Month: November 2024

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Seven Major Differences Between Chinese and American Business Cultures

Understanding cultural difference is the key in building lasting relationships with your business partners abroad. China has a long and rich history and culture that has built a business environment that is markedly different than U.S. business culture:

1. Relationship-based versus transaction-based

Relationships come before economics in China whereas in the U.S. economics generally take a front row seat to relationships. Chinese people do business with people they know and trust.

Rather than getting into business discussion immediately once you meet, take time and get to know your potential partners abroad; invest now for payoff later. Once trust has been built, Chinese business people will gladly share their thoughts with you and will give you honest feedback. One way to build the trust and rapport is to hang out outside the office hour, for instance, invite them to lunch or dinner.

2. Face to face interactions versus doing business without meeting in person

Most of Chinese business activities and deals are made through face-to-face interactions. To successfully launch in China, you will need to visit China and build relationships with your partners through frequent face-to-face interactions. To accommodate Chinese business culture norms, many American companies have opened offices and hired locals in China to facilitate business in this foreign market. Other American companies form partnerships with local companies to bypass the need to establish a branch or office abroad.

3. Negotiations: prepare to haggle

There is a huge difference in the way negotiations take place in the U.S versus China. Chinese people tend to haggle and to believe that there is room for negotiation on every deal. U.S companies need to make a padded proposal. Always start with a reasonable proposal regardless and expect multiple rounds of negotiations.

4. Entertaining is a part of business

In China, entertaining (hosting) is an integral part of the business culture. In most instances, inviting potential partners or employees to dinner is appropriate and considered an informal meeting. A dinner with potential business partners may be used as a way to build trust and deepen a relationship. It may be used as a way to solicit feedback that you may be unable to obtain during the standard workday or in the typical work setting. A dinner or other social outing is also an appropriate way to follow up with deals informally agreed upon.

5. Communication style

Chinese people tend to be quiet and reserved in business settings while Americans tend to be outspoken and eloquent. This cultural difference may make it challenging for U.S. companies to obtain the information they seek such as concerns, feedback, outright rejections, etc. Many times it may take a series of formal and informal meetings to reach your desired goal.

6. Closing a deal

Unlike in the U.S., in China the signing of a contract does not mean immediate business. After a contract is signed, understand that this is the beginning of the arrangement; follow up with your new partner and look for actions. Actions taken on the Chinese company’s or partner’s parts indicated commitment. Do not hesitate to suggest specific actions such as having a detailed discussion on next steps or suggesting a trial purchase order.

7. Gifting

Exchanging gifts has a long history in Chinese social and business culture. The good gifts include something representing the city or state you are from or things with your company logo. Gifts do not have to be expensive. It is something special that this person may not have. When you present a gift to an individual, it should be done privately. You should state that this gift is a gesture of friendship rather than business. When you gift to an organization, it should be presented to the leader of the organization. Gifts to avoid include scissors, clocks, handkerchiefs and others with negative meanings in China. Please run your gift ideas by several Chinese friends, family members, or co-workers before sending them to your current or potential business partners.

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For the Pairing of Wine With Food – There’s No Place Like Home

For some people, learning about wine can seem rather overwhelming or daunting. Add to that a certain amount of social pressure and it’s easy to understand why many people do not even dare take a stab at wine tasting. At home you need never feel self conscious, awkward or ashamed in choosing wines. When enjoying wines in the comfort of your own home, you can easily become ‘at home’ with your choices.

There are two ways you can dive headlong into experimenting with different wines. And why not dive right in? After all, what do we enjoy about our homes? At the most basic level, we enjoy shelter or comfort, rest, and meals. The rest and comfort of your home is an excellent environment if you choose to select a few bottles from various price ranges and styles at a time and open them up for your tasting pleasure during your leisure. But, while rest and comfort will aid in the enjoyment of trying out wines, our meals at home offer the perfect catalyst for the excitement involved in tasting various wines.

The pairing of foods and wines is done in the exact same way as the way they are tasted: on the palate, where it comes together. You match wine the same way that you match anything that tastes good together. Foods and wines are matched with a little common sense, and a lot of personal preference. All food and wine matching is more easily understood when the taste components of wines are thought of in the same way as ingredients in a dish. After all, wine is a food. Good cooking involves a balancing of ingredients and technique and good wine/food matching involves focusing on how specific components in wines interact and achieve a sense of balance and harmony with specific components in dishes.

Let’s begin with how the taste buds perceive what you are consuming, whether you are tasting wine or food:

Sweetness pertains to the amount of sugar in your food/wine and is sensed by taste buds located towards at the tip of the tongue. Tartness has to do with the acidity in both foods and wines. The taste buds at the center and sides of the tongue pick up this sensation. Saltiness may not be a significant component in wine, but is important in how a wine relates to it in foods. Saltiness is perceived somewhere in the center of the tongue. Bitterness is tasted in many foods, also in the tannin content of red wines and to a lesser degree in white wines. The rear of the tongue is responsible for communicating tartness to you. Umami is the term used to describe the flattering, amino acid related sense of “deliciousness” found in many foods, and to a limited extent in wines.

Just as umami is so difficult to define, it is also difficult to determine just where on the tongue we perceive it.

