Image Collective Communication offers a variety of high-end lifestyle courses targeted at China's high net worth individuals, including wine tasting and table manners. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Having style and sophistication is the name of the game in China's wealthy circles these days as a growing number of people are signing up for etiquette courses as a means of bridging cultural differences and embracing Western values.

Han Bing, a 35-year-old businesswoman who runs a company promoting luxury brands, is just one of many who believe that wealthy Chinese people still have much to learn when it comes to exuding class and elegance in social settings.

"Some Chinese people often leave the impression that they are wealthy but not noble... Taking the etiquette courses helps a lot," said Han, who has lived in Europe for five years and took courses by Image Collective Communication, a company that works with an English brand to offer etiquette courses in China.

Han has also enrolled her seven-year-old daughter in etiquette courses, saying that it is important the latter grows up knowing how to be well-mannered as that would make it easier when it comes to expanding her social network in the future.

Etiquette school

This trend comes as no surprise to Sara Jane Ho, the founder of China's first etiquette school Institute Sarita, who foresaw it as early as 2012. The 29-year-old Harvard Business School graduate opened the school in Beijing after attending a two-month intensive course at Institut Villa Pierrefeu, the last and most famed of Switzerland's traditional finishing school.

"I am a multicultural person with diverse interests, hobbies and social circles. Institute Sarita is a platform for similar-minded women to pursue a meaningful and tasteful international lifestyle," said Ho of her motivations behind setting up the school.