Night of 21 September, a dialogue about working in Asia was held at the alliance of French at Wuhan University. Wu Hongmiao, professor and director at WHU’s School of Foreign Languages and Literature, who was elected one of the 50 significant people in the process of establishing bilateral Sino-French diplomatic relations, and GANNE, sociologist studying in enterprises and work, who is also a distinguished director in the National Center of Scientific Research in French, presented together a substantial feast of thoughts.

Different from many people’s expectation, the dialogue is not about the opportunities and the challenges faced by Asia, arising economy as a whole, instead, it focused on the cultural shock revealed to the French people when they were trying to work together with the Asian people and the cultural diversity reflected by it.

The room is filled with absorbed audience from France and China. Seven questions about working in Asia were discussed in an interesting but also profound way.

The details

The first unacceptable difference met by the French merchants when they tried to run their factories in Japan is the Japanese focus on the details. The abnormal prudence to make a decision and the extraordinary persistence in digging into the details somehow drove the French entrepreneurs crazy. But that’s the way the Japanese work, and that’s a cultural shock these businessmen must conquer.

Behind the words

While for those trying to carve out a way in China, the words really tortured them, because it’s never easy to understand what the Chinese officers really what. There is always something they really care about behind the words but nobody would point it out directly. So the French who only care about the quality of their work got frustrated and the Chinese also got unhappy because they thought that they were disrespected as the French barely paid any attention to the manners they cared.

Timing

For the French people, when they have an object, they would immediately start to make a schedule for the final outcome.

So when they saw those Chinese who were never pushing things forward according to the plan, they got so anxious that they could not help interrogating their Chinese partners why they were working so inefficiently. While the Chinese people also got thought that the French people were just so arrogant. As for the Chinese, it’s always right and vital to wait for a best opportunity. What’s more, we always ask ourselves to go step by step and bring every possibility into consideration instead of making a fixed schedule for the whole year, especially when we are in an environment where everything keeps changing and evolving.

La logique

“La logique”, which means logic in English, is absolutely the most frequently heard word in my French classes. Just like what the French Madame said herself, the French people are quite proud of their philosophy, which is to always find the links between things and to solve the problems in a logic and sometimes maybe programmed way, which, in the Chinese opinions, could be too rigid.

La face

La face is something especially about China, which causes a big problem to their French colleagues. The French think that if we are talking about business, then we are just talking about the fact and the efficiency. It’s not something personal, so if I say that you have made a mistake, I’m just pointing it out so that you could notice it and then correct it.

La méthodologie

The French are quite proud of La méthodologie, which means a system of solutions or thoughts to solve problems. But don’t forget that it’s a system, so it’s somehow like a fixed way to think, a set web of thoughts. And that’s what the French students are taught in their classes, but for the Chinese, the most important thing is to understand or rather, to feel, the way you organize your thoughts and then to draw a conclusion or a solution, which mostly includes many programs suiting many possibilities.

The strikes

‘‘I don’t know why there will be so many strikes in France but I think it’s just unbearable.’’

To the last question, Monsieur GANNE gave a humorous answer and then, both the scholars rose to thank the audience and finished the lovely night.

Through the dialogue, the cultural differences and the insight into its diversity kept inspiring us and maybe the scholars themselves. The sparks of wisdom were ignited here as the stars in the darkness and that was the moment when I realized that maybe this was the way how culture got gradually integrated, how differences got understood.