Are All Asian Businessmen Alike?

I have learned that Asian businessmen are not all alike.

This past week I found myself attempting to negotiate with Asian businessmen on two different occasions.. 

First, I was involved in negotiations for a Thai client. After failing to get the best deal we had both hoped for, I told her that I wished my husband had been there to strike a better bargain for her with her Indian landlord.  My client readily agreed that my husband was an excellent negotiator - "because he is Chinese!" she said.  She added, "We Thai don't negotiate. We just keep smiling--through our gritted teeth."

After receiving some wise tips from my husband, I went back to the table the following day and I was able to negotiate a better lease agreement for my client.

A few days later my husband and I were negotiating with some Vietnamese and Korean businessmen. Afterward, my husband summed up the negotiation very concisely. 

"The Vietnamese are always going to argue the point, even if the conversation is going their way!  The Koreans are just going to walk away--not wasting a minute of their time if they don't like the way the conversation is going.  And both groups know that the Chinese will bring them all back to the table and negotiate a compromise!"

In global business negotiations, you need to know where everyone is coming from!

Synthia Woodcock-Dang    

Déjame en paz!

At age nineteen I was a university student in Madrid. Because I had previously lived in Venezuela, I thought that I knew a lot about Spanish culture.  

One Saturday evening, all dressed up for dancing, I went out with some fellow students to local nightclubs. As is typical in Madrid, we started out late, around eleven, and enjoyed eating tapas and listening to music until early Sunday morning. Eventually the bars closed.  My friends all lived in the same neighborhood and decided to go home together on the metro. They urged me, however, to get a cab since they didn’t think it would be safe for a young woman to be alone at that hour. I told them stubbornly that I preferred to use the metro as it would be cheaper and I could certainly fend for myself. I went ahead and purchased my ticket. I soon discovered that there were very few madrileños using the metro early on this Sunday morning.

While I was waiting for my train, an older Spanish man passed me and paid me a compliment, as men are wont to do in Latin culture. Since I considered myself a feminist, I was very irritated by his remark. I immediately reacted and snapped at him, saying “Déjame en paz” (“Leave me alone”).

I soon realized that I had made a serious mistake. I had offended his masculinity. His reaction was swift. He grabbed me and slapped my face repeatedly.  Then he stalked off, leaving me traumatized but physically fine, deep in the recesses of the subway.  

Though it was an unpleasant experience, the lesson was an important one. A native madrileña woman would never have reacted; she would simply have ignored the man. In the future, I too went native and used this much safer strategy.

Reed Stevens Skoug
Teacher of Spanish
Ft. Washington, PA

Flying Heads of Lettuce in Harry Potter

I decided to read the first Harry Potter book in Spanish to keep up my language skills. I figured since I’d already read it in English, I wouldn’t need to sit there with the dictionary, painstakingly looking up the words and ruining the flow of the story.

Well, by the end of the first chapter, I was already confused. Why were people throwing heads of lettuce through the air all the time? I certainly didn’t remember all that flying lettuce from the English version. A few chapters in, I just couldn’t take it anymore—I had to look it up.

Oh. Wait. “Lechuga” means “lettuce.” But “lechuza” means “owl.”

Nicole Finch

Are you really full?

I was 19 years old when I went to France for the first time to visit my cousins. Upon my arrival they prepared a delicious feast to welcome me. We all ate a lot. At a certain point I just couldn't eat another morsel and so I proclaimed, "Je suis pleine."

I was disconcerted when I saw the shocked looks around the table. I soon learned that, in slang, "Je suis pleine" means "I am expecting a baby." 

Some expressions definitely lose - or add! - something in translation.

June Graff

Editor's Note: I had exactly the same experience shortly after I arrived in Italy and announced to my friends over lunch one day, "Io sono piena."

What? Mother Dirt?

While in Antigua, Guatemala, I was riding a bus and overheard two American students discussing where they should eat dinner. The bus passed a restaurant called "Madre Tierra."

