As I promised I'm now presenting you with some controversial stories and facts about our emerging superpower and economic giant, China. My intentions are NOT to create a fuss, NOT to encourage political rallies and protests and NOT to undervalue the power of China. I merely want to share my opinion based on my experiences in the country and some amount of cultural perspective that I have accumulated over the years.
When I first arrived to China, I thought: This is good for me. Here I will learn gain some Asian values, such as harmony, peace, control and patience. What I got was nothing similar to these feelings and values. The only reason I became more patient in China was because I was forced to be quiet, forced to wait, forced to talk slowly, merely to cross the communication and cultural barriers that stand as a heavy wall between us Westerners and the Chinese.
In Beijing you can forget all about harmony and peace. Everything is one big chaos - it's a human-made jungle of health and safety hazards. If you haven't been there you only see what they want you to see, yet on the other hand I wouldn't encourage you to go just to prove this point. A little example: In Beijing there are no real peak hours for the traffic jams. You have a few hours before dawn and a few hours at night in which the traffic runs rather smoothly. Not long ago I read a fb status of one of my friends mentioning a recent conversation his wife had with a taxi driver when she put on her seat belt. She told him that she was doing it because she wanted to protect herself in case of an accident and he told her that it would be uncomfortable figuring the likelihood of being stuck in traffic for the entire ride.
When I was working in a Chinese academy, owned by two westerners, there were a bunch of Chinese teachers and I really understood that while they are lovely people they are not the easiest employees one could have. My boss, whose confidence I quickly gained due to the mere fact that I as well was a westerner, told me that not only does he have to tell them what to do a million times he has to show them everything step by step. Of course as teachers they were excellent, it was in the administration process they lacked.
It seems to me that they work miracles when they are being instructed carefully, for example when you give them a step to step guide on how to complete an excel sheet. Yet, when it comes to independent thinking, initiative-taking and creativity they are lost in the forest. They will say yes to everything, but when they have to do it, they don't. The boss was struggling a lot when he wanted them to fill out a weekly report or help with PR work. I saw the boss as a patient man and I could understand his frustration.
I have a theory that may be able to explain this trend. Read it in my next post titled:
If you play alone you stay alone.
Yet, what I can tell you right here and right now is that if you, as I did, lack the virtue of patience, Beijing really does the work for you. However, keep in mind that it will be forced on you from all around you and blow you up like a balloon that eventually will explode unless you let the air seep out slowly. What I did to prevent an explosion was to repeatedly tell myself that "China is China" or "Only in China" and comfort myself with looking at my EU passport that I, unlike 92% of the world's population, am so lucky to hold.
When I first arrived to China, I thought: This is good for me. Here I will learn gain some Asian values, such as harmony, peace, control and patience. What I got was nothing similar to these feelings and values. The only reason I became more patient in China was because I was forced to be quiet, forced to wait, forced to talk slowly, merely to cross the communication and cultural barriers that stand as a heavy wall between us Westerners and the Chinese.
In Beijing you can forget all about harmony and peace. Everything is one big chaos - it's a human-made jungle of health and safety hazards. If you haven't been there you only see what they want you to see, yet on the other hand I wouldn't encourage you to go just to prove this point. A little example: In Beijing there are no real peak hours for the traffic jams. You have a few hours before dawn and a few hours at night in which the traffic runs rather smoothly. Not long ago I read a fb status of one of my friends mentioning a recent conversation his wife had with a taxi driver when she put on her seat belt. She told him that she was doing it because she wanted to protect herself in case of an accident and he told her that it would be uncomfortable figuring the likelihood of being stuck in traffic for the entire ride.
When I was working in a Chinese academy, owned by two westerners, there were a bunch of Chinese teachers and I really understood that while they are lovely people they are not the easiest employees one could have. My boss, whose confidence I quickly gained due to the mere fact that I as well was a westerner, told me that not only does he have to tell them what to do a million times he has to show them everything step by step. Of course as teachers they were excellent, it was in the administration process they lacked.
It seems to me that they work miracles when they are being instructed carefully, for example when you give them a step to step guide on how to complete an excel sheet. Yet, when it comes to independent thinking, initiative-taking and creativity they are lost in the forest. They will say yes to everything, but when they have to do it, they don't. The boss was struggling a lot when he wanted them to fill out a weekly report or help with PR work. I saw the boss as a patient man and I could understand his frustration.
I have a theory that may be able to explain this trend. Read it in my next post titled:
If you play alone you stay alone.
Yet, what I can tell you right here and right now is that if you, as I did, lack the virtue of patience, Beijing really does the work for you. However, keep in mind that it will be forced on you from all around you and blow you up like a balloon that eventually will explode unless you let the air seep out slowly. What I did to prevent an explosion was to repeatedly tell myself that "China is China" or "Only in China" and comfort myself with looking at my EU passport that I, unlike 92% of the world's population, am so lucky to hold.
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