Culture Shock: My Story

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Ed Britton, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Culture Shock: My Story
by Ed Britton
Coaching for Cultural Transitions

Everyone who visits China lives their own ‘culture shock’ story. This is mine.
First, a little background on the stages of acculturation.

There are four stages to Culture Shock:

1) Honeymoon (infatuation stage) – a tourist; fascinated, but asleep to the culture
2) Withdrawal (rejection stage) – a wakeup call; shocked, repulsed
3) Adjusting (“I’m OK” stage) – a survivor; adapted, mediocre contribution
4) Leadership (cross cultural leadership stage) – a contributor; performing, thriving

Got it?

One more thing. My wife, Elise, insisted I add this part. “You don’t want to scare them off,” she said.

Our introduction to China was more, uhmmm, deep end, than many experience. We were set down in the very center of China (not on the more developed and West-savvy east coast) with a company very new to the country and not experienced with transitioning.

That said, some have it even worse, so I’ll try to edit out the whining in the final draft!

The Honeymoon

I arrived in China on August 23, 2004, ahead of the rest of my family. I was 50 years old, and my job was to develop an education program, write the curriculum, hire and train management and staff for a new English language training company. The schools were to be established deep in the interior of China. I was used to this kind of work, since I’d worked as an educational Dean in Canada and had spent many years developing programs and writing curriculum for industry oriented learning.

Shouldn’t be too hard, I thought. I’d worked with whole industries designing learning programs. One company, an English language program? Vacation!

More background. I’ve always been an active hiker, so I’m pretty fit and trim. I’d had two years of prior international experience in Africa, so I knew about living in a developing culture. I scoffed at the idea of culture shock.

Then, toward the end of September, after about four weeks in China, I stepped onto a bathroom scale for the first time in my new country.

I had lost 7 kilograms (15 pounds).

I didn’t know how to eat.

Two days later I crashed with a severe ‘flu. My ’Honeymoon’ had come to an abrupt end and landed me in bed. It gave me time to reflect.

Withdrawal

It wasn’t extra fat that I had lost, and if something didn’t change in a hurry, I’d be an ‘expat statistic.’

I realized that I needed to be more aware and careful about how I was adjusting to China. As I lay in bed, painfully trying to swallow, I reflected on the first five weeks of my China experience and for the first time tried to wake up to what was happening to me.

I wasn’t used to the food, how to prepare it or how to eat it. I had been jet lagged, not feeling hunger in a normal way and not sleeping well. I had been working hard in a new job and trying to get the apartment ready for the family’s arrival. In spite of always having been physically active, I was burning more calories by walking everywhere. So, eating less and working harder, the arithmetic caught up with me.

I was astonished and concerned with the low quality of work I was seeing. In my second week, after I’d cleaned the apartment, I had some painters come in to freshen up the walls. I explained (using sign language) what I wanted painted. They started upstairs. I went into the kitchen, heated up a bowl of soup and sat down at the dining room table to eat it. Finished, I went up the stairs to check progress.

The sight was jaw dropping. There was paint everywhere! Stairs, floor, ceiling, light fixtures – like a six year old had been give a bucket of paint and a brush without supervision!

Well, they were out the door. Except for one guy who stayed behind to clean up – it took him THREE DAYS! That’s how big the mess was.
He used turpentine. Besides the general assault on my health, I think the fumes, together with unfamiliar air pollution, had a lot to do with the condition of my throat.

I didn’t know how to cross the road. Crosswalks were especially dangerous because cars don’t stop for pedestrians. At intersections, that means you have traffic coming at you from eight different directions – including drivers trying to run red lights!

And I certainly couldn’t talk or even vaguely understand what was being said.

I lost 3 wallets to pick pockets in my first 12 months in China.

You’ve heard about squat toilets. Child’s play. Rest room stalls were often doorless, the stall walls only 3 feet high – or the squat toilets simply lined up in a row without any shielding at all! (Foreigners are a special attraction.) There may be no ventilation and no effective cleaning. The mud on the floor is not mud. The smell – okay, next topic.

In short, I couldn’t eat, talk, safely cross the street, hang on to my wallet, or even go to the rest room. What had culture shock done to me? Well, I felt like my social development had been turned back to about 18 months old. I was a baby.

At the same time, I was still responsible for the program and curriculum development, the hiring of management and staff, and reporting to the owners of the company. Urghh!

Adjustment

My family arrived in October. I had become somewhat more proficient at shopping at ‘the little grocery’ across the street and could get food into the house. My wife, Elise, was not working outside the home and soon learned to prepare a few meals. We found a supermarket further down the street and were able to purchase a wider variety of foods. I started to get my weight back.

I pick up language slowly, (my Grade 11 French teacher made me promise to never take another French class – I was happy to oblige), but by this time I’d learned the most important survival Chinese. Rather than share the doorless bathroom stalls with the kids at the school, I found a more private bathroom in a restaurant next door.

I crossed the street in the middle of a crowd of Chinese rather than on my own. I learned to supervise workers very closely, and to trust my own sense of quality and work process rather than others.

I was doing my job on a day to day basis. But, I also realized that my performance was not exceptional – nothing like how I was used to performing in Canada. I had adjusted to the pace of accomplishment in China – and that’s a good thing because having western-like expectations for performance, at least initially, simply cause frustration and anger.
The educational program was being written, people were being hired, student numbers were up and so were revenues.

Just the same, I knew that something more like my overseas performance was required to get the school moving forward in a significant way. But, it wasn’t happening. People seemed satisfied with progress toward goals and much less concerned with the achievement of goals.

I was OK. But just OK.

Cross Cultural Leadership

It’s difficult to find a Chinese administrator who is experienced, but not carrying baggage from China’s recent tumultuous past. Nevertheless, after two years I was able to find a bilingual Chinese administrator who showed good judgment and ability. This was key to my own on-the-job cultural development and performance. I had a partner who could focus on day-to-day administration, while I focused on program, curriculum and staff development.

I had also learned a bunch of stuff that works and doesn’t.

For instance: My Canadian leadership background occurred in a highly collaborative environment – sometimes to a fault. I was aware the Chinese were used to an authoritarian, top down working culture, but thought they would appreciate being consulted about decisions.

So I called a meeting, laid out the decisions, some options, and asked for input.

Wrong!

Silence! Nobody said a word!

What I saw on their faces was fear. Afraid of exposing their thoughts in public, at work, where they might be criticized, even punished, for ‘saying the wrong thing.’

They wanted me to make the decisions, take the responsibility and relieve them of risk. I was seen as having power, a foreigner, and outside the reach of retribution. But the Chinese teaching staff felt powerless and vulnerable.
I spoke privately with a staff member I’d worked with quite a bit, and she explained. Then I went to the other staff, privately, and discussed the same topics. This time, people had lots to say. I was able to practice a collaborative leadership style in China.

As you learn this stuff, what works and what doesn’t, you start to be able to introduce contemporary leadership practice in a way that is compatible with the very distinctive culture that is China.

Starting with small victories like this, I started to practice cross cultural leadership – to change things and add value.

There are many more episodes in my personal story of acculturation and particularly about my learning in cross cultural leadership.

I’ve condensed the very best of six years into two reports that I share FREE to my readers -

- 12 Incredibly Useful Tips for Surviving Your Move to China – simple, concise, practical stuff that will save real pain.

- Take the Shock Out of Culture Shock is a book’s worth of powerful knowledge on adjusting to China – but in a short report.

Next stop: http://www.EdBrittonChinaCoach.com for FREE China-survival reports!