daly. They came up with a celebration-Yoon, Daly and Kizer do a Sensei bow after every make.
Hmm, the Flickr
Sansei bow seems "deep", with the hands much closer to the face than in the Notre Dame pictures. I Googled "korean bow greeting" for images, thinking Justin"s Korean heritage might exhibit some such characteristics. Well, I see images of
lots of bowing, no greeter palm meets, some handshaking.
