Landed in Singapore this morning and as usual no clean shirts left so went shopping. Wonderful staff and great service in this wonderful city. I held up a purple shirt, asking the mature Chinese assistant if I could try it on.
"No Sir", she replied. "Slim fit. You too fat." Albeit the Chinese are blunt, they are also unfailingly courteous when serving you, so the nuance of the sentiment got lost in the translation!
I wasn't offended. She went on to show me shirts for fat people.
I've been doing a series of crisis workshops with communicators from the Chinese national and regional governments and organisations. They are visiting London in groups to study media relations in the UK. The visits are organised by the China Media Centre at the University of Westminster, London. The visits have aroused interest and some of London's leading PR people are coming to meet them. It's a brilliant dialogue and we're learning from each other. What's clear is that what we intend our statements to convey in a crisis do not always cross cultures.
We sometimes see the Chinese statements as a little cold and lacking feeling. The Chinese sometimes view ours as a little gushing and lacking hard facts and actions. Certainly citizens in the Chinese world want a list of everything the government is doing in a crisis - how many troops are being sent, how many helicopters, how much food. Then they judge whether the Government really cares.
Our statements sometimes lead (rightly for Western consumption) on our care and concern for the victims and their relatives. That's absolutely right, but we need to remember also to give as much detail as possible on what we're doing to alleviate the crisis or incident. Even small things matter.
There's a feeling that given English is a common global language and social media is breaking down cultural barriers that we all understand each other now.
My dialogue with the Chinese has made me rethink this. How what we say is perceived in other cultures matters a lot in a crisis, and it's an area that needs further study. We're continuing to explore it with more seminars with Chinese delegations later this month.
Meanwhile it's a topic we're going to discuss at the Media Relations in the Digital Age conferences this week in Singapore and then Hong Kong.
(Posted from Singapore)
"No Sir", she replied. "Slim fit. You too fat." Albeit the Chinese are blunt, they are also unfailingly courteous when serving you, so the nuance of the sentiment got lost in the translation!
I wasn't offended. She went on to show me shirts for fat people.
I've been doing a series of crisis workshops with communicators from the Chinese national and regional governments and organisations. They are visiting London in groups to study media relations in the UK. The visits are organised by the China Media Centre at the University of Westminster, London. The visits have aroused interest and some of London's leading PR people are coming to meet them. It's a brilliant dialogue and we're learning from each other. What's clear is that what we intend our statements to convey in a crisis do not always cross cultures.
We sometimes see the Chinese statements as a little cold and lacking feeling. The Chinese sometimes view ours as a little gushing and lacking hard facts and actions. Certainly citizens in the Chinese world want a list of everything the government is doing in a crisis - how many troops are being sent, how many helicopters, how much food. Then they judge whether the Government really cares.
Our statements sometimes lead (rightly for Western consumption) on our care and concern for the victims and their relatives. That's absolutely right, but we need to remember also to give as much detail as possible on what we're doing to alleviate the crisis or incident. Even small things matter.
There's a feeling that given English is a common global language and social media is breaking down cultural barriers that we all understand each other now.
My dialogue with the Chinese has made me rethink this. How what we say is perceived in other cultures matters a lot in a crisis, and it's an area that needs further study. We're continuing to explore it with more seminars with Chinese delegations later this month.
Meanwhile it's a topic we're going to discuss at the Media Relations in the Digital Age conferences this week in Singapore and then Hong Kong.
(Posted from Singapore)
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