Negotiating with the Chinese: Lesson One

You’re sitting across the negotiating table with your Chinese supplier. Your agenda? (1) Lower your cost per unit by 8%, (2) Speed up production time per 40′ container by one week and (3) Get them to accept more favorable payment terms (e.g. 30% down, Net 90 on the balance).

His agenda? To make as much money as possible and (this is very important), to gain as much face as possible. Hence, your request for lower cost per unit, despite quantity increases, isn’t going to go over very well if you ask for it directly. Secondly, your request for increased production speed will reduce his flexibility in scheduling his jobs. Finally, your request for better payment terms means he’s got to pay more in interest on his operating capital.

Note: If you’re Nike, GM, or Wal-mart, none of this applies. If you’re a medium or small enterprise, read on.

If you say something like “We’ve increased our quantity to nearly three times what it was last year, so we’ll need you to cut your costs by 8% per unit,” you’re going to get this response: The boss will furrow his brow, scratch his chin, and say “That will be very difficult” or alternatively, “That is very inconvenient for us.” What that means, in plain English, is…..NO!

The boss will then explain the fact that his own costs have increased over time. Labor, materials, equipment, rent. Everything has gone up. He was thinking about asking you for a price increase! Also, you don’t do things very efficiently. You send POs, then make changes to them. Some of your preferred suppliers are difficult to work with. Etcetera.

Why did you get this response? Perhaps the more cogent question is, how do you get the response you want?

If you’re a typical American, you won’t really like the answer.

You’re going to have to throw yourself at his mercy, and in doing so, appeal to his social obligation to save your face and to his desire to increase his face.

This is why saying to a Chinese supplier “You know, there are several other factories we could work with here?” will only stall and complicate negotiations. You’ll just irritate them by saying this.

So what do you say? You give him the opportunity to help your business as a bona fide partner by saying something like this: “I’m facing serious competitive pressure in my market. You are my partner–without you, I couldn’t get anything done. If I don’t find a way to decrease my costs by 8%, I don’t see how I can stay in business long-term. Please, Mr. Wang, can you take a closer look at your production costs and find a way to lower my cost per unit?” If you can manage to tear up and let your voice shake a bit, even better.

I know it seems counterintuitive for a Westerner to talk like this (it seems like butt-kissing to most of us), but this is what works in China. You aren’t butt-kissing. You are appealing to a very powerful sociological force: The obligation to give face to a customer who has humbled himself before you, and the desire to increase one’s own face by playing the traditional role of the hero. In this case, the damsel in distress is your company.

One of my consulting clients was a company whose boss refused to adapt to local communication styles. He comes from an aristocratic family, and could never understand or countenance the need to humble oneself and ask for help. He treated his Asian suppliers the way he treated his American suppliers: You work for me, so get in line, or else. His Chinese suppliers felt insulted and unappreciated, and after a time, did everything they could to rip him off. I had all ten fingers and all ten toes in the dam, trying to keep the relationship from breaking, but after a few years, it did indeed break. The relationship ended messily, with threats of lawsuits back and forth.

Do you want to do your manufacturing work in China? Then you’d better learn to communicate with the Chinese. You’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of your competition, who are thinking “Culture? Schmulture! A supplier who won’t do what I ask can kiss my red, white, and blue butt!” Meanwhile, you’re getting the unit pricing, delivery schedule, and payment terms you want.

Now, do you want to sell your products in China? I’ll write about that in Lesson Two.

Chinese Teacher Experiences Culture Shock…in Alabama

I saw this little item on a regional news website (first four paragraphs):

Chinese teacher has culture shock at Elberta school

ELBERTA, Ala. (AP) - A small school in south Baldwin County has become the only one in Alabama and the first Catholic elementary school in the country to be chosen for a guest teacher program designed to teach students Chinese.

The program at St. Benedict Catholic School brings in a guest Chinese teacher and is co-sponsored by the College Board and Hanban, China’s Office of Chinese Language Council International.

St. Benedict, which has 158 students in pre-kindergarten through eight grade, decided to add Chinese to its foreign language curriculum, augmenting a Spanish program that launched a few years ago.

