First things first: please read this piece by David Dayton. It’s a great read and extremely informative, plus it brings to life a number of themes addressed in this blog. Today, a bit more building on last week’s discussion of “individualism.” This time not my thoughts, but those of Lin Yutang, one of the most [...]

A few weeks ago I posted a series of pieces on Geert Hofstede’s five “dimensions” of culture. In my last three posts, the notions of universalism and particularism have come up. Today we’ll take a look at these two concepts in the context of the work of Dutchman Fons Trompenaars and his British colleague, Charles [...]

Yesterday and the day before we took a look at Chinese and American responses to scenarios about a fallen tree and a hypothetical rich person. Besides the lessons about the differences between abstract American moralism versus concrete Chinese practicality, there is, once again, also a lesson for us about oversimplifying.

First, yesterday I came across this article — a thoughtful discussion of some Chinese reactions to the Tonghua tragedy discussed last week in this blog. There is much worth commenting on, but I’m shirking the temptation in order to probe a little more deeply into a topic we began looking at yesterday: American moralism and [...]

In two posts last week (Wednesday and Thursday) I touched on an American breed of moralism and discussed some of its implications. Today we start to bring out some key differences between this view and a predominant Chinese view.

Yesterday I wrote about how each of us is “several selves,” and that this inner plurality gives us a wealth of options to choose from in relating to cultures that might otherwise seem unfamiliar. In some research I did I looked at how Chinese and American participants reasoned through certain scenarios. I discovered a number of [...]

For my own parochial interests as a blogger, the timing of Bill Clinton’s surprise visit to North Korea to secure the release of two American journalists couldn’t have been better. Whom should I see last night on CNN, and on The Daily Show (starting around 5:15 into the clip), but John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador [...]

A recent, horrific incident in northeast China has been making the rounds in the U.S. news cycle. The official Chinese government response to the incident holds at least one major lesson for Americans in China. It’s a roundabout path, but I hope an interesting one.

A conversation with a caller on NPR’s Car Talk this weekend served as a reminder that despite the power of culture, and the temptation to think in absolutes, there is always wiggle room.