独一无二, 无尽的爱

(This is extracted from a Chinese friend’s blog)

Culture Difference
What the heck! This topic again! This is not plague! This is not a curse spelt by the invisible evil witch! This is not the joke played by the demon! It’s all in your head! Your respectless head!

I wasn’t going to start my article this way, you know? I was going to start with stating the current situation and people’s views on it. I was going to give a few examples in my or other’s multinational companies and was going to some how come out with a perfect sollution. But I don’t know…when I opened my blog editting page, I just can’t help losing cool.

One of the things my boss bries so loud about is called “Culture Difference” and obviously he blames it all on the Chinese. He and his American coworkers have dealt with Chinese people for some time and are mostly uncomfortable with it. My boss is crazy about it. He wants to hair consultant and shrink for himself claiming trying to seek out a way to deal with Chinese emplyees. He seriuosly have a problem working with us.

I admit there are a lot of demerits in Chinese people about the way they work. I myself, as a Chinese, didn’t like some of our Chinese vendors’ way of work. All little things, here and there, indicate China is not quite up to the American standard. For example, the way we communicate is not clear and the figure is not accurate. Whenever you ask a vendor to give you a certain answer, they don’t give it to you directly. As a Chinese and I know why—they don’t know it either. They provide service but not professionla service. They only provide a little bit service. That’s far from American expectation and of course people from the developed country laugh at Chinese. But they don’t know the reason why Chinese are like that. They don’t care to figure out. One thing is for sure, and it’s the rule for all service providers: we make sure we give what we are paid for. These Americans rush into China with a goal of cost saving by hiring cheap labours. Haven’t they heard the saying: One gets what he pays for? 1/10 of American salary end in 5/10 or even more American standard service is already good bargain for the US employers. And they complain about bad service in China. One can say that when he is not CHEAP.

And another thing is respect. You make fun of Chinese culture just because most of the cases you employ them, not being employed by them, you can make fun of them whenever you want. Have you ever met a kind boss? No! Have you ever met an American boss before? Hell No! Peae. If in most of the cases, Chinese people are the employers, I met the americans all speak manderin with a Beijingnese accent. And probably some of them will be proud to speak some Shanghai dialect.

My boss is very frustrated about Chinese employees and want to solve it. It seems like he’s make moves, doing some thing, trying to improve the situation by hiring consultants. He’s doing it in a very professional way, but not the right way, excuse me. It all comes from the heart. If you want to learn about Chinese: how they think, how they feel, you will quite down first. You should be a good listener first and be modest rather than being the loud “American”. Chinese people value relationship, especially friendship. It’s the worst quality to betray a friend. Once you have the trust, you have it always. If you let them into your heart, you are in theirs in the same time. But Americans don’t care. They pretend to care about Chinese by talking to some consultant. If you want to know Chinese, talk to your Chinese employees. Whe an employee quit, give her a resignation interview–it’ll be more honest and straight forward than an entrance interview. Spend more time with the employees, you will learn Chinese culture has a lot of merits. You will understand it. And Chinese people live longer and it has something to do with the mentality.

A couple whose marriage is going down might want to talk to a consultant, but if they don’t care or love each other any more. What’s the point of “doing it in a professional way?” the consultant helps nothing in a relationship. They might give you suggestion about how to communicate or what to do, but we can sense whether it’s heart-felt or just techically “dealing with us”. If a couple has gone this far as to see the consultant or the shrink. They trust is gone. If a third party is involved. It means you can’t handle it yourself. What to do then? As in a lot of cases, Mary and John divorced at last.

But Mary and John will find their true other half later. They don’t have to stick together. They tried. It didn’t work out. We live only once, Chinese people want to work for Americans who respect their culture and care about what they think and I believe Americans want to hire Chinese employees who want to learn and work hard to live up to their standards.

Well, she does bring some nice points about how, as foreign investors, we expect too much from the locals.