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Sunday, January 15, 2017
Front Page
Choice for E.P.A. a Frequent Ally of the Regulated
For Cubans, an Expulsion Long Delayed
Finding His Voice on Race
After ‘Downton, Affluent Chinese Seek Butlers
For Early Jersey Boys’ Investors, Oh, What a Run
Women Who Voted for Donald Trump, in Their Own Words
International
The New York Eines
International
Che New York Cimes
“What they would like to say to their friends is, ‘Look, I have a butler, an English-style butler in my home, to show how wealthy they are,” said Neal Yeh, a Chinese-born Briton living in Beijing, who for over a decade has helped train and find jobs for butlers.
“The country now with the biggest trend in butlers is China,” said Mr. Yeh, whose English accent would be at home on “Downton Abbey,” the television series about a blue blood family in England, which was avidly watched in China. “I dare say I have
played a part in starting this trend.”
Butler training schools and agencies have been doing business in China for more than a decade, but the number of recruits has grown sharply in recent years, according to those in the business. Most are Chinese and many are women. The International Butler Academy China opened in 2014 here in Chengdu, a haze-covered city in southwest China, and offers a six-week boot camp on dinner service, managing homes and other minutiae of high living.
“The Chinese are vacationing more now than ever in history, and so they’re being exposed to the West more and more,” said Christopher Noble, an American trainer at the academy who previously ran bars in Cleveland. “But Chinese people see that, experience top-class personal service abroad, and they want to experience it here.”
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A student uses a ruler to set the cutlery on the table A boom in butler service might seem for a formal dinner. Gilles Sabrié for The New York
incongruous as President Xi Jinping
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