Chinese are easy.
Flatter them stupid and never accept a compliment unless it comes in a red envelope.
- Don’t stick your chop-sticks into your rice - it looks like insence-sticks in a funeral.
- Use 2 hands to hand over your business card.
- If the person you meet or say goodbye to does not strech out his hand for a hand-shake, a friendly nod of aknowledgement is perfectly OK.
- It is OK with a firm hand-shake, but do not squeeze the guts out of that dead cold fish.
- Short “bursts” of looking someone in the eyes/face is OK, just don’t let your stare linger for any time.
In my previous post, I forgot to add that after you have observed how the people around you behave, and adopt part of their behaviour, you should probably modify it a bit before practising. You should also modify your “normal” behaviour - a firm hand-shake, but no vice, and a slap on the back is reserved for good friends.
I don’t know how people interact where you are from, but modified/toned down normal behaviour where I am from goes a long way here.
People here are friendly and will forgive you if you makes a few mistakes in etiquette - after all, you are a foreigner, and they will expect you to do things and behave a bit different.
Now, tell us what you would consider rude, inconsiderate and/or plain wrong behaviour where you come from, and then we can discuss if that behaviour would be considered acceptable here.
If someone asks you if you’ve eaten, they’re not suggesting you go out to eat together. They’re just saying hello.
Maybe the OP also should list behaviour that is considered polite and proper where he is from, and we can discuss if it would be bad behaviour here.
[quote=“JOHN MOSS”]trebuchet,
how could being a “professional” be any different wherever you are?
all it means is taking your job performance as your first priority, doing the best you can at that job.
it means acting civil-again, the same no matter where you are-being cordial, polite and putting your job first, that is, if you are a teacher, your first priority is the students and their education.
there is no secret formula for how to be professional for each country you are in. we are all humans.
if your coworkers are any different then they have the problem, not you.
jm[/quote]
Au contraire.
“Being professional” in Taiwan means doing a lot of unpaid work just out of loyalty to the company.
“Being professional” in Taiwan often involves going along on group trips on weekends that no Westerner truly wants to go on, because that’s what is expected.
“Being professional” in a Taiwanese buxiban often involves putting the interests of the school and its curriculum over what you know to be the interests of the students in terms of learning English. Retaining students is more important than having students become fluent in many cases. It’s a business first and foremost.
“Being professional” means not making anyone higher ranked than yourself lose face, even if they are wrong wrong WRONG!
“Being professional” means learning to lie and mislead people elegantly if you are going to do something other than what is expected or required, because that is really what they prefer you to do, rather than to honestly say, “I am not going to edit your 150 page thesis in English, even for money.”
There are many differences of this kind. There is also often much more of a hierarchical relationship among employees at Taiwanese companies. It’s very difficult to determine where you should put yourself along the “foreigner ---- Taiwanese” continuum in terms of “how friendly is too friendly”. The problem is further compounded when you have a male foreigner making lots more money than the female Taiwanese coworkers, but essentially doing far less work (in their minds).
Tickling has worked well for me in my dealings with the locals.
“Cuuchie cuuchie and few pokes under their arms and we’re like old friends in a flash!”
dear ironlady,
all of your quotes apply to anywhere you work. not just taiwan. save for the one that claims that women are paid less for men for the same work. this is only different in america because women worked their asses off to change this and make things fair-although some will say its still skewed toward men, i dont know.
all of your other points, in my opinion, could take place anywhere. we all do things we don’t want to do to keep our positions. ass kissing is not a taiwanese trait, it is the trait of those who want to either maintain or advance their positions.
face may be more of a consideration in some cultures, but give me an example where a low level or newbie employee is fine with slamming his or her boss to his or her own benefit-aint gonna happen.
if teachers put their institutions first, and the students second, well, that is something that is wrong with the whole education system, if what you say is true. i dare to say there are professionals out there that put the students first.
your points are well taken, but still i feel most apply everywhere.
it seems as though trebuchet is far too uptight.
i maintain that anyone, in any job would do well to just do the best job possible, and all the other crap is just that, crap.
jm
[quote]Tickling has worked well for me in my dealings with the locals.
