Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are on a mission to make the world a better place. Using their vast fortunes and public visibility, they have launched an effort to get the world’s billionaires to donate more of their wealth to worthy causes. What would happen, some wondered, when they took their effort to China? The [...]

In this book post, the first in a while, we delve into a world quite the opposite of the ethereal “God” world of the last book post — though we return to this world toward the end. A starkly different picture is painted by the Chinese data. This matter-of-fact statement encapsulates the essence of the [...]

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 [...]