One student read the sign out loud and said, "Mother Dirt! Ugh! Who would want to eat there?"

I held my tongue, since his companion immediately corrected him and said, "It's not Mother Dirt! It's Mother Earth."

Big difference!

RoseAnna Mueller
Columbia College Chicago

French or English in Belgium?

Some time ago a Flemish Belgian friend of mine and I went dancing at the Ghent Festival, an event that attracts people from miles around, including northern France and all of the Benelux countries. A French-speaking gentleman asked me to dance for a long sequence of dances, and we had a pleasant but rudimentary conversation in French. I was very proud of myself.

"Who was the guy who thought you were a goddess and kept dancing with you?" asked my friend afterwards.

"I think he's French," I replied. "I suppose he could be a Walloon [French-speaking Belgian], but he kept speaking French to me even after finding out that I was an American. A Belgian would most likely have switched to English automatically when he heard that."

"He spoke French to you? He's definitely French," my friend said loftily. "No Belgian would do that."

Flemish and Walloons don't get along very well and have low opinions of each other's language skills, but they have even more contempt for the language skills of all non-Belgians!

- Rebecca

Tex-Mex vs. Mex

When I was in college, I studied abroad in Mexico. On my first day with my new host family, they offered me some salsa with my lunch. Being from Texas, I considered myself to be a connoisseur of spicy foods, particularly Tex-Mex food, which I figured was the same as Mexican food, anyway.

I heaped a spoonful of the salsa onto my rice, took a huge mouthful, and promptly began to cough uncontrollably. I gulped water, to no avail, and could only sit there as red as a beet, with tears in my eyes, as my host family stared at me. "It was spicier than I expected," I managed to gasp.

In spite of my frightful first experience with Mexican spices, I didn't learn my lesson. A few months later, I found some chipotle peppers in my host family's fridge. I'd eaten sandwiches with the same peppers and thought they were quite tasty. So I popped a whole one into my mouth.

My immediate thought was that I was either going blind or passing out. I groped for a napkin and spit it out, tongue aflame.

Nowadays, I don’t eat chipotles by themselves, and I use salsa very sparingly.

-Rebecca from Texas

A Day in Lovers' Lane

I visited Spain for the first time when I was a college student. It was the most wonderful experience of my life! I met so many great people and I was warmly received as a member of their families.

I was invited one weekend to a family gathering in a tiny town outside of Seville. The entire pueblo knew that the Americana was in town and wanted to meet her, i.e. me!

After a day of climbing the hills of the family’s olive orchard (el huerto), we arrived at Miguel Angel’s grandmother’s home. The living room was filled to capacity with rows of chairs occupied by relatives who had come to meet Miguel Angel’s American friend.

“So… what did you do today?” they asked me in Spanish. I answered with unbridled enthusiasm, “Fuimos a la huerta!” The room became suddenly quiet! The grandmother looked like she was ready to keel over.

“What did I say?” I anxiously asked my friend.

“Only that we went to ‘Lovers' Lane’ for the day!” he responded.

My mix-up with word gender didn’t help the international stereotype of the American female! El huerto means orchard. La huerta, as I learned the hard way, means Lovers' Lane!

I do share this story with my older students when they question whether “el & la” really make that big of a difference!

Many thanks to Peggy Kinney McHugh for this amusing story. She presently teaches Spanish at Camp Hill Jr. and Sr. High Schools in PA.

Looking for “skins” in Salamanca

When I went to study in Salamanca, Spain in 1984, I found it challenging to find a few things that were common in the US. One item I needed and could not easily find was double A batteries for my small cassette player.

One day, after I had been living in Salamanca for five months and was very confident with my Spanish, I went into a store in the Plaza Mayor. Like in many of the smaller shops, you couldn’t wander around by yourself. You had to tell the salesperson what you were looking for. When I was asked what I wanted, I replied, “pieles.”

