Before I go (Part 2): Expectations

In addition to setting goals, my employer in China asked me to outline some of my expectations before I arrive in China. This made me realize that everyday I’m doing research, I’m changing my perception of China. From the second I land in Shanghai, my impression of China will change. I will never be able to recreate what I thought of China once I am there. There needs to be some record of that so that each and every day we can see how much I change. This of course will be useful to my employer so they can measure how my understanding of Chinese language and culture influences my experience in China.

I started this process the same way as I did my goal setting. Sitting in the waiting room at a Groove Ford dealership, I jotted down all of the things I think of when I think of going to China. I’m a bit embarrassed to publish the list. Compared to most people, I feel like I have had a fair amount of exposure to cultural sensitivity. I took that class in Prague on “international communications.” I teach seminars on culture shock a few times each semester for my job with study abroad. I’ve three different classes that explored different aspects of Hofstede’s Model of Cultural Dimension.

Yet everything I could come up with felt like stereotypes. I wish I could say I was deeper person, but I realize I’ve never really been taught about China beyond what I’ve seen in the media. There were a couple lessons on it in my high school geography class, but I really don’t know much about what life in China is like.

As I did with my goals, I realized that some of them were very over-lapping. I also realized they mostly fell into the categories of Environmental, Cultural, and Personal, with my definition of these categories being as follows

Environmental: beliefs about the climate, architecture, and structure of Chinese society.
Cultural: beliefs about the people and customs in China
Personal: beliefs about experiences I think I will have

Without further ado: here is my rough list of expectations.

Environmental
·       I expect Shanghai to be hot and humid.
·       I expect that most of China is probably “dirty” by American standard
·       I expect the smog to be thick (almost tangible) and that it may be difficult to breath at times, or perhaps fairly smelly
·       I expect the cities to be overwhelmingly crowed and chaotic
Cultural
·       I expect to witness a great deal of national pride, with a lot of personal honor and a great importance on reputations
·       I expect people to be punctual
·       I expect that people hold themselves to a high level of perfectionism
·       I expect most people are very quiet and reserved, as well as very formal and polite in the interactions
·       I expect that people will be very friendly and welcoming
Personal 
·       I expect learning Chinese language to be hard, specifically the pronunciation
·       I expect arriving in China to be very overwhelming and that the city will be very confusing to navigate
·       I expect to be very successful

I may add more below as I think of more, but this captures my “first thoughts” when I think of my expectations of China. Even if they are true, I’m sure they don’t tell the whole picture. I’m hoping (call it another goal) that after spending time in China, I will be able to look back at this list and understand some of the meaning behind these perceptions. I also hope that I will be open minded enough to have some of these perceptions changed.