“Cuuchie cuuchie and few pokes under their arms and we’re like old friends in a flash!”
[/quote]
[quote=“JOHN MOSS”]all of your quotes apply to anywhere you work. not just taiwan. save for the one that claims that women are paid less for men for the same work. this is only different in America because women worked their asses off to change this and make things fair-although some will say its still skewed toward men, I don’t know.
…your points are well taken, but still I feel most apply everywhere.
it seems as though trebuchet is far too uptight.
[/quote]
I don’t think so.
Read what I said carefully – I said that the ladies at the school would feel he was doing less work but being paid more. This is because he is the FOREIGN teacher, not the Chinese teacher. It’s not at all a matter of equal pay for equal work. (And, BTW, women in the US still make some ridiculously low amount of money per $1 earned by men in the same jobs.)
As a foreigner who worked both in Taiwan and the US, I find that the workign culture in Taiwan is substantially different. I don’t think Trebuchet is being paranoid at all. It can be a hugely difficult adjustment to “get on well” with Taiwanese co-workers. When I was first in a university teaching job, I was put into a typical Taiwanese office setup with six desks in it (crammed in all together) with five other teachers. Having to be right on top of them all like that freaked me out so badly that my neck locked up physically and I had to go to an orthopedist because I could not turn my head or raise my arms above my shoulders. He couldn’t find anything wrong – said it was stress – and so it was. It was also very difficult for me to interact with those teachers – despite having reasonably fluent Mandarin – for some of the reasons Trebuchet cites. The university environment is a little different from a language school, but the same principles apply, I think.
On another job, it was demonstrated to me that being “true to the job” without regard to the intricacies of interpersonal relationships in the Taiwanese office was a no-go. It doesn’t matter whether you’re hired to be the expert or not – you MUST figure out how to fit in appropriately, and it matters a LOT more how you run your interpersonal relationships in the office than how precisely correct your English work is, or whatever it is you’re doing. Good English will NOT help you keep your job, but getting along, singing karaoke and looking enthusiastic about all the stuff that is thrust upon you to do or participate in (things to which any Western workers would say politely, “Sorry, Saturday is my day off, it’s family day, so I won’t be able to go/do that/etc.”) will get you a lot farther.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Tickling has worked well for me in my dealings with the locals.
“Cuuchie cuuchie and few pokes under their arms and we’re like old friends in a flash!”[/quote]
Trebuchet,
I feel very much the same way as you do all the time. I’m quite insecure to begin with so the culture differences make it even more difficult.
I find what works best is smiles. One frown will cost you a thousand smiles, so stay sharp. 
bobepine
PS: I’m sorry I’m not much help. I hope I’m not offending you. I hope I don’t sound pretentious. I’m afraid to say anything else now. I wish I’d know exactly what to write. I’m afraid to be rude. I’m sorry.
Not sure if this was mentioned before but is there any way you can switch the order of Night and Day in the title. It would rhyme a little better.
I took lots of chocolate in to all my work mates and secretaries and told them that it was from my mother, who desperately hoped that they would then all be nice to me in exchange for the sweets.
Seems to have had the desired affect.
Update: These bitches can all go beep themselves. They thrive on power trips. They don’t want to get along with me, they want to unite with each other against us foreign men. It gives them a feeling of power to have us all running scared (and boy, are we, every foriegn male teacher at my school is walking on eggshells.)
The male teacher I mentioned can go beep himself even harder. He’s got problems with the fact that we make more money than he does and problems in general. He is in, we are out, he never grew out of junior high school mentality and he likes to get his revenge on the big guys who pushed him around back then
Anything I do to get on their good sides will only suceed in making them feel he has succeeded in their power-trippy intentions to have us all bending over backwards to get the approval that will never come.
