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Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

They came 75 minutes late.
I went to the gate of our school, but saw no car except a blue lorry standing right outside. They definitely were not sitting in that lorry's cabin. I turned and was about to walk back to the office on the third floor, when a female voice floated over to my ear, "...are you Roger?" She stood beside a black LEXUS, and the driver was just getting out of the car. Where the heck had they been for the past two minutes??? The car certainly must have been inside the gate!
I shook hands with manager so-and-so, then they opened their doors and sat down. I opened the rear door and lowered myself into the car too. "Can you give us directions?"
I was mystified. They had picked their way from town, some 25 kms away to here, a campus in the boonies, surrounded by green fields and small rural villages. They should know their way back to THEIR school!
We turned into the highway and back to the urban area, travelling at maybe 30 kms an hour, with cars speeding past us at close to 100 kms an hour. Why the hell weren't they moving faster???
"We want to discuss with you..."
In the car? I began getting a little irritated. You know when you walk with Chinese, they inevitably slow down their pace, eventually standing still, talking, when you want to move on at a higher speed.
"Well, we better hurry to get to your school," I volunteered, pointing ahead. There followed some inconsequential remarks, then I had to give them new directions: "Turn left!"
But they were suddenly interrupting my speech talking to each other in Cantonese, not listening to me. We missed that turn and were still going straight-on at a snail's pace on a dual-carriage highway! Then, the girl asked me, "do you know this area?"
"No, I have never been here. We should turn back." The manager/driver laughed, "ta bu zhidao zhege difang...hahaha!" I had just been to that school for a grand total of 5 days, being driven to and from home by van every time. We made a dangerous U-turn on the road where there was a gap in the road divider. "Could you go a little faster?" I asked now. "Why?" Yes, that was her question: "Why?"
But who understands Chinese anyway? This was supposed to be an interview and a visit to their school. I had asked them to be at our school by 3:15 p.m., so as to be in town by 4 p.m. It was now 4:30 p.m., and they were telling me that their students had clocked off class, so they would not drive me to their school!
"Do you want to go home tonight?" they asked me intriguingly. What a silly question! They were never going to put me up in a hotel 30 kms from my home if I could return on my own. But, what did they want from me now? What was there to discuss since they wanted me to pitch in on COMING MONDAY?!

I still did not know who they were, except "Mr A." and girl "B.", and that they were "very interested" in hiring me right away, 6000 a month, 10 hours a week, visa and housing thrown in for good measure!

It was now 4:40, and I told them if I caught a bus at 5 p.m. sharp I could travel home on time. I was not in the mood to discuss more in that car with those two lunatics that did not know where they were, nor what they wanted from me. They agreed to hurry up. We finally broke into something bordering on 60 kms an hour, but they were still frantically scanning the horizon for signposts to point them to my home, then they stopped to enquire (although I gave them instructions). Finally, we arrived exactly two minutes past 5 p.m., and my bus was gone! I was by now pretty worked up!
I forced them to drive me home, a further ten kilometers! They meekly complied.

But I bore and still bear them a serious grudge. And this is the reason: I had made numerous offers to them of coming at a time convenient for both sides, they had insisted on picking me up on Friday, not telling me their true intentions, then coming over one hour late, secretly cancelling our deal of driving me to their school, and further dawdling and procrastinating, until I lost my self-control.

Significantly, another offer had been made to me, and I had to choose between both jobs as part-time opportunities. The other part-time job was equally "urgent", and I committed myself, only to hear this very Saturday morning, three days after acquiescing to them, that the school had decided to forego the hiring of a foreign teacher "because the parents have so far not complained that their children do not get a native English speaker as a teacher".

It is this Chinese habit of avoiding committing themselves, this inability to PLAN AHEAD, anticipating outcomes, foreseeing results of their own actions or inaction that drives me so mad! In short, it is this AChinese "cultural' thing of being so chaotic, disorganised, immature...

Kurochan · Joined: 01 Mar 2003 Posts: 944 Location: China

The head of the waiban at my school has this way of calling me like five minutes before a meeting starts, and telling me I should go, even though the meeting is like 20 minutes away! Nobody seems to mind when I'm late, though. I think at my university, they're just pleasantly surprised when the foreigners aren't drunk!

Also, I'm under pressure to sing and dance on TV. I guess if I could sing and dance that would be ok, but I can't. I did tell them I'd dress up in a furry animal costume and act stupid on TV instead, but they didn't go for that.

dractalks · Joined: 14 May 2003 Posts: 136 Location: Boston/Shanghai

Roger said (too much again but this)....

bliksem · Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 16

Hi there everyone - I'd like to use Roger's post to ask your opinion on how you perceive China to be able to cope with the future.

If it gets any feedback I'll post again off-topic Embarassed

I live in Hong Kong but I have read a lot of posts on the China forums, and I think everyone here has a much broader concept of what he/she thinks about the culture as a whole. I am struggling to begin to understand - and I think I will reach the position soon where I won't care anymore - so before that happens...

here it is:

With most of the economic-world seeing China as this big money-making machine of the future - do you think in your opinion based on what you have seen and perceived as an EFL-teacher ...

