All you've got is a butt in a chair...

Somebody please shout this from the rooftops of Taipei and Hsinchu (and the rest of the country) make every insane boss and manager in Taiwan read it. Twice if necessary.

Please.

Because if you think Americans are overworked (and they are), come have a look at Taiwan.

I am completely serious - if you teach adults, make 'em read it. If you're in corporate training and working with high-level people, make them read this. If your students are knowledge workers, make them read this.

I can't change the work culture of Taiwan by myself, but I can be the change I want to see in the world, live by example*,  and when the opportunity arises, promote thinking and discussion - and hopefully change - on attitudes like this when talking to others.


*example:

Me: **teaching class until 9:45pm, on break**
Office girl: **Hi, Jenna, [Company X] wants to see some changes to its midterm report. They want more info, and where it said 'improvements', they didn't mean 'what the students can improve on', they meant 'how the students have improved'."
Me: "OK, I'll do that as soon as I get the chance."
Office girl: "Can you do it after class tonight, please." (it was not a question)
Me: "No."
Office girl, clearly dumbfounded: "...no?"
Me: "No."
Office girl: "Why not?"
Me: "Because I'll get home at 10pm if I'm lucky. I will then rest, because I need and deserve rest. I'm not going to do more work in that time, so late at night."
Office girl: "Oh. But [boss] wants it tonight."
Me: "Well that's too bad, isn't it?"
Office girl: "Uhhh..."

No Apology, No Way

Not too long ago, my sister told me about an incident at work in which both she and a Taiwanese coworker had independently made mistakes on similar projects (test-writing, I believe). When told that she'd messed up, my sister apologized and said she'd get right on fixing the error. She noted that her coworker did not - she said "Oh, uh, OK" and fixed it. I, too, thought it was odd to not apologize for a minor error that is clearly your fault,  but let it go. Then, at my job, I asked for a certain worksheet I'd created for them years ago to be prepared for my use for an upcoming seminar. In the intervening time they'd "lost" the digital file somehow, so I had to re-create the worksheet. They didn't actually tell me that they didn't have it until the night before, which put pressure on me (despite my asking many times for confirmation). Instead of "we're sorry" or "we apologize", I got a "I have checked with ______ and we do not have the worksheet you requested". I replied and said I was disappointed and felt their actions were unprofessional, and noted that when dealing with foreigners, it smoothes office relations quite a bit to own up to your mistakes and apologize. I'm blunt like that. I got no reply.

It got me thinking: is this a thing? I think it is, but I only have two anecdotes to back me up. In the US if you say you're sorry for some internal office screw-up and then present a solution and work to make it right, people will generally drop it, if not forget about it altogether. As though those two words are like memory erasers: "oh she screwed up...but she owned it, she apologized and we all make mistakes. So let's forget about it." In Taiwan, maybe apologizing causes you to lose too much face? Or admitting that yes, you made a mistake will cause people to remember and criticize you rather than forget? That if you mess up, the tacit social agreement is that you won't admit it and others won't draw attention to it? That it's not the smoother-over of interpersonal interactions the way it is back home?

Which would be fine if everyone lived by that rule, but we don't. In offices where you have to deal with foreigners, either in-house or from abroad, you need to know these things, because the average foreigner won't understand that cultural difference and will feel miffed and annoyed at the lack of apology or even recognition and ownership of the mistake. Not owning it will cause that person to remember it, not forget about it. They might not say anything, but the feeling is there and it does jeopardize relations.

It makes me wonder if I should be teaching this in my business etiquette class...

Linferiority Complex

I was chatting with a student about this article, in which an Asian-American writer, while thrilled with the sudden superstardom of Jeremy Lin, was simultaneously worried that Lin's ascent would make his life harder. Why? Because Lin actually embodies many of the stereotypes associated with Asians and Asian-Americans (and Asian-wherever-elses). You know, smart, humble, hard-working, loves his mom, a team player - the writer even argues that the fact that he loves Jesus, too, fits with the stereotype. He laments that this could cause a redoubling of such beliefs about those of Asian heritage - especially Asian men - and admits openly to wondering secretly if there will ever be a "cool" Asian-American role model , you know, a stereotype-flaunter who, as one friend put it, "snorts cocaine off a Kardashian's ass". (Sorry moms).

