A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the People's Republic of China
By Scott D. Seligman
When I first decided to give this book a try as my final book review book, I was a bit worried. My main concern was its publish date of 1999. I wondered: would the book be out of date with the many changes of the last nine years? However, I was pleasantly surprised by the book's timelessness. It focused on the cultural aspects of the way in which the Chinese conduct business, which hasn't changed much in the past nine years or the past 2,500 years as I learned in Seligman's first chapter.
The book is organized into several chapters covering everything from how to interact with the Chinese in China to how to host the Chinese in America. Seligman starts with the basics of forming the all-important relationship with the Chinese, getting in touch and the meet and greet being important first steps. Following the first steps, he takes the reader through the etiquette of business meetings and banquets. Allowing the reader to delve into the way the Chinese make deals. Seligman also goes on to address the importance of saving face in China. This is much more important for Chinese and they spend much more time thinking about it than Americans do. For this reason it is important not to forget to always use proper titles, since these forms of address have been very important to the Chinese for centuries.
Seligman brings this knowledge to his readers from both personal experience and experiences of others he has learned about through his professional interactions. One of the things that struck me as I was reading was the book's professionalism. It never "chose sides," simply giving readers a guide to understanding the business aspects of the Chinese culture. Seligman never gave an opinion about whether the traditionally American way of doing business was better than the Chinese way. Instead, he focused on a mutual respect for both cultures and finding a common ground for them to mesh successfully.
Overall, I felt the book had few weaknesses. There were some rather cliched references to sports examples often used by American males, which I felt were not good examples. They seemed stereotyped and meant only for a male reader. Also, I would love to see the book updated to include more "netiquette" information regarding business in China. In several sections Seligman gives an example of an American using a fax as a way of communication with the Chinese. Although, this scenario could still be possible today, e-mail certainly seems to be a more likely choice. Many, even those in the business world, need to learn the importance of "netiquette" and the consequences of not taking e-mail seriously.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is planning on doing business in China or even to someone simply interested in gaining some insight into the Chinese. It is well-organized and easy to read. Because it is separated into chapters and subheadings, it is also easy to go back and reference for further information. Seligman obviously spent some time on this book as it was very thorough. It is a great book to have read before our trip to China - I only wish it was a little smaller, so I could carry it in my pocket for reference.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
China...AND India!!
As of Thursday, January 17, 2008 we are officially going to India as well as China in our upcoming business trip! I am very excited by this news and totally support this decision. I think it will be important for us to see both countries as they are fast becoming the countries in the global economy. Often these two countries are compared and by visiting both, we will be able to see the similarities and differences for ourselves. Although I am sad to be giving up the past visits to Southern China, the prospect of seeing a whole other country and culture will really enhance the trip. Thank you Dr. Carr, Vicki Walls, Dr. Singh, his wife, and anyone else I may have missed who is helping make this trip happen!
Monday, January 7, 2008
River Town
By Peter Hessler
River Town is Peter Hessler's candid account of life as a "waiguoren" or foreigner living and working in China. Hessler spent two years in the late 1990's along the Yangtze River in the remote town of Fuling. Prior to his arrival, the town had not had seen "waiguoren" for fifty years. He was sent as a Peace Corps volunteer to teach English and American literature at the local teacher's college. During his time in China, Hessler not only learned Mandarin, but also learned a great deal about the Chinese people and their customs.
Hessler is willing to tell it like it is - including both the good and the bad aspects of his experience. One of my favorite aspects of the book was the passages he included from his students' writings. He did not filter their writings, leaving in their misspellings and grammar mistakes. This gives the reader real insight into the minds of his Chinese students.
I also enjoyed following Hessler in his changes over the two year period. When he first arrived, he knew little of the ways of the Chinese and almost no Mandarin beyond a few simple phrases. It was interesting to see how not only he changed, but the way he looked at the world changed with his ability to speak Mandarin and his better understanding of Chinese culture. By the end of the book he is no longer a "waiguoren," but a resident of Fuling and he very much considers himself so.