[and for that reason being more immersed culturally than the foreign production managers that pop in every 2 months]

...that the Chinese will be able to cope with this [i.e. adapt] OR will the West soon learn that they[China] will do it their way and thus it will all go down the toilet eventually? - this is based on the fact that no-one seems to "get" the culture or that any deficiencies are ignored as simply cultural misunderstandings or a means of negotiations.

DISCLAIMER:
These are questions based purely on how the Chinese are handling or will handle BUSINESS and MONEY matters through the perceptions of the "Western world" - i.e. you the EFL teacher

I would appreciate your opinion a lot [especially from the long-serving community out there]- if China really is the "next big thing" - why doesn't anyone invest some time to understand them, not just make money from them - or have most people tried and just thought...why bother?

Seth · Joined: 05 Feb 2003 Posts: 575 Location: in exile

I've been hearing that India is the next true big thing and that the China bubble will pop sooner or later. India's economy is more localized and entrepreneurial whereas China's is manufacturing and seemingly inflated real estate mandated by the government. I'm sure every city in China has some large modern buildings that sit completely empty and will probably remain so for a long time.

I knew a guy in Luoyang from Spain who was doing business with a joint sino-spanish tractor company. He said the biggest problem with the company is having to watch out for the shady dealings of their Chinese partners. I think it comes down to Chinese seeing foreigners as a way to make more money by having a white face around and as a connection to a Western market, not as business partners who should mutually benefit.

Chinese capitalism is still young and some businessmen seem to think a market economy is just smash and grab, not the well-honed machine it can be. School owners especially can be very short sighted.

Anyway, back to what Roger was saying, I find that at both schools I worked at the managers like to stall quite a lot. One reason is that they'd hope you'd forget about whatever you were requesting. Another is that they make you wait in a certain place and keep promising to be right out when they're finished with some important business. Then they spring a request, knowing that it's too late in the day to do anything else. The manager at my first school was notorious for this. "Sorry it took so long, lets go to dinner. Oh, by the way, could you teach a sample lesson at 7, if you don't have other plans?

Susie · Joined: 02 Jul 2003 Posts: 390 Location: PRC

Roger

I can relate to your story, from my experience it sums up "the way things are done" by some people in China = the culture.

Do you have any advice on how to handle, or, deal with, those people?

yaco · Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 473

Dear Roger

What is happening ?

Shady deals in the back seat of a car !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

What has my experience got to do with China's future, or with how Chinese do things in general? Probably quite a lot! This was one incident out of a whole series, four of which have happened within two weeks, not in an identical way, but all rather similarly - it usually was BAD or nonexistent PLANNING on the part of the Chinese, and how they manage time!
Coming late for appointments is so common here you could actually count all the Chinese that within your lifetime had come on time!
And, for Chinese to urge others to be available at 0.252 a.m. sharp is common too - and then they have nothing to ask you or nothing to tell you. They engage in chitchat or smalltalk, and when the personal chemistry develops well they potentially hire you as a stand-by.
I do think the Chinese have a serious mental handicap with the notion of time!
Take our private employers, for instance: they advertise "IELTS course 3 evenings a week, 2 months, with foreign English teacher, XXX RMB". If enrollment is satisfactory, they will try to hire someone for that post. If they can't find someone, they have to pacify their students, telling them "next week" or "next Thursday", and one out of two times this proves to be a piece of disinformatsiya. And if they do hire an expat in time, they may not be able to vet him or her thoroughly enough to make sure that person is suitable. What matters is that that person is a waiguoren....
So, because the Chinese are - congenitally? - unable to plan ahead, they have to resort to putting out white lies all the time. Though the term "white" lie is debatable - there is no greater excuse for their bumbling than the fact that they are not grown-ups mentally, i.e. people who can face reality, and own up to their shortcomings or mistakes.

Time management too - you can't say they don't know failing to be on time can have financially disastrous consequences. If they miss a plane, train or bus, having bought the ticket beforehand, they have to deal with more or less dire consequences, and that is happening all the time. For example in July last year, I joined my colleagues on a trip to Hainan. We had to get to the school by 5:30 a.m.. I had to cover the longest distance, and this by taxi, but I was the first to arrive. At 6:30 a.m., we were still short two members of our group. Our tour guide decided to tell the driver to start. At 7 a.m., we were informed that the two of them were trailing us in a taxi. When we arrived at Guangzhou Airport, they had to fork out 150 kuai for their taxi ride.
But that was not the end of the story: at immigration, one of the two found out he had forgotten his ID card at home!
The guy (the boyfriend of one of my colleagues) took another taxi back home (some 30 kms), returned to the airport - and had to buy a new plane ticket. This whole experience set him back 2500 RMB. He joined us late that afternoon in Hainan.

