What’s new this year is that my wife and daughters have already been there for the first three weeks of the program. Colette has been co-directing the program. Mariette, our 8-year-old, is a participant, and Francesca, our 6-year-old, has been “tagging along.”

After a week wrapping up the program, we’re off to the small Tibetan town of Xiahe, high in the hills of Gansu Province. Colette and I have been there three times, and it is one of our absolutely favorite places in the world. But we haven’t been there since 2001, when, in late May, we went there to scope out possible locations for a semester program. It was on that trip that we met a young Dutch woman named Christine Mariette, and suddenly we had a name for our first daughter, who wasn’t yet born. Since then we have dreamed of bringing her and any sisters or brothers to Xiahe. Unfortunately we didn’t have a digital camera back then. Some nice photos here.

Depending on connectivity I may post from the road. Otherwise I’ll be back in early August.

Tom is about to graduate from high school. He decides he doesn’t want to go to college, despite his parents’ wishes. Instead, he wants to join a rock band. What will the family members all say to one another? What will happen in the end? Who is right?

To overgeneralize: if you are an educated American, you probably have some sympathy for Tom, and you may even think he should go for it and forget his parents’ advice, even though you also think he will probably fail. You may think that he should pursue his dream; you may even think that he must pursue his dream, if he has truly been given a rare talent. You may believe that no matter what his parents say or do, they will not and cannot change Tom: he needs to learn lessons on his own, even if they are hard lessons, even if he suffers. His life is his to make, and the most valuable lessons are the ones learned through direct experience.

When I was a graduate student in linguistics doing research for my dissertation, I asked this question to several pairs of U.S.-born, native-English-speaking people. I also translated the question into Chinese and posed it to pairs of China-born, native-Chinese-speaking people. (The native dialects of the Chinese interviewees varied, but, being educated, all spoke Mandarin with great ease.) The summary I just offered of possible American views reflects a standard set of “cultural models” which my American interviewees turned to consistently in discussing this scenario.

Brief terminological aside: “cultural model” is a quasi-technical term used by scholars at the margins of linguistics, anthropology and psychology. Essentially it refers to an idealized notion of how the world works or should work. If I go to a restaurant and my server asks me to fill out a deposit slip or endorse a check, I will be surprised because the question violates my mental “model” of how restaurants should work. These models are called “cultural” because they are shared: I can reasonably expect my restaurant companions to be equally surprised about the server’s actions.

The cultural models that make up the “standard” Chinese view of the rock band question diverge sharply from the American cultural models. Before describing the “standard” Chinese view, though, I need to stop for a moment and address a concern that I hear every time I present my research. The concern is usually expressed as a statement like, “But that’s not how I think,” or “That’s not how it would go in my family.” My response is not to quote statistics, because I have none to offer. Instead, I say: Absolutely. No one person is going to follow the “standard” line entirely. I certainly don’t. The “standard” view I’m referring to is an approximation or aggregation, based on responses from interviewees, and, in the years since the research, on countless conversations with Americans and Chinese on the topic. The analysis will not stand up to rigorous scientific scrutiny; no social science research ever can, no matter how many statistics are quoted. It is by nature inexact, because the subjects, human beings, are by nature inexact.

The “standard” Chinese view (I’ll now stop “scare-quoting” the term) differs radically from the standard American view. Tom — or, more properly, his Chinese alter ego Wang Er — has an opportunity to receive an education. Fewer things are more valuable than this opportunity, because in an overpopulated world, competition is intense, resources are scarce, and you need every edge you can get. Wang Er’s parents are absolutely right to insist that he go to college. Nothing is stopping Wang Er from pursuing music as a hobby. But his focus should be on studying hard and getting a solid, reputable job upon graduating. Not only will this set up Wang Er and his family with a strong economic foundation to guard against future calamity, but everyone will look good too and gain the respect of those around them.

Different topics, different style, all in service of making those trans-Pacific ties ever stronger. I’d love your feedback. Please email me here.

Meanwhile Happy Holidays to all who celebrate them!

That said, it’s worth looking at the cause of the annoyance. From a cultural standpoint, the quality in question is self-righteousness. It’s a fine line between self-righteousness and universalism, which I’ve discussed a lot on this blog. I think the link between the two stems from the conflation of two ideas: that there should be a standard worldwide, and that the standard should be our standard, where “we” are a particular cultural group: in this case the U.S. or the West.

When self-righteousness is present, it tends to take over. I become more concerned with how I’m better than you than I am with what you might actually be up to in your life. In fact, it becomes hard for me to hear about what you’re up to in your life, because in my eyes it doesn’t really matter, because you’re not really the kind of person whose actions and interests matter. After all, I’m better than you.

