Green hats and other ways to blow a deal in China

By MARCUS GEE
Toronto Globe and Mail
Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Never give a green hat to a Chinese businessman. Never give him a clock or a pair of scissors, either. Never wrap any gift in white or black.

At a Chinese banquet, never clean everything off your plate; always leave at least a morsel of food behind. Oh, and never, ever leave your chopsticks propped up in your rice bowl.

Doing business in China can be a minefield. Apart from wrestling with an unfamiliar language, culture and legal system, visitors also have to figure out how not to embarrass themselves by breaking the complex rules of Chinese etiquette.

Arriving in China with a case of jet lag, often under big pressure from the home office to produce something, most visitors feel they simply don't have the time to master the abstruse customs of a foreign culture, on top of everything else.

Carla Kearns has some advice for them: Make time. Her Toronto Chinese-language school runs a thriving sideline teaching people how to avoid the little misunderstandings and slip-ups that can sour a business relationship before it starts.

"It's like playing a new sport without knowing the rules," says Kearns, 36, who opened her school last summer after years of living in Taipei, Shanghai, Honolulu and San Francisco.

Consider the green hat. The phrase "wearing a green hat" in Chinese sounds like the word for "cuckold," so a green hat on a Chinese man is said to mean that his wife is cheating on him. Not a good gift, then.

A clock is a symbol of time running out _ in other words, impending death. The colors white and black are also associated with death, so better choose a different color of wrapping paper. Scissors and knives symbolize the cutting of ties, not exactly the message to send if you are trying to forge ties with a business partner.

At a banquet, eating everything on your plate implies that your host didn't serve you enough food, a harsh insult. Chopsticks left in a rice bowl look like the sticks of incense that Chinese burn at family graves, another unpleasant reminder of death.

Kearns says a few hours spent learning simple dos and don'ts can save business people a lot of grief.

As well as running The Mandarin School, her language-training institute in downtown Toronto, she gives seminars and speeches.

She also offers one-on-one lessons on what she calls "cultural intelligence."

In China, she counsels clients, it's not just the nuts and bolts of the business deal that matter. "It's all about building relationships and saving face."

Learning a few words and phrases of Chinese helps. Chinese, she says, will be grateful and impressed that you bothered.

Mastering simple etiquette counts, too. Don't just take a person's business card and stuff it in your pocket. Receive it formally with two hands and study it with interest. It's a sign of respect.

The drug company Roche Canada hired her when it invited a group from its China arm to visit Toronto. After hearing her advice, it decided to put on a special greeting. Instead of sending a single person out to usher the arriving visitors into the office -- the usual Canadian practice -- the whole executive committee came down to the lobby to greet the delegation and introduce themselves. Afterward, there was a group picture.

Little things like that matter, says Kearns, but it's not just understanding manners that makes a difference when doing business with the Chinese. Understanding their attitudes is important, too.

Chinese business people, she says, have a very different idea about time. Canadian executives often travel to China, strike a deal and then expect to agree on an orderly timetable for making things happen.

Chinese generally don't work that way. Things happen when they happen, and Canadians have to learn not to fret when there is no agreed schedule of events.

They also have to learn how to tell when Chinese are saying no. Unlike bluff and open Canadians, Chinese don't like to give a direct negative answer, Kearns says. They might say "maybe" or "I'll think about it" instead. The answer is still no.