Customer Reviews

Getting Along With the Chinese: For Fun and Profit (Travel/China)

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I have conducted college-sponsored tours of China for eighteen years. For most of that time, this little classic has had my highest recommendation as a guide to interaction with the Chinese. The author spent decades as a businessman in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China proper, and he writes with insight and humor. Though the book was produced with the businessperson in mind, for any Western visitor to China it is an excellent, amusing and effective antidote to misunderstanding and culture shock. If you are going to China, be sure to read it.

It was my first time traveling to Hong Kong and to China. I have no business there and I have no intercourse with the Chinese outside of personal relations. I picked this book up to read on the plane. But, man! This is a very good book! Mr. Schneiter seems to have become something of a Chinese himself during the course of 30 some years in the Far East. Clearly written, with fast wit: Universally applicable advice on how to get along with the Chinese, but not only the Chinese. I would think all people who exchange one thing for another while trying to leverage the situation to one's benefit could all be "Chinese". That is, what the author has to say, would apply just as well in Washington DC, or in Moscow, or in New York. BE SMOOTH and CIVILIZED. By that he means, observe, observe, and observe the flow of things before you take calculated action. AND, always leave room for graceful improvisation. The author warns that it is always practice which will get you the art of looking gracefully impromptu. The author himself gives many examples of how he used his own advice to undo many a tight situation he found himself in. I suppose only those who have to do business with the Chinese will continue to pick this one up in Hong Kong. But this book really deserves to be read by more people. A real pleasure. I couldn't put it down.

This (very short) book is best characterized by this telling quote from the author: "a few summers ago my wife & I were enjoying a holiday on the Oregon coast when a young Asian happened along. On the possibility he might be an exchange student or tourist, I greeted him in...Mandarin." You tell me, who greets "Asians" in America, in Chinese, "on the possibility" he/she might be visiting from China (or in the author's favored rendering, "The People's Republic of China"---politically correct is he...except in America, when he's simply insensitive & superior apparently). Also striking an odd tone is the author's championing of western fast-food outlets throughout the Far East for bringing Asians a more "balanced diet." Did I mention the author is a long-time lobbyist for the wheat industry? More hamburber buns and pizza please all around! The author does offer up some worthy advice, however, but it can be summerized as follows: "It's best never to take yourself, or things, too seriously," when in China. "You can't get anywhere in China by being a pest." Ask Chinese at bureaucratic impasses "if you were in my position, what would you do?" if you want to effect movement. "Anything offered to you with two hands should always be taken with two hands." That's about it! The Chinese, in short---according to the author---are not impossible to understand. If you familerize yourself with & practice Chinese manners you can gain their respect & favor; assuming you first realize that international business practices will not succeed in China---that the Chinese are "Chinese" & simply do not like to do things just as others do. The rest of this 195 page book is filled with numerous examples of encounters the author (or those close to him) has experienced "some years ago"---in his oft repeated phrase; examples usually from the 1970s/early 1980s---that illustrate the above maxims. By the way, the above refers to the 2000 edition of this book (first published in 1992, but apparently never updated since). Consult this book if such is your inclination, but you would be better off simply ignoring it and reading something more substancial. (Aside: this book read & reviewed in China.) Cheers!

I came to China with a university group to teach English. I am now starting an MBA program in Global Management. The first course is Cross-Cultural Communications. This book should be the book for that course. It can't be because it is too entertaining and practical, not the dry "analytical" stuff. It is too good! I bought it before coming to China and it got left behind when I came. At first, I thought I had memorized it because time after time I recognized something from the book in what I saw in China. Then I realized that it was the accuracy of the book that made it so memorable. Buy it!