I do not believe this is a cultural thing. Rather, it is a cultural-level thing - most people here simply do not grow up sufficiently to take care of their priorities in life.
You can, of course, attribute it to socialist-Chinese "culture" - a nanny state that decides in the place of every individual to the point of telling them when they have to go to wash their hands, listen to the news, and love their leaders!

gmat · Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 274 Location: S Korea

Roger wrote:

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

I can't explain, but I can surmise - again. We all can only surmise as the Chinese cannot give us coherent explanations for their behaviour. Calling it "irrational" may sound "judgmental", but it is our way of judging our own shortcomings. The Chinese simply don't judge themselves, and expect us not to judge them negatively. However, displease one of your Chinese bosses, and you will see the downside of living in a society like this!
Well another twist to their character may be their OPPORTUNISTIC attitude. I have never come across this characterisation before, yet to me this seems to be the most readily applicable one.
Everyone is trying to ride high on some wave, hoping it is going to bring them good luck! It happens on personal and professional levels - dating and teaching alike! It begins when a Chinese, seeing a white face, realises that he could "practise English" with that face. You can see it at work when they drive cars. More importantly, it presides over Chinese businessmen's decisions. When one business operator is successful, he will soon find a lot of competition from folks who learnt their ropes by watching him! You can see this in any street - if a shoe-shine man is doing a reasonably good business there, next day there will be 4 of them, and by the end of the week, there will be at least ten.
Besides, gambling is a major motivation force that translates into business decisions. Buying shares is equated with "investing". When I lived in Shenzhen, that city opened its stock exchange. People half my age derided me for not "investing in stock", as they put it. I particularly remember a Hunan native who had a relatively stable and lucrative white-collar job, which he quit when his first "investment in shares" to the tune of some 10'000 RMB in savings went through the roof. He reinvested his earnings, and he spent all his day time watching the stocks.
Inevitably, his streak of good luck ran out, he lost more than he had earned previously, plus a substantial amount of his principle (the sum he had saved before investing it in stocks). As some of us know, this sort of destiny is quite common - go to HK, and watch as the hordes take the ferry to Macau on Friday, Saturday and Sunday! And, how many of them return empty-handed? Many have to borrow funds, and end up borrowing from criminals! This is a phenomenon the socialist government tried to eradicate, and probably succeeded in eradicating - until Deng liberated China's social and economic life again! Now look around and count all the big businesses that have been borrowing money from the state, never able to return their loans!
It's also deeply ingrained in the psyche of ordinary folks. My in-laws expected me to lend them money - something I could hardly refuse! I am glad I have been able to set up a noman's-land between them and me!
On a more culturally attractive plane, you can see it in various superstitions. In HK, you will find buildings that have - mysteriously - no fourth floor. I lived in a guesthouse which had thirteen rooms - without a number 4 room! (Four in Chinese sounds like the word for 'death').
Then there is the quaint belief in QI, literally 'gas', or 'energy' - it is supposed to move mountains and your personal fate! On certain days, you should not go out (my missus insisted if I went to HK on my only day off, I would be punished by QI in an accident!). It also motivates the Chinese to procreate in certain years or months (the year 2000 was a demographic bumper year Chinese, as was l988 - being the year of the dragon, and with two eights in the year, with eight being equated in Cantonese thinking with 'wealth'!).

Wolf · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 1245 Location: Middle Earth

struelle · Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 2372 Location: Shanghai

gmat · Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 274 Location: S Korea

Steve,
I agree that being late would result in the loss of face. But Roger (and my) experience is that the Chinese are always late. That is why I asked for an explanation re face and tardiness.

In the meantime, my girlfriend hinted at an explanation for the lateness problem. If someone shows up on time, it is obvious they are not too busy! You must be a little late to show how busy and important you are Confused

I don't know, that was the most plausible thing I have been told, and that's pretty warped!

khmerhit · Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2003 1:14 am Post subject:

kurochan complained:

Quote:

Also, I'm under pressure to sing and dance on TV. I guess if I could sing and dance that would be ok, but I can't. I did tell them I'd dress up in a furry animal costume and act stupid on TV instead, but they didn't go for that.

I just wanted to see this again in black and white. Very amusing.

Steve-- re face-- if you don't get the reason for tardiness, you wont get the Chinese. It's the APPEARANCE that matters. If they arrive late, they APPEAR to be busy, busier than those who arrived earlier. If their phone rings in a meeting, they APPEAR to be in demand, regardless of the import of the call. I don't think we in the west are much different, but snce we have money we can afford to downplay the importance of face. OK, think of working class Britons who dress up for Saturday nite to look middle class. Same deal, but a matter of degree. I'll admit that the Chinese have let it addle their brains, of course...

bliksem · Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 16

So guys - what's the verdict? Will China "make it" as the next superpower?

The economists say YES and everyone seems to be "investing" money in China [probably more like playing roulette - "come on lucky RED " Embarassed

]

It seems to me the people who have been LIVING here for a few years disagree?

So is there something I'm missing [except the other half of my brain...] or do all these economic big-wigs have no idea what they are in for???

If someone has an answer please let me know because something is not adding up...[except if everyone is in it for the short-term and then it's doomed anyway...]

thanks.....I think....