Our Foreign Expert Eric He Uses Chopsticks Better Than the Chinese

‘Hello. Sorry for my poor Chinese’. In the Deputy General Manager’s Office of SANY-Palfinger Company in Ningxiang, the standard Mandarin pronunciation of Eric, an American, amazed our journalist. However his Mandarin was limited to a few words. With the help of a translator, he talked about his working experience in SANY. He said that ‘The summer in Changsha is hot and people here are hospitable’. Eric is fond of spicy food. The hospitality of Changsha made him feel ease at home.

Beating His Chinese Colleagues for Picking Up Peanuts with Chopsticks

‘The development in Changsha is too fast!’ Eric exclaimed. To him, the greatest impression lies on the rapid changes in Changsha. Eric worked many years in Singapore before. He commented that Singapore has a high level of internationalization and Changsha is catching up with a faster and faster pace. In the recent two years of his working in SANY, Eric not only fell in love with delicious Changsha food, but also polished his skills of using chopsticks to eat peanuts. Eric is very fond of peanuts soaked with vinegar. For a foreigner, it is not an easy task picking up peanuts one by one with chopsticks. Half a year earlier, Eric contested with his colleagues for picking up peanuts with chopsticks during dinnertime. He proceeded with amazing speed and gained a complete victory. Talking about the tricks, Erick claimed that ‘The trick is simply that practice makes perfect’.

Combining Chinese and US Styles in Working, Adapting to the Culture in the Joint Venture Enterprise.

As the Deputy General Manager and Financial Executive Officer in a Sino-Foreign joint adventure enterprise, Eric is in charge of the finance, production procedures, promotion of information technology and management of other daily activities. With the effort of Eric and his colleagues, the technology and management philosophy from Europe got to adapt to the different operation culture in SANY and were applied successfully.

Eric informed the journalist that the key to success in a joint venture enterprise lies in communication. He also said that ‘As long as SANY and Palfinger communicated effectively with each other, the joint power of the two companies will achieve a desirable effect analogous to one plus one being greater than two.’ For both an enterprise and individuals, cultural difference always exists between different countries.
Eric gave an example as illustration. For the habits of communication, the difference between Chinese and western culture is that Chinese tend to speak implicitly while westerners speak comparatively more explicitly. In the period of his working in SANY, Eric sensibly combined the Chinese Style with the US Style and humorously named the practice “Chinese and US Combination”. He further explained as following: ‘For instance, when speaking to Chinese employees, I deployed the Chinese style that was to suggest him implicitly how to improve on a specific task. While for decision-making, I deployed the American Style that was to explicitly give my exact decision as YES or NO to avoid any ambiguity.

Learning Chinese to Become an Expert on China

After work, Eric likes to wander about the streets to look for ‘Surprise’. Due to his poor Chinese, Eric once had a peculiar adventure. At lunchtime of a weekend, he came alone to a local restaurant to taste delicious Chinese food. Due to the difficulty in language together with absence of pictures on the menu, Eric had to place his order on a Chinese menu with body language. Before serving the dish, the waiter first passed him a pair of plastic gloves. This made him a bit uneasy and he was puzzled in his mind by what the dish would be. Only when the dish was served then the weight was off his mind. It was a large pair of pig’s trotters. Eric enjoyed the food greatly and commented that ‘The adventure was worthy’.

Out of a year, Eric spent more than 90% of his time in China. He claimed himself to be a genuine Changsha citizen. His Family came to visit him very often in China. Talking about his family, Eric said ‘They have come five times this year. They like China and SANY a lot.’ Now Eric is having intensive Chinese classes every week and he said confidently that he ‘aim to become an expert on China as fast as possible’.