The travels of Justin

Moments after writing my last entry, I stood up and said goodbye to the only other determined computer user left in the office. Knowing that doors are locked until morning, I waited patiently until 6:30 AM when I figured the doors would be unlocked. As I stood up and said goodbye, the fellow in the office told me that the door would probably still be locked so he’d let me out. I said “pardon?” The whole time I had thought the friend who had disappeared was the only key holder that night; since the key holder was missing-in-action that would mean I’m trapped, right?. Apparently I could have left the building at any time.

Last Monday at English Corner I discussed the strong possibility of playing some sports (probably table tennis) with friends on Saturday night. By the end of the week, some unrelated Saturday lunch plans were suddenly rescheduled to run all evening. I don’t have to worry much, I think to myself, confident that meeting friends for sports was only a big maybe. When I finally wake up after lunch with a mere 5-hours of sleep, Ryan gives me notice that my friend from English Corner dropped by to verify tonight’s plan for 7 pm in building… etc. Unlike most of my classmates, these days I tend to have about 2-weeks in advance scheduled pretty solid which is why I do my email and blogging at weird hours at night. Since that type of scheduling is not a cultural norm, I probably should have expected my classmate to assume “maybe” was really a rock-solid commitment. I apologized to my friend using text messages and he seemed disappointed, but understanding. The dinner I had to go to was not an optional event, so there wasn’t much I could do.

Returning from dinner, Ryan says that my friend dropped by the house again to collect Ryan on the way to play. Ryan — in the middle of helping someone with a paper — has to tell this fellow that he’s busy and can’t play. It’s clear our friend is bothered. This leads me to another observation about student life in TUT: Chinese students sharing a dorm are an extended family; Ryan and I simply live like roommates — supportive, but ultimately independent. Ryan hadn’t even been included in the original discussion to play table tennis and learned about the whole thing today, but our friends assumed that my apparent commitment on Monday also meant Ryan was, by proxy, informed and committed; of course, I had no reason to invite Ryan to something that wasn’t formalized.

Hopefully I’ll see this friend on Monday night and have a good time making cultural expectations a focal point of our English Corner conversation. One of the reasons good relationships are so critical to business success in China can be seen in getting past the minor misunderstandings that might disrupt an otherwise harmonious and mutually-beneficial long-term relationship; in this last regard, we one is reminded that this is sound advice for partnerships of any kind — international or not.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 11th, 2006 at 11:30 am and is filed under Business, Tianjin, China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.