Customer Reviews

How To Live & Do Business In China

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book review is from INSIGHT magazine, a monthly publication of the AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE in Shanghai, China. This can be authenticated by checking my file on Google. The first part is writen by Caleb March, the book editor of the magazine and the second part is written by Robert Benedetti, an AMCHAM member

(July, 2007, Shanghai,China) How to Live and Do Business in China provides just what the title suggests: a personal account of Chinese business and social interactions that taught author Ernie Tadla that "the right way for humanity is to balance, to integrate the best of [Western and Eastern thought]." Tadla recounts how he applied this maxim to the Chinese style of building business relationships slowly and focused on long-term goals rather than immediate solutions. The book begins with anecdotal chapters on living in China, which lead up to the second part: the eight business lessons Tadla "learned from the Communists," including opening the mind and changing paradigms, preserving face, understanding guanxi and Chinese communication. These lessons proved to be valuable in his work with PPI, an American-owned marketing communications company. The book is peppered with dozens of insightful stories, as well as dos and don'ts case studies, including Microsoft and Wal-Mart. Tadla writes in an easy-to-read style, with many lists, bullet points and quotable take-aways.

EXPERT VIEW"Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, but while reading Ernie Tadla's pint-sized book: How To Live & Do Business in China, I was finding his observations and perspectives about China to be strikingly relevant to my own experience moving to Shanghai more than a year ago."The author's perspective, lessons and case studies are based on his collective seven-year experience in China after leaving his Canadian homeland with his wife. From his anecdotes about getting sick soon after his arrival in China, Shanghai's `supercharged work atmosphere,' the value of participation in AmCham Shanghai, to crossing busy Shanghai streets, `face' and `guanxi,' Tadla's observations, perspectives and reporting are refreshingly accurate. "In stark contrast to everyday life in Shanghai, Tadla's story-telling style is as soothing as a cup of steaming oolong tea. The personal vignettes contained in his 150-page book will prove to be valuable reading to all China newbies, while also providing familiar and perhaps therapeutic reading for those of us already so familiar with this maddening and intoxicating country. China veterans may find the reading entertaining and reflective."-
Robert Benedetti, business development manager, Shanghai SIP Engineering Consulting

I have just read Ernie Tadla's book " How to live and do business in China" I started to read the book out of curiosity and discovered that it said things to me that I hadn't expected. I have recently come over to Canada to live and work, and am setting up a new business venture. So to me it says "How to live and do business in Canada!"
I found amazing parallels with Ernie's journey and my own.

It told me things that I had forgotten I knew, things I didn't know that I knew and a lot of things that I really didn't know at all but should. By this I don't just mean facts, I mean how to go with the flow, how not to get frustrated and down when things don't go the way you hoped for and how everything will come with time. Enjoy the present.

I personally think it is a really great little book, it's light and easy to read and there is a lot of stuff in there that anyone who wants to can use to help them in business and in life.

To put it simply, read this book, you will get from it exactly what you are prepared to get from it.

And read it more than once, I have!

Interesting from first page to last. Writer obviously is a good study of human nature. Worth reading - just for the entertainment. A must if you are planning on doing business there. Understanding the culture and how things are done is critical if you are to succeed. This book takes you through that for China.

The lessons contained in this book basically amount to: develop long-term relationships with the Chinese; tailor your business to acknowledge that China is different from the rest of the world; and understand that Chinese people communicate indirectly. This may have been novel advice when Mr. Tadla first arrived in China, but these days, who hasn't heard these things? I was really looking for specific techniques on how to market/communicate indirectly and effectively. This book is more a collection of personal and professional anecdotes without any real value added.

"First-time author Tadla delivers an eclectic volume that may be of use to North American businessmen. Even at well under 200 pages, How to Live & Do Business in China is a sprawling work that is part-memoir, part-travelogue and part-primer on Chinese culture. Tadla writes of his experiences as a 61-year-old Canadian adjusting to Chinese norms while serving as a consultant to a U.S.-owned, Chinese-operated commercial production company. He struggles at first, hindered by his Western prejudices, but eventually achieves what he calls a change in paradigm and meets with success. As a first-person narrator, the author is a likable fellow with a rough-edged yet generally readable writing style. As he contrasts Western and Chinese approaches to just about everything--likening the cultural differences to the difference between left- and right-brained thinking--Tadla includes personal anecdotes to illustrate his points. Discussing Chinese medicine, for instance, he relates his apparently successful efforts to beat back prostate cancer using a method blending Western and Eastern approaches to health care. The book is organized somewhat haphazardly, and the author tends to run off on tangents, a few of which--a touching tribute to his late wife, for one--stray from the thrust of his work. Most of his observations, however, prove useful in illuminating Chinese standards to Westerners otherwise unfamiliar with the territory. Several sections--an overview of Confucianism, an essay on the crucial concept of "guanxi," a description of the Chinese haggling process--may help ordinary tourists and businessmen. The author mangles a sentence here and there, and he unsettlingly glosses over Chinese human-rights abuses while lauding the government's ability to get things done, but altogether this is a friendly, handy beginner's guide to navigating the society of a vast, ancient country. Short, wide-ranging and serviceable."
KIRKUS REVIEW: Kirkus Discoveries is one of the most prominent, professional, and respected book review publications in the book industry

I ordered 3 books on living in China and this is the worst by far. There is information in the book, but it is very sparse and it is a very short book. You will learn far more with "Doing Business in China", and Moons, "Living Abroad in China". I learned way more about Ernie Tadla than I wanted to know, and way less about China than I expected. How this book got 9, 5 star ratings I'll never know, but they fooled me.

I read your book "How to Live and Do Business in China" in two hours - could not put it down! It has to be one of the most caring accounts of experiences of a Westerner in China! I am hoping to move to Chengdu or Luzhou in Sichuan Province in the coming years and found the answers to many difficult questions.

I met Ernie some months ago not knowing he had written a book. Our conversation took us all over the world and we shared many views. It was only towards the end that Ernie told me he had written this little book which he would love to give me...

The title of the book somewhat did not give me any indication that what I would read was my conversation with Ernie that evening - this surprised me, but only made me want to finish the story Ernie had started telling me. Its marvelous little book, that shows us how to be better world citizens, and for which I have only one suggestion; the title should be "How to Live and Do Business". No matter if we are living or doing business in China or the Middle east or South America, the book gives you a framework and examples for the type of openmindness any person should have towards a global world where cultures have intertwined as never before in the history of humankind.

Ernie Tadla gets it right. You can't do business in China without really living. And these days, you can't really live in China without doing good business. Pre-Olympics, it's starting to get too damn expensive.

So, How To Live & Do Business In China provides wonderful, insightful instruction into these two very necessary and intertwined areas that combine to make the best of China adventures.

Mr. Tadla, though married (at least at the time of book publication), guides us through sex in Shanghai just as insightfully and humorously as he does through Chinese communication styles. I wish my significant other would let me write so honestly. Kudos, Ernie (and wife, Lovy).

I just loved this book. It is a succinct education on doing business in China wrapped together with a heartfelt true story.
It is usually easy to put down an educational book but the story here makes you want to read it right through, it is thought provoking and entertaining.
I would certainly recommend this book to any person going to China for pleasure travel or business travel.
Ernie Tadla does not over complicate the basics of understanding the Chinese people in fact he will help you enjoy your visit to China a great deal more with his excellent educational book.
I might also add it may make us think twice about the way we live with each other here in North America.
Enjoy
Thomas G. Taylor