The article goes on to describe the culture shock felt by the Chinese teacher, a Shanghai native.

While I feel for this fellow, who is indubitably confused as all hell, I have to appreciate the humor of this situation. There is nothing in this world that will fully prepare a Shanghai native for life in any village, town, or city in the United States. By the same token, there is nothing in this world that will fully prepare an American for life in most parts of Asia.

I wonder what, if any, sort of training the Chinese teacher had before he left for small town USA. I wonder what sort of training, if any, the school had in hosting a visiting Chinese teacher. Probably none.

What’s the problem, you may ask? What exactly are the differences between Chinese and American culture?

Start with this idea:

EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT!

Nothing is the same. Food, style of dress, communication styles, value systems, religious beliefs, political environments…the list of differences is endless. Which is why, of course, I live in greater China. Still, even those of us who have sense of the differentness between the cultures of East and West are sometimes frustrated by the cultural differences we encounter.

My advice to both the teacher and the school: Patience, openness, and tolerance. Judgment and an overweening focus on cultural differences will make you miserable. Teacher Wang, think of your colleagues and students and their strange behavior as “ke ai (loveable),” and parents, teachers, and students at St. Benedict Catholic School, give Mr. Wang the gift of acceptance. Let him eat his fried fish and rice, drink his green tea, wear his slippers in the faculty lounge if he chooses to.

In closing, I quote the Principal of the school:

“We felt like children who have Chinese language are going to be able to write their own ticket when they get to college,” Principal Kendall McKee said.

I know that reporters typically aren’t able to communicate all of the thought and planning that precedes a decision to implement a Chinese language program in a school, but statements such as these concern me a bit.

Why? Because you’ve got to learn a language like Mandarin in the proper cultural context. You can’t just learn some vocabulary, tones, and sentence structure and expect to have any idea what is going on. Chinese is nothing like Spanish. Or French. Or German. There are huge cultural gaps here, and from a linguistic perspective, it would be easier for a native English speaker to learn all three of the aforementioned romance languages than it will be to master Mandarin.

Is there a program in place to bring the students to China, or to make some effort to bring China to the students? What sorts of cultural activities are built into the language program? Does the principal himself know anything about Chinese culture? Does the Chinese teacher know how to communicate his own culture to the kids? I hope there’s more going on here than just a Chinese teacher spending a year teaching kids the difference between the tones and the first few hundred words in Mandarin. Otherwise, this project has the potential to turn out to be an exercise in waste and frustration for all involved.

I wish both sides well. I hope the news station reports on progress made on both sides in six months or so.

How to Learn Fluent Mandarin Chinese

As one of the most popular posts on this site is my piece on the difficulty of learning Mandarin, I thought I’d post this article as a follow up. Please also note that the original audience for the piece was native English speakers already living in greater China, so there may be some localized usage that you don’t quite understand (e.g. KTV=karaoke club).You can find a .pdf version of the magazine this article was first published in here: Taiwanease Issue No. 11.

If you wish to reprint or copy this article, please contact me for permission.

How to Learn to Speak and Read Fluent Mandarin

By Truett Black

Perhaps you’re new to Taiwan and determined to understand what is going on around you; perhaps you’ve been in Taiwan for some time, and feel like you’ve dug yourself into a pit of linguistic and cultural ignorance by not being able to speak or read Mandarin; perhaps you’ve figured out that being able to communicate in Mandarin will open up a number of career opportunities, elevating you beyond the status of a temporary worker in Taiwan’s English, editing, banking, or engineering industries.

Whatever your motivation, learning to speak and read Mandarin fluently, as opposed to speaking “barely getting by” Mandarin, is a task akin to learning to fly a jet airplane. It is not something you will accomplish without powerful discipline, a tolerance for frustration and mental exhaustion, and the ability to laugh at yourself. In my October 6, 2006 article for Taiwanease, “Why You Shouldn’t Learn Chinese,” I wrote about the difficulties of becoming fluent in Mandarin. I suggested that before you begin learning Mandarin, you decide whether you’re up to the task or not. In this article, I’ll tell you how to become fluent in spoken and written Mandarin.

