For those of you who worry about me, you’ll be happy to know I have arrived safely in Bangkok.  I don’t have a phone number here, but I will be checking email.  Next stop for me… dinner at the fish market!!

So you’ve heard about Adam’s many adventures in China.  First you read about Adam battling the Shanghai Traffic, and then you read about Adam’s one month anniversary in China.  You were enthralled by the epic battle at Huangshan Mountain and mystified by the gorgeous food markets of Hong Kong.

You might be sitting there asking yourself, “what else could Adam possibly have in store for me”?  How about some tanks?  That’s right, even though the military staged a coup in Thailand and ousted the Prime Minister, I’m heading to Bangkok!  I’ll be in Bangkok until Wednesday, soaking up the warm weather and the lush spas with Sarah and her mom.  We plan on visiting a very exclusive restaurant called Bed Supperclub, where you get to eat on beds (how jealous are you?)!!!  Rest assured I’ll be taking lots of pictures, and I might even get a picture with me on a tank!

Happy national week from China!

One of the more profound things about moving to a new country is the difference in cultures (both corporate and social) – and let me re-assure you, China has many!!! During my MBA I was constantly told that corporate culture is one of the hardest things to change and adapt to. I have to say that this is 100% true. About two months ago, a friend forwarded me an article talking about how hard it is for a foreigner to manage in China. The article was written by a Western manager working in China, and while the article had a bit of fluff, the following paragraph stood out to me. It is in reference to one of the many tasks that a manager has to perform when communicating with his/her employees.

“I offer my ‘K5 x 5’ rule. Don’t think because you’ve said to change a supplier, or let you see something before it’s sent, or stop doing a certain procedure, that it’s done. You have to repeat the request - five times. And then you have to go back after five weeks to make sure that it has stuck. Take it as a rule of thumb: Repeat five times and check after five weeks.”

I don’t necessarily agree with the above rule, but I have personally experienced similar situations many times in China, with one of the more recent incidents relating to my living arrangements. I live in a company dorm, so any request about the dorm has to go through official company channels. Basically someone was told not to place anyone else at the dorm I am staying at, and sure enough, another person was placed at the dorm. It’s not that the person didn’t hear or understand the request, because I’m sure the words “Ting bu dong” (meaning I heard you but I don’t understand) would have been spoken.

From my experience it appears that the problem is things just don’t seem to sink in at first. Things have to be constantly repeated for anything to change, and even then, you have to check back constantly to ensure the change is still in place. Perhaps it is an inability to deal with change or think “outside the box”, but this seems to be a common occurrence when Westerners deal with locals. It should also be noted that the problem could entirely be based on language, thus the problem eliminated if Westerners understood the language better. With the difference of words aside, communicating anything in Chinese is very different from English. To an English speaking person, asking someone “Where is building X?” seems like a very straight forward and easy question, with a relatively straight forward and easy answer to follow. The same question in Chinese can often create a two minute discussion – these two languages are worlds apart.

There have been many studies done on the differences between Eastern and Western schooling practices, and without quoting any of these studies and possibly misinterpreting the conclusions, it seems that these studies agree that traditionally Western schooling teaches people how to think abstractly, while Eastern practices teach people how to deal with a specific problem. This is not to say that one schooling method is better than another, but there are differences in the methodologies. It is up to people to figure out how to cope with these differences so the above rule becomes unnecessary.

As a final bit of interest, I share with you a related story. I was taking a taxi around the city, and handed the driver the store address of where I wanted to go. The taxi driver started driving and then looked over at me and said that he did not know where this location is. The driver asked if I had the store’s phone number, to which I replied no. We continued driving (I was assuming the driver knew the basic area the address is in), and two minutes later I was asked if I had the phone number, once again I replied no. The driver made a phone call to find out how to get to where I wanted, but was unable to obtain the information he wanted. He once again turned to me and asked me for the store’s phone number. We continued driving, and I was once again asked if I had the phone number – you should be able to guess my answer by this point. The taxi driver pulled over to the side of the road and pulled out a street map. After looking at the map for two minutes he once again looked at me and asked those six words which I was beginning to hate. I answered for the final time, that I did not have the number. The driver started driving again, and finally called someone else who gave him directions to the address in question.

As I’ve stated before, patience is one of the most important things to have when moving to China, as an impatient person would have had a tough time surviving this almost comical situation.

I’m sure some of you are in need of your Adam fix, so here are pictures from my birthday celebration in Shanghai!  Click here to view the pictures.

This weekend, a few of us celebrated my birthday at Saleya in Shanghai. It’s a very cute French restaurant, with real French owners! The food was very good (and talk about some great desserts!!!). We then walked over to a rooftop restaurant called HZF (another French style restaurant), where we sat on the roof drinking some port and white russians. HZF has a great view of the city; it is definitely worth checking out for a drink! This was my first birthday celebration abroad, and I have to say it almost felt like I was at home. Thanks to everyone who took the time to email, msn, call, skype, and mail me – it made me feel very special and definitely brought a ton of happiness to my day. It really is amazing how small this world is becoming due to technology.

I apparently wrote down the wrong number for myself before.  My number in China is  011-86-135-0287-9250. 

It’s Saturday night and seeing as how this is only the 2nd weekend I’ve been in Guangzhou, I don’t have any plans for the evening (I also worked for 12 hours today as well!).

I’ve decided to add video to the website, so below you should see a very poor quality video of a restaurant I went to tonight (you’ll have to wait for the review).  I’m actually pretty happy my cell phone was stolen, because I was able to go and buy a new one which lets me take decent quality photos and video (no sound though).

