1 . According to Jessica Hagy, author of How to Be Interesting, it’s not difficult to make yourself interesting at a dinner party.

    1    , if you’re out of your comfort zone or if you’re wandering into somebody’s house for the first time. So the main thing is just to show up and be adventurous, trying different foods and talking to strangers.

People love to talk about themselves. If you can start the conversation with a question other than “What do you do for a living?”, you’ll be able to get a lot more interesting conversation out of whomever it is you’re talking to.     2    , it can bring in “I have this old, broken-down vehicle” or “I rode the bus with these crazy people who were laughing at silly jokes in the back.” It just opens up conversation.

    3    ? If you can’t take their wine away, you should certainly try to take away their soapbox (讲台). If you’re the host, you can ask them to help you in the kitchen with something and just remove them from the situation.    4    .

And what about that other dinner-party killer: awkward silence? If you’re faced with an awkward silence at a dinner party, the only thing that always gets everyone talking again is to give the host a compliment (赞扬).     5    . Just quickly turn around and say, “This cake is extremely delicious and you have to tell me all about it.”

So being interesting at a dinner party isn’t that hard.