Here are some examples of the consequences of these differences:

1) Handling and communicating problems. In the Chinese classroom after the teacher is done making a point or teaching a lesson he or she will ask are there any questions. No hand is ever raised. Why you might ask? Well first it would be a loss of face for any student to admit to not understanding or needing clarification. The student would be afraid that the teacher and students would view him/her as an idiot. Secondly, the student wouldn’t ever discuss a point or offer their own view since that would offend the teacher’s pride making him/her lose face and risk possible revenge on your report card. Can you see how this might present a problem in business? You or one of your management staff go to great pains to communicate a critical issue or some company policy. Now the speaker asks for any questions or are all points clear…Wrong! Never do that or ask that because you’ll never get a response. Probably the ones that understood the lease will give you a nice smile when you look at them. We’ll get to the significance of smiling later though. What needs to be done in this scenario is to go over the key points by having the staff in attendance explaining to you in their words what you said. This way it’ll become apparent who understood what and where there needs to be additional explanation for clarity’s sake. So due to the sensitivity and potential for embarrassment, don’t expect much transparency or self-initiated questions. I mentioned the smiling before. Smiling in western culture is usually from a feeling of satisfaction or comfort, however in Chinese society it is often a mask that is worn when the wearer is feeling awkward.Like when they are clueless about what you are asking due to language or cultural barriers. In western culture our proverb states-”the squeaky wheel gets the grease” in Chinese culture their equivalent proverb states-”the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” From these 2 proverbs focusing on the same situation you can clearly observe that western society is saying that if you need some help speak up while Chinese society is saying keep your mouth shut or else! These 2 meanings are virtually opposite! Are you starting to get the picture here?

Here is a personal example of this kind of cultural impact on the thought processes of Chinese people. I was working in an American-owned factory in Taiwan. The department I was involved with managing had a serious back-order problem on a series of hardware accessories. When I did some investigating I found that there was no capacity or production problem within our factory as had been suspected. In fact the problem was due to vendor requesting certain order quantities for plating the metal parts. When I asked the colleague responsible for coordinating our parts with plater if he ever considered coordinating with the vendor what numbers he’d need and batching orders he gave me a puzzled look. I explained to him that this would enable us to meet our order obligations to our home company but require us to carry a little extra inventory on hand. I got the back order problem which had been accruing for the better part of a year straightened out in 2 months. Why did my colleague not think of this or if he did, not act on it? Well I can only surmise here, but I’d venture to say that he and many Chinese people have adapted to not thinking unless they have to. remember what the teacher would do if you raised question or comment? Similarly, many Chinese come to feel that thinking is both tiring and potentially dangerous. The scolding one will get for being “dense” is milder than one will get for being “too clever.”

I was planning to release these posts as one e-book. What I decided to do is post each chapter as a blog post here and at the end I’ll publish as an e-book. Please feel free to share this with your business friends that are doing stuff here in China or would like to talk to someone here that has been doing business here for a long time  and can help them.

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Introduction

I’m writing this with the hope to enlighten and share acquired information and insights from my over 20 years of living in Taiwan and China. Mileage will vary accordingly for each reader!

I grew up in New York City so I had contact with Chinese people from when I can remember. Many of these people were really Chinese in America as opposed to Chinese-Americans (which many of their children were or later became). It was very obvious to me that Chinese culture was very different than Western culture and became a point of fascination for me. I also loved the food so that didn’t hurt either. Many years later I got into this much more deeply by studying the language, culture and history at the University of Arizona. It was quite fascinating and some of the examples of their history and culture opened windows which I gazed through with great interest. One of these was “2-legged mutton.” My professor taught us that this was the euphemism they used in the capital during the Sung Dynasty. There was a great famine and many died from starvation. Meat was so scarce that some vendors began selling the meat of the deceased, hence “2-legged mutton.” While it was only a point of curiosity and fascination then, I feel there are 2 key points that can be understood in light of my now 30 year exposure to Chinese society:a)they are extremely practical in many ways rarely letting feelings or romantic ideals get in the way; b) they are masters of euphemism.

The former no doubt due to their many thousands of years of having the most populous and crowded country, one which was rife with competition for food especially as peasants farming rich landlords land with little or no benefit, and the latter due to their sensitivity about face and the resulting indirectness when talking about sensitive issues and wanting to put even disturbing truths into the best light possible. What these 2 examples indicate is that while being people just like any in Holland, Europe or Holland,Michigan they have a different culture and assimilate and share information in a slightly different fashion. Early on in my Taiwan experience I had a problem with my eye,what appeared to be an infection. Several different friends enthusiastically gave me information on the best eye doctor in Taipei. All of them were different but I digress. I went to one of the best eye doctors office and was shocked. I was in a room full of people that ll pretty much stared at me. In fairness this was 1988 and most of them had probably never seen a foreigner(westerner) up close and personal. I waited a while and was summoned into the doctor’s office. I was shocked to behold that there were at least a dozen patients in there who (are you ready for this/) all stared at me. The doctor began his examination and then stopped and looked at em and said,”you know you could go blind from this.” When I smiled at his obvious exaggeration he admonished me saying that he was serious. As you can imagine I was more than slightly aghast at his bizarre bedside manners. The piece de resistance was when I got numerous little paper parcels of medicine each containing differently colored and shaped pills with every color of the rainbow. The kicker was the one round green one stamped “New Drug.” I of course instantly thought of the Huey Lewis song while feeling a little nervous.

So what are some of the challenges in setting up a Greater China presence,whether it be factory, branch office etc., or just doing business in China with locally based suppliers/customers? Isn’t it enough to let my hair down at the karaoke/KTV and go for it over a few bars of “The Green Green Grass of Home”? Well as you can probably guess by this point I’m inferring the whole daunting issue of communication. Yes the process between 2 people where they attempt to successfully share ideas and information between each other. Communication is no easy feat or safe bet even with people from the same culture, age bracket, similar life experiences, language,etc. Now add on different culture life experiences, priorities, level in the socio-economic structure and language and you can see the potential for disaster at the worst or for headache at the very least. An interesting note about language. One of my friends pointed out to me after probably better than a dozen years of living here in Taiwan, that I had a good grasp of language.  I need to explain-the common expression for language is 語言 (Pronounced-yuyan) but my friend said to me that my 語文 (Pronounced-yuwen) was very good. You are probably wondering what is the difference? The first more commonly used one just means language in general. The second one means language with a deep knowledge of it’s related culture and relevance. My point here is that English and Chinese as language and cultures are about as opposite as can be and offer little common ground in many areas.

I was planning to release these posts as one e-book. What I decided to do is post each chapter as a blog post here and at the end I’ll publish as an e-book. Please feel free to share this with your business friends that re doing stuff here in China or would like to talk to someone here that has been and can help them.

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