Even though I seldom travel, I have my own fair share of interaction with people from different cultures during some of my working experiences. The cultural group that I have been interacting with the most is the Chinese from the People’s Republic of China.
I worked as an event coordinator in a series of seminars that hosted many delegates from People’s Republic of China. The seminars involved meetings of regional managers of the company in Asia and main event involved speeches of certain VIPs to the rank and file and members of affiliates. The main event that I am about to elaborate on was held at the Suntec, Convention Hall 10. In addition to being in charge of escorting the VIPs, my colleagues and I had to organize the security of the vicinity. We drew up plans, protocols and equipped everyone with the best equipment. However, we did not realize that we were far from ready. Everything would have worked if we were dealing with a crowd of Singaporeans but the addition of a larger crowd from China proved to be very challenging. Our assumption that one way fits all proved to be ineffective.
On the actual day, we put up sign boards that gave directions in both English and Mandarin to decrease the manpower needed to direct the crowd from the Suntec main lobby to Hall 10. These sign boards worked well for Singaporeans as most of them were able to follow the directions with minimal intervention from us other than a few who asked for the direction for the restrooms. In contrast, the Chinese, who arrived later, did not follow the directions as effective as the Singaporeans. Many of them tried to take short cuts and they often rushed and squeezed their way through the queue. Therefore, I had to deploy additional manpower up to two times as planned to maintain order. We were lucky to have spare manpower that was initially planned for emergencies.
Moreover, the Chinese was nosy when queuing and this added more difficulties to us. My colleague wanted to use the loud speaker but I told him that it should be the last resort and we should resort to a more subtle method. I talked to a few of their group leaders and it proved to be more effective as these leaders were more understanding and they were able to manage their people much effective than us.
Since Singapore is a city where the influx of foreigner is high, we will have to deal with people of different cultures in our career. Instead of being overwhelmed and be passive towards these foreigners, we should be flexible and adopt an active attitude to learn to deal with such cultural differences.
