6 months...

Trip Start Oct 05, 2004
1
53
80
Trip End Jun 30, 2005


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Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Rejuvenated by a holiday and the experience of my parents' seeing China for the first time through fresh eyes, I'm aware both of how at ease I am in China, but also how much of a comfort zone I'm in. It's as if I've subconciously found ways to switch off the curiosity or ask fewer questions about my surroundings. That's also a very Chinese thing to do which could be a sign of going native I suppose, even though it's one of the less admirable traits.

The truth is probably that the demands, time constraints, and nature of the job I'm doing insulates me from some of the things I came to see and do. Conversely, the job is giving me insights into doing business with Chinese people, managing a nebulous group of staff with diverse personal agendas and little natural interest in shared goals, and it's a wake up call after years of working in a well-organised professional services organisation. By comparison the ethics, standards, responsibility and accountability here are light years from what I'm used to expecting.

The strange thing is that I've learned incredibly fast not to let it get to me, but experience tells me that it's like half of the psychological contract is not being fulfilled by the organisation. Repeated failures of process, colleagues who don't pull their weight and incompetence can't be outweighed long term by the good stuff - unless you're committed in other ways.

What's even more interesting is to watch people come into an environment where others have subconciously developed an emotional attachment and made a psychological investment. Seeing an individual arrive and intelligently confront the status quo is fascinating and at times like watching a fly swotter taken to a house of cards.

As I write this, the fact that I've written more about the job than the cultural changes that I came to experience tell me something's wrong despite all of the positive experiences and lessons I feel like I'm learning. Next task is to figure out fixing it and learn some more of this bloomin' language!
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