The woman gave me a puzzled look and asked me to repeat. I repeated what I had said in what I thought was perfect Spanish: “Yes, I want skins,” I said a bit more forcefully this time. She was still puzzled and kindly asked me to repeat again. I did, still certain I was asking for batteries.

The woman then pinched the skin around her wrist to indicate that I had asked for ‘skins.’ I am certain I turned bright red. I was so embarrassed that not only did I not buy batteries that day I never went back to that store. Now I can look back and laugh, but at the time I was mortified that I had used the wrong word, pieles instead of pilas, and was unable to laugh at myself.

We would like to thank Colleen Sheehan for submitting this amusing story. She currently teaches Levels I, IV and V Spanish at the Cobleskill-Richmondville High School in New York and has taught Spanish for 20 years.

A Foreigner in His Own Country

My husband and I were in Florence and went to the Accademia di Belle Arti to see Michelangelo's magnificent statue of David. We got in line for tickets. I noticed that there were two categories, discounted tickets for Italian citizens and regular tickets for everyone else. When it was my turn, I asked for an Italian ticket. I am an American citizen by birth but also an Italian citizen by marriage. I showed my Italian passport and got my ticket. When it was my husband's turn, he too asked for an Italian ticket. He was born in Rome and lived in Italy for the first 50 years of his life. He was, in other words, a "real" Italian. The ticket man asked to see a document. He didn't have his passport with him but explained to the man in perfect Italian that he was indeed an Italian, born and bred. The man insisted on seeing a document. The many Italians in the long line behind us immediately took sides. They started yelling and shouting, "Give him a ticket! Can't you tell he is Italian? Listen to him!" The man would not give an inch. My husband ended up paying full price. Italians are known for not being sticklers for rules. Why was this one so stubborn? He is lucky a riot didn't take place. It almost did!

Submitted by Andrea, Virginia

Another Foreigner in His Own Country

Sometimes the shocks are reserved for coming home.
I’m an American of Asian descent. Back from a year abroad, I’d just landed in New York. I caught the free shuttle bus from one of the parking lots at JFK to the Howard Beach subway station. When we arrived at the station, the bus knelt with a pneumatic hiss and I struggled off, suitcases heavy with gifts, books, and a year’s living. In my wallet I had a wadded-up twenty that I’d held onto for the last twelve months, anticipating my arrival back in the States. But the MetroCard machines weren’t taking bills.
I asked the man in the glass booth for change.
He sighed. “Do I look like I’m here to give you change?” he asked.
“Well…,” I began, taken aback. There were piles of coins on the counter in front of him.
Before I could explain, he continued, “If I went to your country, I’d make sure I had some change on me when I got off the plane.”
Welcome to New York, I thought, reaching for my passport.

Submitted by Edward Gauvin, Writer and French Translator

Culture Shock in One's Own Country

Pete and Shorty's

I have discovered that I can encounter culture shock without even leaving the US. Let me share the clash I recently had with another culture.

I live in Washington, DC. Last month I made a trip to the Midwest. One day I stopped for lunch at Pete and Shorty's in a small rural town. As I am a vegetarian, I was delighted to find "veggie burger" on the menu. I was surprised, however, because I hadn't expected such an item on a menu in America's heartland. I ordered it. This is what the waitress brought me.


It looked like an old-fashioned hamburger to me so I asked the waitress, "Is this a hamburger?" She answered in the affirmative. "But I ordered a veggie burger." She looked at me as if she had never in her entire life encountered anyone with such a low IQ. With a triumphant flourish, she pointed to the slice of tomato on the bun and asserted, "There's the vegetable."

- Chris Gilbert, Washington, DC

Two pounds of pork chops, please

I had lived in Chicago for about two years. I had done some traveling and learned some Spanish in Chile, Cuba, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico, so I was totally confident in my Spanish.