Whether or not this exercise in pop-psych is accurate, it characterizes what I see in much Western media coverage of China, and much of what China novices from the West are curious about when it comes to China. Few Western journalists and publications seem interested in the myriad, and quite concrete and difficult, actions taken by officials, businesspeople and other leaders all across China to improve the lives of the Chinese people. There is much to be learned and gained from a careful study of these efforts. And thankfully it’s not all deficit, as shown by this piece from Time. Here’s a teaser:

Could the world’s lone but weary superpower actually learn something from China? It’s a politically incorrect question, of course. China is an authoritarian nation; its ruling Communist Party deals ruthlessly with any challenge to its hegemony. It remains, relatively speaking, a poor, developing country with huge problems to confront, massive corruption and environmental degradation being Nos. 1 and 1a. Still, this is a moment of humility for the U.S., and China is doing some important things right. If the U.S. were to ask the Chinese what it could learn from their example, it might gain some insight into what it’s doing right and wrong.

Now if I wanted to I could complain about the shock the author seems to be expressing at the very possibility that the U.S. could learn from China, but I’ll refrain. Or not.

Now that I’ve written this thoroughly self-righteous post, feel free to let me have it.

Mr. Obama’s statement also pointedly noted the U.S. belief in the importance of universal human rights that should be enjoyed by “all peoples, and all ethnic and religious minorities,” and called for the Chinese government to resume dialogue with representatives of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader whom Beijing considers a separatist.

Huh? I thought I was going to be reading about how Hu and Obama are working through their differences across a range of complex issues. Then, out of the blue, this. I expect this type of reporting from the New York Times, not the Wall Street Journal.

Don’t get me wrong. Of course human rights need to be respected. Nothing I write here should be taken to impugn the thinking or writing of anyone working to benefit human beings worldwide. The thing is, there’s no shortage of verbiage in Western newspapers about how China comes up short on human rights, and I expect something different from the WSJ.

I was reminded of a conference I co-hosted in Beijing in 2006. At the time I was directing Stanford University’s study abroad program at Peking University. We were welcoming Stanford students, staff and faculty from Stanford’s centers in Kyoto, Berlin and Washington to participate in a workshop on globalization. It seemed that every other question I got from our guests was something akin to: “What’s up with China and their failure to support freedom, democracy, and human rights?” Unfairly, I found myself annoyed by these questions. To me, there were so many other important topics our guests “should” be interested in. Why obsess about these old, tired questions?

I was prompted to put some thought into why I was bothered, and what this all said about key cultural differences between China and the West. I’ll take this up in the next post, and perhaps beyond.

I can’t offer any such stories, and I be surprised if many of these stories exist. At the same time, I think what’s missing from the piece is the flipside: what can Western organizations gain from a deeper understanding of Chinese culture? In other words, why stop at not being an asshole? Once we’ve achieved non-asshole status, how can learning more about Chinese mindsets help Western organizations reach their highest aspirations?

The case that I’m continually building in this blog is that if Western leaders are mindful of culture, and of what people bring to the table as a result of culture, the upper limit on their success is much higher than without such mindfulness.

“Don’t be an asshole” is great advice the world over, and will save your business time and money. What more can we do to help our organizations thrive in China?

The most common theme I witnessed was suspicion, on the part of some of the Americans, of the motives of the Chinese partners. I kept being reminded of the bugaboo of attributing intentions (usually erroneously) based solely on behavior. There was a particular kind of behavior observed by the Americans which made them uncomfortable, and it didn’t take long, as the Americans talked among themselves later, to create agreement about the (ill) intentions behind the behaviors. This is a savvy group of executives, though, and they were receptive to other interpretations of the behavior.

One thought that recurred frequently during the week was this: what about all the other organizations working in China, which either aren’t aware of intercultural issues, or which are aware but don’t want to invest in intercultural consulting? I thought of how intercultural misunderstanding grows over time, often without our noticing, until it’s too late. A former colleague once put forth the “fish poop” model of human relations: over time, a fish tank accumulates fish poop. From one day to the next, you won’t necessarily notice a difference. But over time you end up with a stinky, fetid mess of a place to try to live, let alone thrive. Human relations, like fish tanks, require constant attention to accumulating fish poop — especially in intercultural environments, where the poop is likely to come fast and furious.

My experience with this company left me with a profound appreciation for them and companies like them, who can see the importance of the intercultural piece for their future success.