I think if I brought in some chocolates they’d accept them politley aand then cackle in Chinese to each other “Haha! We made him buy us chocolates! Now lets be nice for one day, be bitches for the next three days and see what else we can get him to do! We’ve got him just where we want him now!”
They just want us all to be their little marionettes. They don’t like us and never will.
I think the best course of action may be to never change my behavior regardless of how they treat me. I am robot-man now.
Good, now you noticed something isn’t right. Time to actually earn your higher wage now…
Anyone, within any company walks on eggshells when they earn 6 to 9 times more than everyone else… 
I’m telling you, smiles and compliments is the way to go. Buy gifts and smile. Compliment the teacher on their patience and how they handle the students so well. You have to give enough so that the culturally inclined conscience will be indebted to you.
Insist when they refuse and get your way. Give my son. Give more and you shall be repaid. 
Sounds pretty much like premeditated selfishness, I know.
It’s called Guanxi.
bobepine
They can shove their guanxi up their asses.
Nah, so okay, I guess that was good advice. But they can still stick it. That’s how I feel. Today Taiwanese culture blows.
I want to do bad things to their cookies. 
It never gets any better or any easier, it’s all fucked up, but you need to make a living. Don’t try to be friends with anybody, you are not wrong and you are not Chinese. Do your work and keep your nose down. Fuck e’m, but don’t fuck yourself.
They mean no wrong, they just don’t know, ignorance is bliss.
I’m just happy it hasn’t only happened to me. I wish you only the best, and don’t lose any sleep.
Do your best, Peace, Mark
I just want to thank everybody who posted on this thread. Especially Ironlady. My neck hasn’t locked up yet, but I can relate. Thanks for letting me know I’m not insane for being this stressed out.
Thank you all.
:taz:
:taz:
:taz:
:taz:
:taz:
You’re welcome. :dance:
Yes, she put it well. As Dorothy put it in the Wizard of Oz, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” They do things differently in Taiwan. Lots of things can be infuriating at first – cars running through red lights and almost hitting pedestrians, people swinging umbrellas in your face, stopping in doorways to jabber on cellphones, cutting in front of you in line, and lying, cheating and playing stupid games at work.
But if these things drive you into a crazy rage then you’ve got a problem. Yes, they may be screwed up, but don’t expect to change 23 million people. If you swear at every red light runner and fume over every stupid act at work, you’ll be constantly miserable. You’ve got to learn to lighten up, relax, and just accept that there’s a lot of stupidity here. So be it. If you don’t like it you can always go home. But if you choose to live here, your best course of action is to try to accept that Taiwan is the way it is and learn to go with the flow.
I’m not saying you should be rude, inconsiderate and dishonest, but just accept that you will encounter stinking piles of shit from time to time and it’s easier to just step around it than to cuss and swear over the stinking mess.
Finally, it’s possible that the people at your work aren’t as bad as you say. It’s possible that you’re so full of rage that they can sense it and treat you differently not because you’re the foreigner, but because you’re the angry foreigner who acts strangely. I don’t mean any offense by that comment, but just a suggestion that maybe as you learn to accept the differences of Taiwan and just go about your everyday business without paying heed to them, things will gradually get easier.
Good luck. 
Um…people vent – appropriately – on Web fora. Prevents them from going postal at their jobs. The only people who never get frustrated in Taiwan are the lobotomized…suppose the national health covers it?
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]
Finally, it’s possible that the people at your work aren’t as bad as you say. It’s possible that you’re so full of rage that they can sense it and treat you differently not because you’re the foreigner, but because you’re the angry foreigner who acts strangely. I don’t mean any offense by that comment, but just a suggestion that maybe as you learn to accept the differences of Taiwan and just go about your everyday business without paying heed to them, things will gradually get easier.
Good luck. [/quote]
I know. I am angry and frustrated and I’m sure it shows. It’s easy to tell me to relax, easy to tell myself to relax, but how to really do that?
I swear I want to defile some cookies and give them out. It’s the only way I think I could smile and not have it look like a fake smile/
That’s bad and don’t want to stoop to it. Does anyone have any better suggestions?