Several folks have said they are worried about making connections in China. One way to lower anxiety (aside from Xanax) is to use your guanxi. (Once you are in China, everything from bulletin boards to chance meetings in restaurants and on the street are very productive ways for lao wai people to meet Chinese people--Chinese people are generally quite interested in what you are doing in China, especially if you step a few hundred yards off of the main tourist pathways). And often, just standing in front of a public bulletin board will arouse the question, "ni shi nali ren?" where are you from, and you can take it from there.
We know it as 'networking' but it is more than that, of course. As you engage with the required materials for that class, you'll get the idea. What better way to learn about guanxi than to begin building up your own? Here are some hints.
Friends of friends can help you. If you don't ask, you won't ever know who knows who in China. Ask and you shall receive, right? How often have you forgotten about a resource that's right under your nose? Ask around. You'll know someone who knows someone.
Check the bibliography in Plafker, and browse around on the websites here in this blog. They often point out names of people--authors, friends of authors, blog postings that mention this or that person of interest. Track them down. Get their phone number or their email address and holler at 'em. Don't be shy.
Connecting on the Web
Then there's Google, and the (better) Chinese variety, BaiDu. BaiDu allows you to search in English, and many Chinese websites (certainly not all of them, and that is a challenge) have English sections. The Internet is an interesting way to build some basic "reading" skills (I should say "decoding" rather than reading, since reading usually means speaking and saying what you see but decoding is more direct: moving from the symbol 首 页 directly to the idea of a home page--but I digress yet again). Here are some Chinese websites that may have resources for you. You can build a better list of your own using BaiDU. These sites all have some English on them: the search sites have been tested by entering "engineering services." Some older sites returned nothing at all, so I left them off this list.
AliBaba. For industrial (and service) outsourcing of all types, this is the biggest website in China and one of the most popular B2B websites in the world: AliBaba, http://www.alibaba.com. From mandolins to engineering services, you'll find it here.
Other Sites
The China Economic Information Network seems mainly to aggregate (and translate) economic news stories from Chinese publications. http://www.cei.gov.cn/ Worth a look (you'll need to find the link to the English section).
The State Council Information Office publishes a site called the China Internet Information Center http://www.china.org.cn. I've not used it before but like most Chinese sites, you'll find contact information for the agency that operates it, and even a phone number.
Health? Lets start with something that's very Chinese, the Institute of Information on Traditional Chinese Medicine (IITCM), China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences(CACMS) http://www.cintcm.ac.cn/opencms/opencms/en/index.html. China operates parallel medical regulatory and research bureaucracies, one for so-called traditional medicine, and one for so-called Western medicine. Physicians may be trained in both traditions and research in the efficacy of traditional medicine seems to be getting better and better. I'll blog about my visit to a Chinese hospital sometime (it was a traditional medicine hospital, and I got better, by the way).
Education? How about the Ministry of Education website: http://www.edu.cn/english_1369/index.shtml.
Securities? Here's one that is mainly in Chinese: The China Securities Journal. But it has an English home-page. If you link to "e-papers" you will find a long listing of white papers, all listed in Chinese. If you mess about with google-translate, you may be able to pick out some things of interest. Then, you have to find a way to read these things. Are you getting the idea that it will be important to have some literacy skills here? At least, it helps to know how to translate little bits of text using the Internet, and you may need a helper who can translate text for you if you get serious about China.
Other stuff? The Chinese government's main portal is a great English-language resource. The links all seem to work and there is plenty in English for you to peruse. That's more than a start. That should keep you browsing for a while.
Check the other web resources which have already been listed in this blog for a few newspapers and other resources that will help you start some connections in China.
Connecting in Person
Here is my own favorite. . . its the. . .no. Wait. This one is a proprietary learning that belongs to the Pacific Rim research and design firm that I manage, PacEth. We use this resource to meet and make friends with people in China for interviews, and it is too valuable for me to post it here. I'll talk about this one in class. Don't worry: it won't do you any good until you are actually on the ground in China. Stay tuned. I'll let you all in on these secret. Lets put it on Free Parking for now.
So Long, Saddle Pals
I'll be observing blog-silence for the next few weeks. You all have other work to do and there is plenty here to dig through and learn from. I will be in contact regarding your papers via email. I'll see you guys in early March!
Hi Class
ReplyDeleteIf you all are in need - I do still have some friends there. Most are still in Tianjin.