at home in…, w| Gerald Zhang-Schmidt

Recently, the trend in writing about China seems to have become focused on the theme of exodus. Long-term expats are leaving, and telling all about the reasons. Mark Kitto – already famously? – gave one reason in the very title of his article: “You’ll Never Be Chinese.” There is a lot to be said for [...]

So, you want to be able to work effectively in different cultural contexts, not just your own… Good choice. Even living in one place, we live in a world that is diverse and (seemingly) getting ever more so. Being at home, whether here or there, does work much better with some cultural intelligence. All the [...]

As some people like David Livermore argue, Cultural Intelligence is (one of) the next big thing(s) among management skills necessary for the contemporary world. Knowledge and understanding that enables us to successfully navigate between different cultural contexts is becoming ever more important even in our private lives, as we increasingly live between different cultures, not just [...]

For somebody whose “business” the diversity and fascination of this, our world, is, I have a pretty bleak view of much of what passes as traveling. Rather than because of the whole matter of carbon emissions from plane travel, it’s because escapes from this world have come to appear extremely problematic to me.

So much can be heard about social issues in China – about China itself, in fact – it can feel as if the country and its people are, in all their oddities, becoming ever more familiar. In talking about relationships, for example, one commonly hears about two sides: Men who get rich and find themselves [...]