The Chinese Melting Pot

I've found office life so far to be pretty similar to the U.S. You have offices, cubes, desks, chairs, Dell computers, Nortel phones, etc. You still have meetings in conference rooms and all the regular things most would expect.

Chinese do not leave voicemail messages. If they can't reach you on your office phone, your mobile phone will go off or you'll get an instant message. Email is used in the office but IMing is much more prevalent. I'm not sure why since both are immediate delivery for the most part, especially in an office environment. I've been told that some people will call and let the phone ring at a person's home for 10 minutes or more.

The most difficult thing to date is meetings. They're exhausting. Not because of the content or challenges of the problems but because you have to concentrate so hard. The U.S. may be "the melting pot" but it has nothing on Shanghai. I've been in meetings with people from all over the world. Each has a different accent and speaks English at varying rates of competency and speeds. (One Singaporean I know here speaks English much more quickly than I do.) Add in when people start having side conversations in their native tongues and you begin to get the picture. You can go home completely exhausted from trying to listen and catch what is being said.

Most meetings are truly multi-cultural unlike the limited, PC variety that some American aspire to. Literally, people from numerous different countries and continents. Our office for example has a Canadian (Quebec), Singaporeans, Tiawanese, Americans and Chinese. That's five different nationalities in 30 people. Add in the staff of your clients and you could easily have six or seven countries represented.

For example, one meeting I was in this week took part in with a client included an American, Japanese, Chinese and a couple Germans. One involved people from Singapore, Italy, China, Canadian, American, etc. Another involved an Australian and Chinese.

Then as you're trying to get to know them, you end up trying to find common ground. You talk about your travels, former employers and industries, sports (futball/soccer and NBA basketball seem to be big here), etc. All are very similar small talk to the U.S. but the experiences of these individuals is SO global. You realize what a good understanding many of them have of the U.S. and the West and what little understanding Americans have of their countries. Yes, they find New Yorkers to be rude too. Many have lived in the U.S. I've met a German that have lived in Akron. A Korean that lives in Allen, TX where we used to live...on a connecting street no less.

There is also a comaraderie when you meet or see a Westerner. You suddenly feel closer to them than you do another American that you're just meeting in the states. They understand your desire to have a hamburger or pizza or a good salad. You can talk with them about the upcoming World Cup (trying follow soccer more), share stories of adjustment to the country and just feel familiar.

Rude Americans however, bother you more than they would in the U.S. I've met two to date and you just want to slap them and remind them they're a guest in this country. It's very discouraging because the Chinese I've met to date are so kind and welcoming, especially if you are warm and humble back to them. You learn to appreciate differences more here instead of having it dictated to you in through a corporate diversity training program.

You also come to realize that many of the office staff have a language competency that you don't, and may never, have. While their English usage (verbs tenses especially) might not suit being a motivational speaker in the U.S., their English is leap-years ahead of our Mandarin for the most part. They're not using cards with English and Mandarin on them to give to taxi drivers to get themselves around town and they wouldn't need to in the U.S. They can actually read English while most Westerners can't read their 20,000 Chinese characters.

Their work ethic is pretty impressive too. They get in at 9 a.m., take an hour for lunch (usually between 12-1) and then work until 7 p.m. or later. It's not uncommon for them to work weekends either.

For those in communications, it's very fascinating to me to see how much access they have to the rest of the world's news and to ponder what this will mean in the future. Obviously, they have very little in 2nd and 3rd tier cities, but there is a lot that makes it to the larger cities and that they consume -- U.S. movies, music, theater, news, sports (the NBA is big here because of Yao Ming), etc.

51 percent of the Chinese say they trust Internet news most. Supposedly, if you work in an office setting, your Internet connection is mostly likely connected to Hong Kong which gives you much greater access than if you have it at home (I've been told they have access to only 20 percent of it there unless you are technical enough to make yourself anonymous and invisible by changing proxies, routing through various servers, etc.).

TV news is the second most trusted source for news. I expect this is because many in the large cities have satellite connections from Hong Kong/Phillipines, etc. so they can see CNN, the BBC, Fox News, ESPN, HBO, Cinemax, Star Movies, Trinity Broadcasting, etc. with less of the "c" word.

Both allow them to hear about what is going on in China from a Western perspective. In an office like this, we receive Time, Fortune, Newsweek, the Asian Wall Street Journal, the Int'l Herald Tribune, PR Week, the South China Morning Post, etc. which also increases the amount of outside information they receive.

What this will mean long term, who can say. But it reminds you of Eastern bloc countries in the 80's but with a much more capitalistic bent in a city like Shanghai.