One of the problems I encountered with this book was Hessler's use of Chinese words. I liked that he included some Mandarin, but after a while, he dropped his English translations. This would not have been a problem had I read the book in one sitting, but after a few days without reading, I found myself flipping through the pages for translations. I did learn a few Mandarin words because of this - "waiguoren" anyone? - but still found myself struggling with some of the other less used words. This was only a slight hiccup in my reading as I found myself quickly engrossed in his stories. My suggestion to anyone reading this book is to really pay attention to those Mandarin words because they will probably continually show up, eventually without English translation. It was a real challenge to find the original translation and I often found myself giving up and trying to decipher it's meaning from the sentence it was used in. The good thing is I do know a few Mandarin words now!
The only other weakness I found in this book was the interruption of flow created by a short story after each chapter. In some cases the story was the history of White Flat Mountain, the mountain above Fuling, and in other cases the story delved into the lives of some of Fuling's residents. Each little story was very interesting, but it broke up the flow of the main story, which followed a chronological order from the time of Hessler's arrival in Fuling to the time he left. The real problem was that most of these stories didn't have a clear link to the chapter before them. Some did have a link, but for the most part, I felt that the flow was hard to re-grasp after these stories.
Despite these weaknesses, River Town's attributes more than make up for them. The book is well-written and easily captures the reader's attention. I would suggest this book for anyone who may travel to China, particularly if they are considering living there. Although, really this book can be read by anyone interested in Chinese life. River Town is a good read that is both fun and enlightening.
River Town is Peter Hessler's candid account of life as a "waiguoren" or foreigner living and working in China. Hessler spent two years in the late 1990's along the Yangtze River in the remote town of Fuling. Prior to his arrival, the town had not had seen "waiguoren" for fifty years. He was sent as a Peace Corps volunteer to teach English and American literature at the local teacher's college. During his time in China, Hessler not only learned Mandarin, but also learned a great deal about the Chinese people and their customs.
Hessler is willing to tell it like it is - including both the good and the bad aspects of his experience. One of my favorite aspects of the book was the passages he included from his students' writings. He did not filter their writings, leaving in their misspellings and grammar mistakes. This gives the reader real insight into the minds of his Chinese students.
I also enjoyed following Hessler in his changes over the two year period. When he first arrived, he knew little of the ways of the Chinese and almost no Mandarin beyond a few simple phrases. It was interesting to see how not only he changed, but the way he looked at the world changed with his ability to speak Mandarin and his better understanding of Chinese culture. By the end of the book he is no longer a "waiguoren," but a resident of Fuling and he very much considers himself so.
One of the problems I encountered with this book was Hessler's use of Chinese words. I liked that he included some Mandarin, but after a while, he dropped his English translations. This would not have been a problem had I read the book in one sitting, but after a few days without reading, I found myself flipping through the pages for translations. I did learn a few Mandarin words because of this - "waiguoren" anyone? - but still found myself struggling with some of the other less used words. This was only a slight hiccup in my reading as I found myself quickly engrossed in his stories. My suggestion to anyone reading this book is to really pay attention to those Mandarin words because they will probably continually show up, eventually without English translation. It was a real challenge to find the original translation and I often found myself giving up and trying to decipher it's meaning from the sentence it was used in. The good thing is I do know a few Mandarin words now!
The only other weakness I found in this book was the interruption of flow created by a short story after each chapter. In some cases the story was the history of White Flat Mountain, the mountain above Fuling, and in other cases the story delved into the lives of some of Fuling's residents. Each little story was very interesting, but it broke up the flow of the main story, which followed a chronological order from the time of Hessler's arrival in Fuling to the time he left. The real problem was that most of these stories didn't have a clear link to the chapter before them. Some did have a link, but for the most part, I felt that the flow was hard to re-grasp after these stories.