Make Learning Mandarin Your Mission in Life

First, while you are learning Mandarin, nothing can be more important than accomplishing your fluency goals. Unless you are a rare linguistic genius, there are no half-measures here. You’ve got to get extreme. Stop spending so much free time with people who speak English. If you are a “scholar” and like to research obscure language acquisition theories, drop the pedagogy and start getting your hands dirty. Maintain your exercise program, but only work out after you’ve done what you need to do with Mandarin each day. If you have a busy work schedule, cut back a bit. Aside from devoting a few hours each day to formal learning activities, you’ll have to keep the language learning meter running throughout your day. You’ll need to self-impose a disciplined learning regimen.

Expect to be Patronized by Well-Meaning People

Taiwanese people are uniformly generous in helping the unfortunate foreigners in their midst who wish to learn Mandarin. They are also frequently condescending. Expect to be laughed at when you first start speaking Mandarin, to be corrected even when you nearly got the tone right, and to be lectured to about vague and largely useless factoids concerning the Chinese language. It is essential that you develop the ability to laugh at yourself while you are learning Mandarin, or you will soon find yourself applying for a bed in the local insane asylum. The truth is, a beginning Mandarin student’s pronunciation does sound pretty damned funny. It is amusing to hear a foreigner belt out a chorus of atonal, guttural Mandarin in a public place. You’ll probably join the locals in chuckling at lousy “foreigner Mandarin” in a year or two, so don’t get offended if someone laughs at you.

Stick with the Program

Here’s a self-directed program for non-Chinese majors who want to become fully functional members of Mandarin speaking society. Mileage may vary, and you’ll make some adjustments to the program as you go along, but these are the essentials if you want to be fluent.

1. Take Classes: Sign up for at least three months of intensive Mandarin classes. You’ll need a structured program for building foundational vocabulary and grammar, learning the basics of pronunciation, and getting used to set of texts. In Taiwan, there are several options for Mandarin classes. See the Learning Chinese Forum on www.forumosa.com for information on Chinese class options in Taiwan. Plan on taking language classes for about six months, but no longer than a year—if you live in Taiwan, classes will actually become counterproductive after a year unless you are studying Chinese literature.

2. Learn Vocabulary All Day: Carry a vocabulary “leech book” with you at all times, and leech 10-15 words and phrases a day from people you speak with, on top of the words and phrases you pick up from your textbooks. Review the words and phrases you’ve learned whenever you’ve got a bit of downtime (e.g. on the bus, waiting in line). If you stick with this program, you’ll learn four thousand or more words and phrases in context over the course of a year. To do this, you’ll need to learn some form of romanization as soon as possible. My personal favorite is Yale romanization, but Pinyin works well too. See www.pinyin.info for a number of excellent tools that will help you learn romanization. As for learning zhuyin, or BoPoMoFo, it is necessary to read zhuyin for several reasons, but I don’t think it is necessary to learn to write zhuyin. You’ll learn zhuyin in your classes, or you can learn it online very quickly.

3. Get the Right Dictionary: My favorite Chinese to English dictionary is Lanbridge’s Concise Chinese-English Dictionary. The Far East Chinese-English Dictionary is also excellent. Make your dictionary your friend. Don’t let a day go by without checking on the meanings of the new words and phrases you learned that day.

4. Buy A Set of Texts: As your language classes come to an end, buy whatever books are left in the series you’ve been studying, and use them for self-study. My favorite series of Mandarin texts is the John DeFrancis series. This series comes in a set of three books, Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced, and was all the rage among students of Mandarin for years. Study these texts on your own for one hour each morning, come rain, shine, or hangover.

5. Become a Mandarin Social Butterfly: I don’t advocate making friends with people just so that you can improve your language skills. I do advocate making friends with Taiwanese people you can relate to in some way, and entering their linguistic world rather than requiring them to enter yours. Get to know the owners of the shops in your neighborhood. Go out with local colleagues. Join a local hobbyist group. Accept invitations to KTV parties and formal social events. If you want to learn Mandarin, you’ve got to get involved in local society in a way that requires you to communicate with people in Mandarin.

