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.
Hey YT!
ReplyDeleteYours is quite the interesting problem. I've also realized that they way people queue can differ culture to culture.
For example during my internship when the workers, who were mostly from India and Bangladesh, were queuing for food, they were standing really REALLY close to each other. It was really front-to-back stuff, and it got a little awkward for me being in that queue.
My guess is that the concept of personal space is dependent on culture. I think Eunice or Brad mentioned something about it in class. Something about the value of privacy.
I do have some questions though, and it is something that has been bothering me for a while. Should the onus be on us to learn how to deal with cultural differences of foreigners in our own country? Shouldn't they learn about our ways instead? After all if we go to China for example wouldn't it be expected of us to quickly assimilate into their culture?
Well those are my two cents. Good job YT it was a nice read!
Yes i do agree that we should make an effort to be considerate about the different cultures we meet. I think that you handled the situation with tact and hence everything turned out well.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Faizal does make a point too. Cultural assimilation of minority seems like a tried-and-tested kind of method. But as we were discussing the dynamic nature of culture, i think assimilation now works both ways. After all, it takes 2 hands to clap.
Hi YT!
ReplyDeletehaha.. event coordinating is no easy job.. especially so for people who we're not used to interacting with! I think you've done a great job in handling the situation, especially by thinking in the shoes of the Chinese. Going to their leaders make sense because they should be more experienced with handling their own people. On the other hand, the curious scientist inside me wonders how differently it would have turned out should you have resorted to using the loudspeaker.. =)
Hey Yu Tian!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your notion that we should be trying our best to actively learn more about the cultures of foreigners in order to help them assimilate into society.
The benefits of doing so goes many ways. Firstly, we would be able to understand how they think and thus react to them in a proactive and uncompromising manner with respect to them. This would greatly minimize unnecessary conflict. In addition, by knowing more about the various cultures, we would be able to learn the strengths of each culture; and to review our own traditions and habits in order to improve ourselves in the process.
Of course as Michelle mentioned, no doubt, culture assimilation also works both ways. Just make sure the ball is not on our side of the court when it falls.
Back to your event, i really think that you've done a great job thinking on your heels to solve such an urgent problem!
And thanks for such a great post! I've learnt much from your sharing!
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ReplyDeleteThanks for this interesting post, Yu Tian. The observation that crowds behave in culturally specific manners is important, and I appreciate your insights and the way you handled the challenge.
ReplyDeleteFor the sake of clarity I think it might have been better in this post to actually specify what the nature of the seminar was and where your crowd was navigating to and from.
Also, in a few cases you switch the tense of your verbs. That is possible, for example, when you switch from describing a past action to making a general statement of truth. However, you are inconsistent in describing the actions. Do you see where?
Still, this is a provocative anecdote and you've received good feedback. I appreciate your effort!
I agree that cultural adaptation had to be done in both ways. Just like the way we have to accept cultural differences of the foreign talents, they have to adapt to our local culture too. However, we are at a more disadvantageous position as our country’s economy depends much more heavily on foreign employees than our neighboring nations. Therefore, we have to learn to be more proactive in dealing with such differences at personal level while the government works at the social-economic level.
ReplyDeleteJapan is the only Asian nation that has a higher elderly population than us. The Japanese society chooses to be less welcoming to foreign influx of talent and reply more heavily on raising their working efficiency and technology. However there is a limit on these advances and their economy has been in the slump. It will be now up to us to choose to be more open and tolerant and continue to enjoy economical success or be left behind. I believe we can have success in fostering the new form of social cohesion in another few decades since we are a immigrant society to begin with.
Hi Yu Tian!
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting read, I liked the lesson you learnt from it! I guess cultural tolerance is very important in this case, in order to reduce any possible cultural conflicts.
But I do agree with Michelle and Faizal, these things work both ways. True, we do have to be more understanding towards people from different cultures, but the reverse should apply as well too.
Hey Yu Tian! Thanks for sharing your story. :) I am impressed by your work experiences. You can handled so many things at the same time. Glad that you did not use the loud speaker, I think it will be very awkward for the chinese nationals. This shows that you have considered on the behalf of the chinese nationals and their feelings.
ReplyDeleteBut I have to agree with the others that the assimilation got to work both ways. Otherwise it will be futile that we are willing to be accepting whereas the other group is less willing to change their bad habits. I think it will take some time for the new immigrants to adapt themselves to our society and change themselves (bad habits) step by step. We too, have bad habits. so we need to constantly improve on ourselves and change these bad habits. Not everyone is perfect. As long as both groups know about this and be more open-minded and accepting, I think both Singaporeans and the new immigrants will live in harmony with each other.
Hi Yu Tian!
ReplyDeleteI have my fair share of interaction with foreigners in Singapore as well as in their native countries. As Singapore is a cosmopolitan society, living and working with foreigners are part and parcel of our lives. We should embrace this and be tolerant of some of the habits and idiosyncrasies that they bring here. After all, this is the way they live back home. At the same time, they should also respect our cultural “dos” and “don’ts”, which will help them to assimilate into our society.
Cheers!