Despite these weaknesses, River Town's attributes more than make up for them. The book is well-written and easily captures the reader's attention. I would suggest this book for anyone who may travel to China, particularly if they are considering living there. Although, really this book can be read by anyone interested in Chinese life. River Town is a good read that is both fun and enlightening.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
China Dreams
I had a rather stressful dream last night that I thought I would share. I'm getting ready to leave for Hawaii tomorrow morning and as of this morning I was only half packed. Since I'm expecting warm weather, I've packed casual shorts, skirts, tank tops and t-shirts. In my dream, however, this was what I had packed for our China trip. So of course I'm freaking out because I have no suit and no clothes that could even pass for really casual business casual. So as I'm trying to figure out whether or not I could talk my mom into flying over to China to bring me my suit, I suddenly wake up. Thank god is all I can say. I guess I should've realized it was a dream when my roommate was actually my best friend from home who is definitely not coming to China with us or when I got in my car (while still in China) to see if I could go shopping real quick to pick up a suit. Oh well at least it was a dream. If I've learned one thing it's that I'm packing my suit first.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
My Book Suggestions
I started my next book about China and it is called River Town by Peter Hessler. I am enjoying it very much and it got me thinking about other books I have read that relate to China. There were five that really stood out to me:
Probably my favorite (and also the one that I read most recently) is Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. It is a wonderful story about two very different women whose lives are bound together by nu shu or "women's writing." It is the only known language exclusively used by women in the entire world. This language was used at time when women in China were very isolated. This was their way of forming life-long friendships; they wrote on fans and other items so they could communicate without even meeting face to face. Eventually these two women do meet, but their friendship threatens to tear apart after a misunderstanding.
It is a beautifully written book that follows these two women throughout their lives: through childhood, marriage, children, and even death. It also has a very interesting (and graphic) description of how footbinding was done. I definitely recommend it if anyone is interested in women's life in China during the 19th century.
My next recommendations are two novels by Gail Tsukyama, Women of the Silk and it's follow-up The Language of Threads. Both are about Pei, a young girl from rural China who goes to work at a silk factory. Like many Chinese, even today, she sends her wages home to help support her parents. At the age of 16, she decides to dedicate her life to silk work instead of marrying. The story is about her experience working 12-hour days in the silk factory as well as the important relationships she forms with the other women in the factory. The Language of Threads picks up where Women of the Silk leaves off and we find Pei arriving in Hong Kong in the 1930s. She and an orphan named Ji Shen are fleeing the Imperial Japanese Army. Upon arrival, they settle into life with an elderly British woman named Mrs. Finch. Unfortunately, before long the Japanese catch up with them and begin their occupation of Hong Kong, while Pei is forced to find a way to survive against the odds.
These books are also well-done and provide insight into life in a factroy in China in the 1920s. It is also interesting to read about the Japanese occupation and how it affected people living in China at that time. If anyone is interested Tsukiyama has also written Night of Many Dreams about two sisters in Hong Kong, which I have not had a chance to read. She has also written about Japan.
Falling Leaves is Adeline Yen Mah's account of her childhood as an "unwanted daughter." After her mother dies giving birth to her, she is considered bad luck and shunned by her family. The story chronicles her life from the time she lived with her family and cruel step-mother to 1949 when the Red Army approached and she is sent away to boarding school to her life today. Through it all she learns to excel at school and dream of the better life that she eventually achieves. It is a tough read, but a good story. It is written with honesty and candor. This book is also called Chinese Cinderella.
Finally, I'm sure many have read The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. This was also made into a movie in 1993. It tells the story of eight women, four mothers and four daughters, who are Chinese immigrants living in San Francisco. It is a sort of clash of traditional Chinese meets American ways as the Chinese-born mothers try to understand their American-born daughters and vice versa. The book is written in a sort of short story format as it goes from family to family, daughter to mother back to daughter. I originally read the book for a class and we split up the chapters by family and read them that way. The book is good no matter what way you read it and as with the rest of the books I am recommending, they are about the relationships of women.
I hope that if you are reading this you will pick up one of these five books.