6. Use Flashcards to Learn Characters: Six months into your program, begin learning characters in earnest. Buy a set of flashcards with about 1,000 characters, and work through them until you know them backward and forward. You’ll have seen many of them in your language classes. Learning to write them is optional—some people find it helpful for retention, others don’t. These first characters you learn will form the foundation of your character recognition skills.

7. Go Back to Elementary School: Once you’ve learned 1,000 or so characters, in addition to your work with advanced Mandarin texts, begin working through the elementary school Mandarin texts. Read a chapter each morning. Start with grade two and go through grade six. The junior high school texts are optional—once you can read at a sixth grade level, you’ll be able to read magazines and newspapers in Mandarin.

8. Take Reading to a Professional Level: Once you’re able to read sixth grade texts and have begun reading newspapers and magazines, take a job as a Chinese-English translator. You can work on a volunteer basis to gain experience, or bravely sign up with an agency as a freelancer. Do work for your school if you are a teacher, anything to gain experience. Nothing will improve your ability to read and analyze written Mandarin better than working as a translator.

9. Interpret: The true test of your speaking abilities is working as an interpreter. Around the same time you begin translating, volunteer your services as an interpreter. Do this for schools, churches, or charitable organizations. Go from Mandarin to English, and then from English to Mandarin. Working as a professional interpreter takes years of study, but you don’t really need to become a professional. More likely, you’ll end up using your interpreting skills in business, engineering, or education.

10. On Writing: I promised a program for developing fluency in speaking and reading. If you want to learn to write as well, the best text available is William McNaughton’s Reading and Writing Chinese. For most foreigners in Taiwan, writing will never be a necessity. In my work, I need to write in Mandarin most every day. But in this era of computers and e-mail, I just type.

Follow this two year regimen, and reading and speaking Mandarin will become a permanent skill, one that you’ll utilize on a daily basis while you live in Taiwan or China, and one that will go on your resume for life.

Copyright 2007 Truett Black

Learning Chinese: How Difficult is It?

For the past year or so, the number of U.S. news items related to learning Mandarin has exploded. Just today, I read an article announcing the opening of another Confucius Institute, this time in Southern California at UCLA. The Confucius Institutes are vehicles for promoting Chinese culture, and serve as Mandarin learning centers, a la the British Council with its English programs.

In this week’s International Edition of Newsweek, Asia scholar Stephen Noerper writes in his piece “Over a Billion Served,” that the Chinese government predicts that 100 million people worldwide will be studying Mandarin as a second language by 2010. The U.S. Department of Education has set the goal of having 5% of all students in the U.S. enrolled in Mandarin language programs within the next two years.

What nobody is really talking about* is whether or not these people will actually be able to learn to speak Mandarin with any degree of fluency. For anyone who has been thinking “Gee, I’d like to learn Mandarin,” I think you ought to know something about learning Mandarin: getting fluent in Mandarin is extremely difficult, and very few non-Chinese people are able to become functional speakers and writers of Mandarin.

(Warning: Horn tooting follows) As an American who speaks, reads, and writes fluent Mandarin, I always encourage people who want to learn Mandarin to remain dedicated to the task. Matter of fact, over the past eighteen years, I’ve spent a good many hours offering advice and coaching to would-be Sinophiles who want to learn to speak the language of the Middle Kingdom.

Some language learners DO learn to speak and write Mandarin fluently. I worked with a group of missionaries way back when, and I’d say 20% of them were really fluent after a year or so in the country. But these were missionaries, guys and gals who devoted their lives to language (and scripture) study. The other 80% either gave up or achieved marginal functionality in the language. So yes, some people are able to get fluent enough in a few years to be able to interpret, translate, conduct business, etc.

Still, the fact of the matter is, the percentage of Mandarin students who are able stick with their learning program, overcoming the stress, frustration, and constant headaches involved in becoming fully, functionally fluent in Chinese is lower than the Navy Seal training graduation rate. I’d venture to guess that there are plenty of Navy Seals who can handle starvation and sleep deprivation but who would ring the bell after a few months of learning Mandarin.

