Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
OK, But There's More to Know (and Other Books Can Help You), November 12, 2001
By A Customer
This guide offers useful tips on how western business people and visitors should behave around Chinese clients/hosts, but irritatingly leaves out any and all difficult information about Chinese habits and customs that the average vistor (including business people) may be bewildered by, due to their strangeness or initial unpleasantness, but which to know about will help them both cope with and understand China better (and ultimately, appreciate it more positively). When I lived in Hong Kong and was visiting China frequently (1990's), I (like other expats) supplemented books like Culture Shock China with Taiwanese writer Bo Yang's "The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis in Chinese Culture." This book helped me to understand the underbelly of Chinese society that I was constantly running into (rude public actions and behaviour, personal habits I did not understand), aspects of China any westerner is bound to run into but which Kevin Sinclair shies away from dealing with.I also agree with the other reviewers who wish Sinclair would stop going about how long he has lived in Hong Kong propping up the bar at the Better 'Ole or Foreign Correspondent's Club - being a long-term western resident in my day was a fact more to hide than to to shout about, and perhaps the author will, in future editions, use the valuable space lost to address the side of things westerners will be unprepared for with his book. In addition to Bo Yang's useful book, I recommend a couple of others. Timothy Mo's The Monkey King, though a novel, gave insight into Chinese attitudes and actions that I found extremely helpful and accurate - I felt I met the characters in Mo's book repeatedly during my time in China. Another novel, Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong, gives valuable insight into the mentality of long-term western residents of China/Hong Kong - like that of the author of this book, Culture Shock China.
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
You can find much better books available., January 15, 2003
I purchased this Culture Shock book when I moved to China for a year to teach English. It was my first exposure to the Culture Shock series. I found this book to have a very discouraging view of China and the book gave me all sorts of false impressions of what to expect. Granted, I found the book was geared more towards the business traveler than others, but I found most of the advice to be useless or out of date. In fact, I found most of the impressions which the book created to be false after only a short time in China. If you are planning on going to China, I would recommend that you purchase a book such as the Lonely Planet or Rough Guide series instead. These books give a better feel for the history and culture than the Culture Shock book.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Odd viewpoint for a Westerner, June 29, 2004
The "Culture Shock" series is well-established and usually helpful, but the choice of this author to write what must be one of their more popular titles is baffling. Some of the insights are helpful, such as the section on religion, what to expect when traveling, food, etc. But the editing is poor and there is much repetition and unnecessary discussion of how China used to be, not how it is today. I agree with others that there seems an unnecessary emphasis on sexual issues and prostitution, including some of the author's own experiences, and a weird comment to the effect that while he often is approached by women, he prefers to do the choosing himself. Sinclair's personal political views are rather unusual and keep intruding. Sinclair is an unabashed admirer of the system, and he says that for the Chinese, all they have to do is obey the law and they'll be fine. I think in general Westerners are far too judgmental in criticizing other countries and cultures, but Sinclair takes this attitude to an extreme. Again focusing on prostitution, he tells us that if arrested, pimps are hauled away and summarily executed--and this is perfectly OK with him! He maintains that religion is freely practiced, and when certain practices are suppressed, such as Falun Gong, it's justified based on the problems such cults have caused in the past. There are better books out there, especially for the traveler who isn't taking up residence there. I wouldn't waste a lot of time on this one.
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