Hopefully I’ll be able to take some videos of my adventures and post them here.  If you are receiving this in email format and you do not see a link for the video, please click on the “Saturday Night Fun (now with video!)” link at the top of the email.  If there are any problems leave a comment below.  Now without further ado I present my first video….

I’m coming up on my three-month anniversary of living in China, and thought it would be motivating to give some advice on moving abroad (specifically to China).  While I make no promises that the following will work for you, I found the following helpful, and for someone who never thought he would leave his hometown, let alone country, it seemed to work well.

So you’ve heard that China is all the rage now and you want to move to the Far East to claim your stake of the money pie.  Well I’m sure you’ve done a little bit of research on living in China, but do you really know what it is like to live out here?  I asked many Chinese friends about living in China before I moved here, and I can say that while the information I obtained from them was useful, a lot of it didn’t apply to me because I am a foreigner, and things are different for foreigners!

There are three things you need to move to China and be successful:
1) An ability to speak Mandarin
2) Patience
3) An ability to speak Mandarin!

The above items are essential if you want to make it big out here.  Number two is essential even if you want to just travel here.  Tasks take a lot longer to accomplish in China, and you can expect things to take anywhere from 1.5 to 10 times longer than you would in your home town.

After making the big decision (and scaring my parents half to death), I started reading a lot about Chinese customs and traditions.  For the most part the books and articles I read gave me a strong foundation of knowledge, although I estimate that I have only found 10% of these readings useful in my day to day life.  Local Chinese seem to just assume that foreigners have no clue about Chinese customs – a foreigner can get away without knowing the customs!  If you were really trying to impress someone, knowing the local customs would help, but chances are your ignorance to these customs will not cause you any harm.  All things being equal (this phrase was stolen from the world of economics), there are a few customs that you should know.  These include (but are not limited to) how to exchange business cards and how to serve tea.  For every other aspect of life in China, common courtesy and politeness seems to work well.

Just a quick side note, I initially made the decision to move to Shanghai because that’s where the immediate future of China seems to be.  I am no longer residing in Shanghai as I have moved to Guangzhou in order to gain some much needed Chinese work experience.  If you have no experience with Asian cultures, I strongly suggest moving to Shanghai because this is the only city in China where you can experience the East and West at the same time!  Living in Shanghai allows you the freedom of thinking that you are experiencing what China is all about, while still being able to speak English and procure Western products.  Keep in mind that Shanghai is not representative of China, as only 1% of China resides in Shanghai.

After feeling comfortable in Shanghai (this took me almost 2 months), I would strongly recommend visiting other parts of China for at least a few months at a time.  This is the only way you’ll ever be able to understand what it is really like to live in China.  Anyways, back to moving to China.  Before moving to China, I strongly recommend visiting China – you have to see whether you will like it here or not!  You should know whether the language barrier is too much for you to handle, whether the lack of certain western conveniences will cause you un-happiness, and whether the overcrowding is unbearable for you.

Ok, so by this point you’ve read up on the culture, you’ve visited the country, and you’ve decided on a city to move to, now what?  Well you need a job and some friends of course!   This would typically be the part of the story where I tell you how important networking is, but let’s just skip that because hey, you already know networking is important!

There are a few great ways to network in China.  Unlike in Toronto (and other parts of North America), people love meeting other people in China – it’s the cool thing to do!  So before you land, start sending emails and contacting people through the internet.  I strongly suggest trying to connect with friends, friends of friends, family friends, distant relatives, ex-coworkers, alumni from your high school, college and university.  There are big alumni networks for colleges such as Harvard and Yale, but chances are there are alumni in China from every school (including the Schulich School of Business).

Next on your list might be trying to network with any religious sect that you are following.  For example, there is a great Jewish network in China (both in Shanghai and Guangzhou).  You should also start looking into joining some clubs, like young entrepreneurship clubs, sport-related clubs, and social clubs that might be of interest to you (there is a great, but very exclusive woman’s entrepreneur club in Shanghai – by invitation only!).  There are also a few sites for expats in Shanghai, such as Smartshanghai.com and thats shanghai.  Sarah is meeting people in her yoga class and I’m slowly meeting people at my gym!  The thing to remember is that foreigners are always looking to meet more foreigners out here.  Local Chinese also seem to be interested in meeting foreigners (but I have a sneaky feeling that there are ulterior motives here, nothing dastardly though).

You can also look into your national governments efforts in China.  Your government will have a consulate office in every major city in China, definitely worth looking into.  There are also Chambers of Commerce such as the CCBC, AustCham, BritCham, and AmCham.

Finally, don’t forget to harness the power of the internet.  Websites like LinkedIn, MySpace and Friendster can help you meet people abroad.  I am constantly hearing that people are able to find new friends and business contacts through social networking sites.  Of course you shouldn’t forget to contact me (I can always use a new friend!).

In terms of employment, unless you have something very special to offer, you’ll have to come to the realization that you won’t be able to command a large salary to start.  Consider taking an internship to gain some work experience out here.  After 6 months of being an intern, you’ll probably have a basic understanding of Mandarin and what it is like to work for a Chinese firm – you’ll be more marketable!

The last thing to remember is this is an adventure of a lifetime.  It is a truly memorable experience and something that you can tell your kids and grandkids about in the future (… when I was your age I worked in factories in China!!).  Enjoy the learning experience and exposure to new cultures, realize that there will be frequent times when you feel down and upset, but remember why you are here.