Probably my favorite (and also the one that I read most recently) is Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. It is a wonderful story about two very different women whose lives are bound together by nu shu or "women's writing." It is the only known language exclusively used by women in the entire world. This language was used at time when women in China were very isolated. This was their way of forming life-long friendships; they wrote on fans and other items so they could communicate without even meeting face to face. Eventually these two women do meet, but their friendship threatens to tear apart after a misunderstanding.
It is a beautifully written book that follows these two women throughout their lives: through childhood, marriage, children, and even death. It also has a very interesting (and graphic) description of how footbinding was done. I definitely recommend it if anyone is interested in women's life in China during the 19th century.
My next recommendations are two novels by Gail Tsukyama, Women of the Silk and it's follow-up The Language of Threads. Both are about Pei, a young girl from rural China who goes to work at a silk factory. Like many Chinese, even today, she sends her wages home to help support her parents. At the age of 16, she decides to dedicate her life to silk work instead of marrying. The story is about her experience working 12-hour days in the silk factory as well as the important relationships she forms with the other women in the factory. The Language of Threads picks up where Women of the Silk leaves off and we find Pei arriving in Hong Kong in the 1930s. She and an orphan named Ji Shen are fleeing the Imperial Japanese Army. Upon arrival, they settle into life with an elderly British woman named Mrs. Finch. Unfortunately, before long the Japanese catch up with them and begin their occupation of Hong Kong, while Pei is forced to find a way to survive against the odds.
These books are also well-done and provide insight into life in a factroy in China in the 1920s. It is also interesting to read about the Japanese occupation and how it affected people living in China at that time. If anyone is interested Tsukiyama has also written Night of Many Dreams about two sisters in Hong Kong, which I have not had a chance to read. She has also written about Japan.
Falling Leaves is Adeline Yen Mah's account of her childhood as an "unwanted daughter." After her mother dies giving birth to her, she is considered bad luck and shunned by her family. The story chronicles her life from the time she lived with her family and cruel step-mother to 1949 when the Red Army approached and she is sent away to boarding school to her life today. Through it all she learns to excel at school and dream of the better life that she eventually achieves. It is a tough read, but a good story. It is written with honesty and candor. This book is also called Chinese Cinderella.
Finally, I'm sure many have read The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. This was also made into a movie in 1993. It tells the story of eight women, four mothers and four daughters, who are Chinese immigrants living in San Francisco. It is a sort of clash of traditional Chinese meets American ways as the Chinese-born mothers try to understand their American-born daughters and vice versa. The book is written in a sort of short story format as it goes from family to family, daughter to mother back to daughter. I originally read the book for a class and we split up the chapters by family and read them that way. The book is good no matter what way you read it and as with the rest of the books I am recommending, they are about the relationships of women.
I hope that if you are reading this you will pick up one of these five books.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
The Elephant and the Dragon
By Robyn Meredith
The Elephant and the Dragon chronicles China and India’s return to economic dominance over the last few decades. The book begins by telling the histories of China and India, focusing on the roles that Chairman Mao and Mahatma Gandhi played in shaping the China and India we see today. Mao plunged China into years of isolation from the world, with its people poor and starving in the name of communism. Although the communist party is still officially in charge today, thanks to Deng Xiaoping, China’s emergent leader after Mao’s death in 1976. China now resembles more of a capitalist state than anything truly communist. As for India, it has two ghosts of its postcolonial past. The first is Gandhi, who is known as India’s “Father of a Nation.” His anti-industrialization along with Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialism “caused India to withdraw from the world economy after winning its freedom from Britain in 1947” (Meredith 41). Nehru was India’s first prime minister after it became an independent nation. In the name of economic nationalism and self-sufficiency, Nehru cut off India from the rest of the world by making export and import difficult and expensive.
