Travelogue From China

A few years ago, I took on an internship out on a cruise ship in China. The cruise traveled along a path between Wuhan and Chongqing, or the Three Gorges as it is better known. My responsibility on the ship was to help the English speaking passengers and to be their tour guide. I would translate lectures, provide narrations as we cruised along the water, hosted parties and worked with over three hundred other staff members. This experience was enormous help for the future travels to China I will be making in my business career.

Perhaps the first cultural difference I came to notice was the difference in the Chinese workplace. Even from the very first day, I felt as if though I needed to immediately and rapidly establish good relations with my co-workers, although we would only be working together for six months. Additionally, it was a little difficult to learn and remember the appropriate ways to address others around me due to the varying levels of seniority. This was only the first step in learning how complex the workplace in China truly is.

Everyone are their meals simultaneously on the ship, butt depending on the level of seniority each person held, they ate in separate parts of the ships. To take it one step further, seniority had an influence on where each person sat down in each area. Should the GM arrive at any time, the center seats, closest to the dishes, would be given up if they had not been left free.

I was given quite a few opportunities to help clarify the cultural differences between our societies. One experience, for example, occurred when I noticed the doctor aboard the chip was charging more than the American patients said they received. Being American, the patients - and myself - fell true to the belief that the customer was always right, but the doctor absolutely refused to claim fault on the matter. I explained the beliefs of the Chinese culture to the patients, and they were willing to accept a gift in lieu of a refund, which would not have had good results for the doctor.

Today, I look back to my experience with a China internship and realize how important the whole thing was. I was able to understand a culture foreign from mine long enough to both survive and learn from it. Their culture stays embedded within mine to this day.