In June I traveled to Xiamen, China, to teach a course in
Rhetoric for the Speech Communication department of Xiamen University. Like UNC Charlotte, Xiamen University prides
itself on being innovative.
Communication Studies in China predominantly studies media, advertising
and journalism, but Speech Communication at Xiamen proposes to be the vanguard
Chinese program for broadly studying human communication, including public
relations. Our department hopes to
collaborate with Xiamen in that quest.
I can hardly claim to be a world traveler, but here are a
few observations that I hope are worthwhile:
Travelling and
working in China is rather easy. I
encountered none of the delays I was warned about in my airline travel. I did not need to do any currency exchange
prior to travelling--the ATM honored my credit union card and charged me a
lower fee--$1.38-- than I would have paid at a "guest" ATM machine back
home. Many signs and menus are
bilingual, with English listed alongside the Mandarin. Even at the traditional fishing village of
Gulangyu Island, where no cars or bicycles are allowed, the police station was
clearly labeled--POLICE.
The Chinese economy continues to boom. Xiamen is a port town and a tourist
destination, and it was doing plenty of both while I was there. Shipping traffic in the harbor was
brisk. Timber and the ubiquitous
containers comprised the bulk of the freight I saw. The crowds of tourists--and the volume of tourism
advertising on Chinese TV--speak to the rise in their discretionary
income. The cars I saw came from every
country imaginable and almost all were very new. The name for old cars seems to be
"taxi."
The Chinese are
prepared to embrace the new. As I
prepared for my class, the received wisdom was that Chinese students have been
trained to expect that answers are either right or wrong. I was worried, because rhetoric is the study
of nuance and ambiguity, where the answer is usually "maybe," or,
"it depends." My thirty-five
students enthusiastically embraced the uncertainties and complexities about
communication that we explored. Further,
their English was very good, as was their appreciation for the global
possibilities offered by the world's rapidly changing technology. These are students ready for the 21st
century, and everything it has to offer.
Business in China is
still built upon personal relationships.
Although I was not working in a corporate setting, it was clear that my
Xiamen counterparts, like us Americans, understand that there is a substantial
business side to higher education. It
was also clear that our business of collaborating must begin with a strong
foundation of "getting to know you."
It is a pleasant way of conducting business, but it does require
patience. If public relations is indeed
the practice of building relationships, China will provide rich terrain for the
profession.
If I committed any intercultural faux pas while abroad, my
Chinese friends were kind enough not to point them out. I know I came close on several occasions,
however, but remembered just in time the sage advice given to Debra Winger in Cannery Row: when in doubt about the
etiquette, move half a beat slower than those around you, and do what they do.
By Richard Leeman
Professor, Department of Communication Studies, UNC Charlotte
Be looking out for Dr. Leeman's article in the Center for Global Public Relation's newsletter, the Blue Book! Accessible at the end of August at: http://cgpr.uncc.edu/