(Not that I think that's cool.  But it does flaunt stereotypes of Asian and Asian-American men).

So, the student thought about it - I didn't use the Kardashian sentence, by the way - and finally said "but that's OK!"

"Why?"

"Because it's good to be hard-working, smart and humble. Why not?"

"Well, those are good things, but they're also stereotypes of Asians in the US."

"Maybe, but they are good stereotypes. So that's good! I hope everyone thinks Asians are hard-working smart and humble. I hope we can all be."

...err. I'm chalking this one up to culture differences. I know many Taiwanese people who would completely understand the modern American aversion to stereotypes, and those who are aware of such stereotypes enough to know not only that such profiling can be a problem, but why. I can kind of see how many others in Taiwan (and the rest of Asia), would genuinely not see anything wrong with everyone thinking they are all smart, hard-working humble folks who love their parents, because that's what they want people to think of them. It's just such a fundamentally different way of relating to these stereotypes from, well, from pretty much every Asian-American I know. There seems to be a fundamental difference in understanding of whether and how a "good" stereotype can still be "bad".

On Rice: My Deep Dark Secret

Here is where I admit my dark secret.

I love inviting my Taiwanese friends over and cooking a dinner that involves serving rice.

All the food goes out on the table, including one pot on a cooling rack, with potholders on the top and bottom, wrapped in a clean dishcloth.

When they ask where the rice cooker is, I whip off the dishcloth to reveal a typical cooking pot with cooked rice inside, that I made on the stove.

Whaaaaat? They always say. That's how you cook rice? You don't have a rice cooker? I've never seen that before!

"I cook rice like your great grandma did," I said. "The way my mom taught me."

"But...nobody does that. You can just get a rice cooker!"

I can...but it's too much fun to shock the pants off my friends. I mentioned this to someone and her reply was "Wow. Usually I think 'foreigners are not too strange' but when I hear that you cook rice this way, I think 'no, that really is very strange'!"

On "Going Native"

A highly fluent student of mine used this phrase, not necessarily something I'd teach, to describe me after I mentioned in one class that I am an avid user of 白花油，萬金油 and various other aromatic, camphored oils, that one room of my apartment is decorated with Hakka flower fabric, that I go to temple parades regularly and actually try to keep track of where and when they will take place, and that I regularly brew lao ren cha at home. 

I thought about it, and realized that no, he was not quite correct. "Going native" implies that you're acting and thinking more or less like everyone around you instead of knowingly sticking out and staying somewhat separate.  But how many Taiwanese people do you know who use White Flower Oil, decorate their apartment with Asian textiles (not just the Hakka fabric - I've collected textiles from around the world - mostly Asia though - for years), make tea that way and actually follow those temple parades as a hobby? Some might do many of those things, but at the very least, I don't know many people who would decorate that way: it may look Asian, but deep down, it's super-duper-foreign-tastic to do that. Well, not the oils. Using them is totally common.

I joked that if I wanted to "go native" for real, my apartment would have white walls and a tile floor, bare walls save for one red-and-gold calendar with a fat Buddha on it, a round table with metal legs and some chairs, one of those wicker stools that's lacquered heavily, to the point where it's orange-yellow, a blue or black vinyl couch with lace doilies on the back, a flat screen TV attached to one wall, and a yellow wood over-lacquered side table topped with thick plastic that's a bit old and discolored, topped with one of those purple orchid plants (fake would be OK). I'm joking, but...you know. Not really joking.

Or, if I had money, I'd decorate it in a Hola Casa (ever been in that store? Furniture sets for the jet set) purely Western, white-leather-and-dark-wood style, not a trace of anything "Asian" anywhere.

And I'd pay little attention to temple parades, but a lot of attention to TV, although watching a lot of TV is hardly relegated to Taiwan.

And I wouldn't drink traditionally brewed tea, I'd drink lattes (I drink those, too, for what it's worth).

And, in the end, the very things that might cause one to believe that a foreigner has "gone native" are in fact the things that have caused me to stick out.

Or, as one friend put it, "Even if I didn't know you, if I saw this apartment I would say 'foreigners live here'."

Me: "Why?"

"Because it's too Chinese!"