People in China, My storyAugust 12, 2006 4:20 pm
Yesterday I played with ‘Google Earth’ and found out that Yanjiao is not a city, it’s a district just like Chaoyang District in Beijing. Yanjiao is a district in Sanhe City, Hebei Province. No wonder that this area is a bit more like ‘kecamatan’ in Indonesia but in a modern shape.
Four months in Yanjiao is enough.
People in the office are prefer to stay in Yanjiao rather than move to Beijing to the new office. Why…? Because they love Yanjiao as a quite place, not a busy place like Beijing. Yanjiao as a small place, not a big and crowd place like Beijing. Well ready or not, you like it or not this office will move to Beijing in a couple of weeks. We’ll move to our new modern office building. My friend told me that "your new office building is cool", but our secretary said: "I don’t like it". Hahaha…she likes everything in a Chinese-consevative shape: simetric, rigid and grey (!!!).
So, to celebrate our new office and to say good bye to (our beloved) Yanjiao Office, last week our bosses (it’s a lot of bosses) held a special dinner (or an alcohol party, yeah right) in a famous restaurant in Yanjiao. Lot of people came including drilling people and people who ussualy take bussines trips, travelling around China (?). First was the speech from the host, then we had a dinner. Finish…? Nope, now everyone try to impress their bosses, to cheer their bosses with wine or beer or alcohol. Well, I should said almost everyone (remember, we are observers…).
One that has a boss should cheers him or her. So, you can imagine this boss should be cheered by all of his or her subordinate (’grin mode’: on). And guess what…? We found out that one of these bosses was drunk and he talked and talked and talked. I, personally, had a conversation with him. We talked with "a normal distance" and after several minutes, suddenly he was just 2 inches from me and he couldn’t stop talking…!!!
Well, according to them, this is a good opportunity to get close with bosses.
Their bosses, not ours.
Their culture, not ours.