Along with taste sensations we also have tactile sensations. For example the density, body or weight of a food is contributed by proteins, fats and/or carbs, while primarily related to the degree of alcohol content in wines (bolstered by tannin in reds). Soft textures contrast with crisp textures in foods while wine textures contrast in terms of smooth or easy vs. hard, sharp or angular. Spicy and/or hot sensations as with chilies, peppers or horseradishes are found in foods but not felt as tactile sensations in wines. Instead they are suggested in a wine’s aroma and flavor or “spice” notes. Actually, most foods’ flavors cannot be detected much without the sense of smell. By the same token, both Cabernet Sauvignon and a Petite Sirah are two types of red wine that tend to be dark, full bodied, dry, and fairly hard in tannin; but the Cabernet gives aromas and flavors of herbal, minty, berry/cassis aromas and flavors, whereas the Petite Sirah gives ripe berry/blueberry and black peppercorn-like aromas and flavors.

There are essentially two ways foods and wines are successfully paired. The first is by the similarities they share. For example: the buttery sauce in a fish dish enhanced by the creamy or buttery texture of an oak barrel fermented white wine. The other way is by the contrasts they contain as when sensations in a wine contrast with sensations in a dish to positive effect. For example: the sweetness of a white wine balancing the saltiness of a dish like ham or cured sausage, and vice-versa.

No matter what your personal taste, invariably you will discover this natural occurrence: the easiest foods and the easiest wines to find a match for are the ones with their own intrinsic sense of harmony and balance. This is because taste buds and sensations of tactile qualities work for you collectively. This is not to say that a young, overly bitter or hard textured Cabernet Sauvignon cannot be served with food. But it does narrow your food choices somewhat. For example: a gamey meat such as lamb can be made more interesting with a sweet natural plum sauce but that would also increase a young Cabernet’s toughness and so you are probably relegated to simply grilling the lamb to a slight char to at least reduce the drying effect of the wine’s tannins, and serving it with a more neutral sauce (if any) made with Cabernet and the lamb’s own natural juices.

Then again, if the Cabernet is extremely rough to the point that it is barely drinkable, not even the simplest piece of charred meat will help it taste better. The same thing for a lamb chop that is drenched in a sauce or marinade that is too sweet, too salty, too spicy hot or sour: the palate knows when a dish is unbalanced, and so even the finest, smoothest, most elegantly balanced Cabernet Sauvignon will not make that poorly prepared lamb taste better. When it comes to food as it relates to wine, it is always easier to match a dish that does not need as much alteration of taste to make it taste better; and vice-versa in the way a wine relates to food. It is simply easier to find matching components of similarity and contrast in foods and wines that are already well balanced in and of themselves.

At this point, it is all a matter of actually tasting and becoming familiar with the wines you like — just as we continue to discover delicious, new foods. The nice thing is the variations in both foods and wines are virtually endless, and so it will always be as much fun as you want it to be. And, if you want try the suggestions of others, opinions of good pairings by others are virtually endless as well. Just know that as you become more comfortable with wine-food combinations at home, you will have no reservations about selecting wines while dining out.

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School Trips to Educational Edinburgh

School trips to Edinburgh offer you an ideal opportunity to explore a little of the history of this capital city and Scotland as a whole.

Origins

A quick glimpse at the countryside surrounding Edinburgh will show that it must have been particularly attractive to early peoples. Close to a major river (the Forth), the coast and surrounded by fertile lands, it also benefits from having a number of steep, hilly locations that must have been very appealing from the point of view of fortifications and defence.

One of the common misconceptions about early Scottish history is that the Romans never entered the country. In fact, Roman colonisation up to the river Forth was considerable in the earlier periods, and there is archaeological evidence that their influence, and possibly even control, continued after they had notionally withdrawn to Hadrian’s Wall. Occupation on the site of Edinburgh is known to go back to the Bronze Age, and Roman remains have been found in the river locally, as well as in the general area.

The English and Scottish

Originally, for much of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Northumbrian English settled the area of East Lothian and Edinburgh. It was only towards the latter part of the Anglo-Saxon period that Edinburgh was finally taken by the Scots and became, together with the surrounding areas, recognisably Scottish as opposed to English.

During the earlier medieval period, as was the case in England, the Scottish kings and parliaments tended to be fairly nomadic and it is doubtful if the concept of being a capital city was well understood. In fact, the city of Perth to the north was the original crowning place of the kings of Scotland. It was only latterly that Edinburgh’s importance grew, as it became clear that a location for government further south was required in order to offset the threat posed by the medieval English kings.

Edinburgh – the Athens of the North

In 1603 the crowns of England and Scotland were united upon the death of Elizabeth I under James VI of Scotland / James I of England. Although Edinburgh remained capital of an independent Scotland for another 100 years or so until the Act of Union, the removal of much of the friction and rivalry between the two nations lead to an incredible flowering of Scottish intellectual genius. This made it arguably the pre-eminent city in Europe in terms of education and progression of human knowledge. This tradition is maintained to this day. Students on school trips may be able to see evidence of this in the number of fine and imposing schools and educational facilities around the city.

A UNESCO world heritage site

School trips to Edinburgh can help students explore the medieval old town as it runs down from the world-famous castle towards Holyrood Palace (the Palace of the Stuart kings of Scotland). It is also the home of the new Scottish parliament building. Across Princes Street from the Old Town, you can find the New Town. This is an incredible area of the city, containing magnificent buildings that were laid out in planned fashion during the 18th century. This was done both as a practical measure to add space to the growing city, but also as a statement of enlightenment and civilisation, to distinguish it from the unplanned organic nature of the Old Town. In effect, the New Town is a statement of intent and optimism for the future, and today both it and the Old Town are UNESCO world heritage sites.

In terms of getting closer to UK history, school trips to Edinburgh may be hard to beat.