Why is learning Mandarin so difficult? Check out this article by David Moser on www.pinyin.info for a humorous primer on why learning Mandarin is so tough. Mr. Moser’s article deals with some of the technical problems inherent in learning Mandarin. To add my own two cents, there are some very practical problems for native English speakers who want to learn Mandarin, namely:

1. You won’t really get fluent in Mandarin if you don’t live in Taiwan or China for at least six months to a year.

2. You can’t get fluent in Mandarin unless it is your all-encompassing mission in life to do so. Most people don’t have that kind of time or desire.

3. Even if you get somewhat fluent, you will probably always sound like a foreigner, and Chinese people will laugh at you and correct you all the day long. Are you prepared to deal with this somewhat disconcerting cultural difference? Note: I don’t think that Chinese people realize how hurtful it is to laugh at a foreigner who mispronounces a word or phrase in Mandarin. For them, the situation is humorous, but not really in a “you’re an idiot” sort of way. The problem, of course, is that even if you approach this situation objectively, there is something cutting about someone laughing at you or publicly correcting you that is difficult to digest without some difficulty.

4 . You’ll probably never learn to write by hand very well. You’ll have to get by with using a phonemic alphabet called BoPoMoFo to type, and your writing will always seem foreign.

For a more comprehensive report on the difficulties involved in learning Mandarin, see my article in Taiwanease Magazine entitled “Why You Shouldn’t Learn Mandarin.” (Note: The link takes you to a .pdf download. My article begins on page 4, and is written under my pen name, Steven D. Quinn).

I don’t want to discourage people who want to learn Mandarin, I just want them to know what they are getting into. Ergo, if you are thinking of sending your kid or your next China-based product manager off to weekend Mandarin classes, hoping that they’ll learn enough to “get by” after six months or a year of classes, I think you’re dreaming.

I’d first find out whether or not your student has a burning desire to speak fluent Mandarin, and is willing to stick with the program until he is indeed fluent enough to function in a Mandarin-speaking society. Otherwise, you’d be better off sending him to a modern Chinese history course, taught in English.

*To give credit to Mr. Noerper, he does mention in his article that “…the language is hard, with more than 2,500 characters generally employed in daily writing and a complex tonal speaking system.” These are good points, but they are only the tip of the linguistic iceberg.

If any of my readers wants specific advice about what you can realistically expect out of U.S.-based Mandarin classes, please feel free to e-mail me.

Translating English Names into Chinese

Several U.S. presidential candidates are facing a crisis in translation. No, they aren’t asking Germans to join them in eating a local pastry, a la JFK. They are facing the prospect of having their names translated into Mandarin in ways that they aren’t likely to be happy with. According to a June 26, 2007 article from the Associated Press entitled “Candidates’ names are tough in Chinese,” Mitt Romney may end up with a Chinese moniker that means “sticky rice” or “uncooked rice.” Barack Obama might be sinicized into “Oh Bus Horse.” (Click here for the link to the full article).

I typically frown on the way English names are translated into Mandarin. Unlike the way foreign names are translated into Chinese, Chinese parents give their children names that have meaning. For example, a popular man’s name among the Chinese is “Jun Xiung,” which roughly translates to “handsome and brave.”

The preferred method of translation for Western names is to choose Chinese characters that rhyme with the English name. Under this method, my last name, Black, would sound like this “Bu Lai Ke.”Roughly translated, my transliterated surname means “cloth come guest.” In order words, laughable gibberish.

I’ve been through several Chinese names over the years. Until I chose a name that actually had some meaning in Chinese, the various versions of my names always elicited laughter among the Chinese.

If America’s presidential candidates want to avoid having names that turn them into laughingstocks among Chinese speakers, they’ll hire an expert to give them an official Chinese name that won’t elicit chuckles from Chinese audiences.

I hereby volunteer my services, free of charge. I’ll give any candidate who requests it a Chinese name that means something, and that won’t make Chinese people laugh.

I only ask that if the candidate I help is elected, I get a tax break in 2009.