I went to a small Mexican-American owned meat market in my neighborhood for some pork chops one night, and I asked the man behind the counter: "Por favor, Senor, pero podrias darme dos labios de chuletas?" He stared at me, and I repeated myself.

"What do you want?" He asked me, rather angrily in English... I stammered "Two pounds of pork chops..."

"Ah, si" he said. "Dos LIBRAS de chuletas." I had been asking him for two lips of pork chops. Que horror!

Sean O.

Complaining about air pollution, or so I thought

Tianjin was, and is, a huge industrial city, about an hour and a half from Beijing. The first word I looked up in my tiny English-Chinese dictionary, after arriving in the city, was the word for "air pollution," since Tianjin had the worst air pollution problem I had ever seen. However, cab drivers and other people I met were giving me odd, puzzled stares when I commented on the smoky, smelly, choking atmosphere.

One day one of my cab drivers gave me a language lesson. Still trying my usual topic of conversation, I mentioned what I thought was “air pollution” and this cab driver pointed to the Chinese flag. Much to my chagrin, I suddenly realized that I had actually been saying something like, "Red flag pollution." My face became as red as the flag I had been insulting!

Fortunately, the Chinese people are very tolerant of their erring or seemingly crazy waiguoren pengyou (foreigner friends)!

- Morris Jordan from Colorado

Be careful when you say “ma” in China

I had been teaching English in China for about a month and had been trying to cram a lot of Chinese vocabulary into my brain. One day I was strolling along Heiniuchengdao in Tianjin with one of my new Chinese friends, when I spied a horse pulling a wagon.

Showing off a bit, I pointed to the horse and said, "Ma.”

My Chinese friend doubled over with laughter. When I got him to calm down a bit, he explained that I had not used the "falling and rising" tone for the syllable which meant "horse." Apparently, I had called the horse "mother." My friend thought it was very appropriate!

- Morris Jordan from Colorado

Driving in the US: Encounter with a Policeman

One day, a few months after I had come to the United States for good, I received my driver’s license. I was so thrilled that I decided to take a drive to go shopping at an Asian market.

As I was approaching that Asian market, I got a little confused as to where the entrance from the street was. Finally, I saw a narrow turning path. I put the turn signal on. I drove a couple of feet, and then I heard a siren. There was a police car right behind me and the policeman was waving his hand for me to stop. I stopped, opened my car door, stepped out of my car, and walked toward the police car.

When the policeman got out of his car, I asked him, “Why are you following me? Did I do anything wrong?” The policeman seemed very shocked at my upfront questions. Instead of answering me, he told me to get back into my car. “Why?” I asked, refusing to go back to my car. Then my tears started to flow. “You don’t know why, young lady?” the policeman asked. “First, you were not in the turn lane when you turned into the shopping center; second, you are supposed to sit in the car and wait for the policeman to come to you.”

In China, drivers who break the traffic rules are supposed to come forward to the policeman. Also Chinese policemen always collect the fine on the spot, in cash. This American policeman took pity on me and didn’t give me a ticket but I learned a hard lesson that day!

- Gwen Qin

Fifteen Bucks? Bucks?

Shopping Experience

A few days after I left China and settled down in Colorado, I went shopping. While I was in the store, I saw a nice pair of sunglasses on the shelf. I picked them up and wanted to find out how much they cost, but I found no price sticker on the glasses. So I went to one of the clerks and asked him how much the sunglasses were.

“Fifteen bucks,” the gentleman answered. “Fifteen bucks?” I asked incredulously. “That is a very reasonable price, ma’am,” the gentleman added.

I thought to myself, “I studied in school that ’buck’ means ‘male deer.’ That makes no sense at all. A pair of sunglasses costs a herd of deer? What kind of currency was he talking about?” I wanted to make sure that he knew I wanted to buy a pair of sunglasses with U.S. dollars.

