So much more to say about the trip, but for now back to the book. In the last “book” post, I introduced “cultural models” in the context of a discussion about whether a hypothetical “Tom” should join a rock band or go to college. Here we’ll look at some actual linguistic data. An excerpt from [...]

Four years ago, while still living in Beijing, I began writing a book about my family’s experiences driving the Mazda around Beijing with California license plates for two and a half years without being pulled over. I have recently taken the project back up. In this blog over the coming months I’ll be posting pieces [...]

When doing business in China, sometimes the most “obvious” things can trip us up the worst. In his classic book Beijing Jeep, Jim Mann tells the long tale of American Motors Corporation’s Jeep-building joint venture in Beijing, including many an anecdote with cultural lessons. One such lesson involved Ed Schulze, head of production and maintenance [...]

Dreams are, as I claimed near the end of last Friday’s post, alive and well in China. If we needed any more evidence that dreams hold appeal in China as they do in the U.S., we’ve got some. First, this piece from Time, about lawyer Xu Zhiyong, who was arrested under false-seeming pretenses, and has [...]

To Americans, our life dreams are no less than a spiritual matter. Because they represent the highest aspirations of a sacred human life, dreams themselves are sacred.

A few more research findings, to shed light on some other aspects of Chinese and American culture. One question asked of participants: 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 [...]

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 [...]