Bingfeng Teahouse

it's always a tough job for me to communicate with those 40-something chinese women, many of them will just refuse to discuss any business cooperation possibilities after raising this question, "what do you want from us?". generally speaking, they live in a zero-sum world, in which they believe a young guy(me)'s win means their loss.

i realized over years that this win-lose mentality was shaped by their living experiences in the 1960s china and, the best way to understand one's mentality is to understand his/her living and education backgrounds, or vice verse.

reading all the posts and comments about recent anti-japan protests, i am just amazed by some westerner's stubborn "pre-set models" to interpret some obvious phenomenon.

when the "ccp incite the protest" theory failed, they revert to the "ccp incite people through anti-japan textbooks" theory.

the funny thing is, if you know one's "pre-set models", you can almost replace that person in making comments, because what you conclude are always the same of that person's with the guidance of his/her "pre-set models" or mentalities.

i used to attend a lot of business meetings, some have chinese participants, some have western participants, and most have both. in meetings with only chinese, we have a lot of debates, a lot of great ideas, but the process is usually out of control (if there is an agenda), and the meeting usually ends up without reaching agreed conclusions. in meetings with only westerners (or more accurately hosted and dominated by westerners), great ideas are rare, but the meeting agenda is followed quite well, consensus is made and action items are assigned to each person at the end of the meeting.

it's obvious to me that the group of chinese doesn't have the same level of awareness of (or respect to) the "game rules" as the group of westerners does. and over years i start to realize that this kind of "game rule" awareness can only be gained through practicing and learning but not merely through education without practice.