Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

This is an experience that my friend conveyed to me when he came back from a business trip in China. He has his own start up company established in Singapore and he has plans to collaborate with China business men to further establish his business. For this reason he accompanied his father’s friend who was a business man in China, for 2 weeks to gain first hand experience about business ethics in China.

His first shock came when he realized that many dealings have bribes involved, bribery in terms of money or in terms of material goods. The manner in which bribes were handled was unique too. Apparently the number of cigarette boxes placed on the table equated to the amount of bribe that is given. When his father’s friend was carrying many boxes of cigarette packs he was confused as to the reason why. He later realized that people use cigarette boxes to show the amount of bribe they were going to offer instead of reaching a verbal consensus.

Another shock came when he travelled to a different part of China (I am not sure about the name of the province). In this part of China, to show that you enjoy the food you have to eat noisily! You should for example slurp your noodles loudly to show your appreciation to the chef for the good food. This was a true shock to him as under normal circumstances eating quietly with minimal noise is considered to be good manners.

This directly contradicted with a French hotel that my friend went to, where the slightest of noise or tinkering of your forks and spoons is considered to be bad manners.

What surprised me when I heard his experience is that, he is a Chinese and he did not know that such customs exists in China. Though his a Singaporean born Chinese I believed there would not be much differences between the customs of Singaporean Chinese and China Chinese. However this does not seem to be the case.

I believe that it is important to understand and appreciate different cultures even though they might be very different to our own.

Different people view culture differences differently, either with a
Negative attitude – Withdrawal and refusal to accept the foreign culture ORPositive attitude – Willingness to understand, to embrace, and to creatively interact with the new culture

I believe taking cultural differences positively will help us adapt to different cultures more easily.


Cheers,
Keerth

Personal Statement

Application Letter Critique