Meredith takes the reader from the dark days of China and India’s withdraw from the world stage to today’s blue-collar work in China and white-collar work in India. Although these two countries are often compared, Meredith argues that they are actually forming “complementary links” as the companies of the world take advantage of what is known as the “disassembly line.” What this means is multinational companies are hiring India’s white-collar works to support the blue-collar work done in China. China is thought of as “the factory of the world,” while India, with its restricting regulations excels as the “back office” of the world. This highlights a big difference between the two nations, something both may have to reassess in the future. India in particular faces a growing work force, which could eventually mean more people and not enough jobs. China, on the other hand, has a graying workforce. Because of their one-child laws, young Chinese workers face what they call the 1:2:4 problem: one person supporting their parents and grandparents with no siblings to help. China, like India, will need to create more jobs or face spending more to support retirees to keep its people out of poverty.
As the book moves out of the past and present of these two countries, Meredith turns to discussing what the future may hold for the United States as China and India continue to gain power. We may be seeing a world with not one, but three superpowers as both China and India quietly upgrade their military. While the United States military is still considered the most powerful in the world, controlling the oceans and the skies, China intends to change all that. And after they shot down a satellite, the United States took notice. India has nuclear power, which the United States currently supports as a way to get power, while lessening India’s pollution. However, this also means that both India and its volatile neighbor Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Our world today is the most unstable it has been in decades.
Although Meredith asserts that the United States is still the best at the end of the book, there are some important warnings throughout the book for the United States and its citizens that do not necessarily follow this view. China and India’s military modernization is one warning. Both countries have the ability to create a stronger military than the United States. Although our spending far exceeds that of any other country, China and India have a far greater population. In just a few years, both will have modernized their equipment, meaning the United States must keep up its military innovations to compete.
Another warning that is very important as the world begins to realize the consequences of global warming is environmental issues. As China and India industrialize, they are creating more and more pollution. Meredith writes that out of the top twenty most polluted cities according to the World Health Organization all but two are in China and India. She proposes some solutions, such as investing in solar and wind power, arguing that despite the extra costs, it will still be worthwhile for multinational companies to move their factories to China. Unfortunately most factories already built are very polluting and China’s lax regulations don’t help matters.
The most important warning from this book is the fact that offshoring and globalization is not going away. Americans may not like having their jobs shipped overseas, but they are going to have to get used to it. There are people halfway across the world who are willing to do the same job for a fraction of our pay. What most American’s don’t realize is that they are contributing to offshoring by buying lots of cheap goods made in China without realizing that offshoring is what keeps those prices so low. America has to face facts that it has got to step it up to be competitive in this world. Unfortunately, this comes at a time when our education system is lacking, while China and India’s grows along with their number of college graduates.
Throughout the book, Meredith cites many statistics. She has obviously done a great deal of research, however, this was a hinderance to the book because there was an overload of statistics. She included statistics on literacy rates today, poverty rates of the past, and even about the future economies of China and India. There were so many statistics throughout the book that few of them really stuck with me. Her writing easily caught my attention and the information within it stayed with me. However, when there are more than ten different numbers in one paragraph comparing China, India, the United States and Europe, I found myself skimming through them and not really taking them in. The other problem I have with statistics is their unreliability. Anyone can skew statistics to say whatever they want. And countries, like China, with somewhat unstable governments are known to bend the facts, such as poverty rate. The statistics projecting the future were interesting, but the truth is no one really knows what is going to happen in the future.
Meredith is an award winning journalist, who works as a foreign correspondent for Forbes magazine. In this book, she takes the reader on a historical journey with well-researched information about China and India’s past, present and future. The book is well-written and easy to read. Her writing immediately grabbed my attention and kept me turning the pages to find out what she had to say next. Since China and India are so important to the global economy, the global environment and global politics, this book is an important read for anyone living in today’s globalized world.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Welcome
Hi and welcome to my blog! My name is Robyn Bowie and I am an MBA student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Like my fellow students, I am looking forward to our upcoming China trip this June 2008. I am also hoping that our trip includes a visit to India too. Let me know if you agree on my poll. Thanks for visiting!
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