Greetings from China III

Hi!

 

Let’s talk about business. There are 150 people in our office who are all overloaded with work and super busy when they are asked but once you follow them everything just takes for ever and will be done in the way it is always been done, which can be quite frustrating. It is in the office when I feel like getting lost even though I am surrounded by people. Besides the fact, that the English level is very poor at our office (which is still way above average for the Chinese peope) people are just afraid. Afraid to talk to me or to each other, afraid to be caught doing nothing or doing anything wrong, afraid to ask, which results in an office full of people where nobody knows what the other person does and me being the top of the iceberg of anxiety as a foreigner, a possible future client as they always say, which means if they do anything wrong with me it might mess up everything….By the way I am just a little intern. All leading managers here are Indians, which I think is very sad, but the Chinese are just too nice, too shy, too afraid. The Chinese are so restrained and subservient that they ask me questions about their job but cannot share their work tasks because they are probably afraid I could do or know it better than them. This means, 90% of the time I am doing nothing…and that sucks…I tried everything….I talked to my mentors, to the HR lady, even to the general manager, but they just don’t understand it…I gave so many suggestions about how my internship could be somehow a win-win but I think their biggest fear is to change. You don’t experience the communism on the streets but in people’s minds. My exaggerated picture of Communism was that all people look the same, wear the same, eat the same and say the same but the possibilities of luxury shopping and the unassailable power and influence of the Alibaba imperium say the opposite. It is in the people’s minds and behaviour where I can see the phasing. With the awareness of me generalizing from only a few weeks living in China I claim that Chinese people don’t question anything, they don’t come up with new ideas, are not curious and don’t think innovative and at the very least they like confrontation. It feels like they don’t have a thrive to improve, they just accept their working conditions and try to get through the day without talking to anybody. They copy but they don’t invent. This on the other side has a positive side effect again….Chinese people hate confrontation, which means they are not aggressive at all. Thus I can walk around, take a cab at night, talk to whoever comes up to me and stick my nose in every side street without being afraid myself. I always feel safe J. China is just very two-sided.

My resume in one sentence right now: I like China, I like the Chinese people, I love the Chinese food (well besides the chicken feet…this will not be my favourite snack no matter how long I will stay here) but working here at least as an intern is incredibly hard, if not impossible.