Finally, I gathered from the conversation around me that “buck” was a slang word for “dollar.” I then asked him, “So these sunglasses cost fifteen dollars?” The clerk responded, “You bet!” “Oh, no, sir,” I said. “I don’t want to gamble. I just want to pay the money for the sunglasses.”

Gwen Qin

Chinese teacher

Littleton, Colorado

Lunch at McDonald's: Get me out of here!

When I first come to the USA, i went to McDonald's with a friend. It was around 1pm. I was sitting at a table, chatting with my friend, and drinking a soda.Then one of the employees came and started wiping the floor around us. I was so shocked. I looked at my friend very surprised. She started laughing at me.

"What is this?" I asked her, indignantly. "We are eating here and this person is blowing dirt on us? I need to get out of here."

My friend calmed me down and told me that it was normal. "You are new but you will be OK very soon," she said.

In my culture nobody blows dirt on you while you are eating. This was my first big shock when I came to the USA but now I don't even look at somebody who is cleaning the floor while I am eating. I simply eat and leave the place. I understand that, unless they clean, the next customer might not feel good about the place because it is dirty if they do not clean in between. It makes sense to me now because the place is open the whole day giving service, so it must be cleaned throughout the day.

-M from Ethiopa

No, not an escalator, please!

When I first arrived in Washington, my cousin took me to a shopping mall. I found it very exciting but I was terrified at the sight of the escalators. I had never seen an escalator before in my life and I absolutely refused to set foot on one. It was just too scary! My cousin became very annoyed with me because, every time we had to go up or down a floor, we had to look for an elevator. Elevators were not easy to find. Escalators are much more popular. I slowly became used to escalators but it took a while!

- Betty from Ethiopia

Speak up or else you are fired!

When I first started working in the US, I was very quiet. I never said anything to my colleagues and I never spoke at meetings.

One day my boss called me to his office. He was very upset with me. He told me that I would lose my job if I didn't change my behavior. I should talk with my co-workers during break time and I should speak up at meetings. I explained to him that I didn't know that I was behaving improperly. In my native culture, one gained respect from his co-workers by being quiet. I learned that this was not the case in the US. I had to change my ways immediately. It was not easy at first but I got used to it. Now I feel very comfortable talking with everyone.

- Haile from Ethiopia

Where is the Rest Room?

When I moved to the United States, I got a job as an assistant waiter at a Holiday Inn. One day a customer asked me where the restroom was. I didn’t know this word very well so I tried to guess its meaning. "Rest" means "sit" so I thought that this person was tired and needed a quiet area to sit in. So I took him out to the lobby and I showed him a big sofa. I thought he could sit there. It soon became obvious that I had not guessed correctly!

After that, when I didn't know the answer, I would ask my boss.

It is puzzling, however, why Americans call the bathroom a restroom in a public place and a bathroom in one's home.

Haile from Ethiopa

Laundry Etiquette in China

I was staying at a university hotel in Shanghai. One evening, I was preparing to leave for a classical music concert at the Shanghai Opera House.

Since I was meeting my group in the lobby, I thought it would be a perfect time to drop off my laundry at the desk. The university had provided a plastic laundry bag and a little blue slip to list the contents. I walked over to the desk and handed the lady my bag, along with the blue slip. Imagine my surprise as she proceeded to open the bag, empty out its contents on the top of the counter, and match every item to the list I had just given her. She was thorough, and, to make sure that she properly identified everything, she held each piece high up in the air and shook it.

I could anticipate that, sooner or later, she would get to my underwear. Just the thought of her waving my panties in front of my friends sent me into a panic. I asked her if she would mind taking care of this behind the counter, but she either didn't understand my English or just didn't see what my problem was.

The dreaded moment came. She dutifully picked up my panties one by one, held them up for everybody to see, and made a little mark for each on the blue slip. I was mortified. I was frantically looking for a button to push that would make me vanish.

Lessons learned: Concepts of privacy vary from place to place and even the most embarrassing situation is temporary.

- Nathalie

http://www.SpeakEZLanguages.com