I Stand Corrected Read online

  ALSO BY EDEN COLLINSWORTH

  It Might Have Been What He Said

  Copyright © 2014 by Eden Collinsworth

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

  www.nanatalese.com

  DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House LLC. Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Jacket design by Gabriele Wilson

  Jacket illustration by Roderick Mills/Heart Agency

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Collinsworth, Eden.

  I stand corrected : how teaching Western manners in China became its own unforgettable lesson / Eden Collinsworth. —First edition.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-385-53869-5 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-385-53870-1 (eBook)

  1. Collinsworth, Eden. 2. Business etiquette—Study and teaching—China. 3. Businesspeople—Western countries—Social life and customs. 4. Etiquette—Western countries. 5. Etiquette—China. 6. Western countries—Social life and customs. 7. China—Social life and customs.

  I. Title.

  HF5389.C653 2014

  395.071’051—dc23 2014006096

  v3.1

  TO MY FATHER, AND FOR MY SON

  You can be comfortable at home for a thousand days, or step out the door and run into trouble.

  —Chinese proverb

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Note to the Reader

  PROLOGUE: Wherein I prove it is sometimes possible to get away with folly

  PART ONE: Introductions and Greetings

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  PART TWO: The All-Important Display of Deference

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PART THREE: The Dichotomy of Personal and Public

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  PART FOUR: The Art—and Perils—of Conversing

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PART FIVE: The Cost of Doing Business

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PART SIX: Children and Their Many Consequences

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PART SEVEN: Where the Chinese Dream Lives

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  PART EIGHT: Getting from One Place to the Other

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  PART NINE: The Politics of Censorship

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  PART TEN: The Body of the Workplace

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  PART ELEVEN: Raising Sons

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  PART TWELVE: A Series of Departures

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  PART THIRTEEN: How the Rest Ends

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE: Wherein I suggest it is always nice to know how to say good-bye

  Further Reading

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  NOTE TO THE READER

  I do not claim to be an expert on China, and though this book includes my personal opinions on that subject, it is an adventure story rather than an analysis. Everything I describe happened, but I have changed the names of some of the people. It was the polite thing to do.

  PROLOGUE

  Wherein I prove it is sometimes possible to get away with folly

  In the early 1980s, I was invited by a delegation of Chinese businessmen to visit Shenzhen. It was during China’s progressive campaign of economic “opening up,” and this former fishing village was growing into a booming metropolis constructed with what looked to be gigantic Lego pieces. At the time, I was twenty-nine. I was also tall, fair skinned, and redheaded, so when I arrived in Shenzhen, it was easy for the Chinese to believe I might have come not from America but from another planet entirely.

  “What do you mean, he’s asked how much I am?” was my stunned question to the colleague acting as my translator at a business dinner.

  “Just that,” he told me.

  All at the table had been drinking a great deal of baijiu—distilled liquor with a high level of alcohol—and I asked my colleague if the man inquiring was sober.

  “He seems to be,” was the answer.

  “Have you correctly translated?” I asked. “Surely he’s asked how much it would cost to buy the company we represent.”

  “No. He means the cost for you, as a woman,” reiterated my colleague. “Our guest has just inquired about taking permanent possession of you.”

  Latching on to whatever composure had not yet deserted me, I pointed out that I was not just a woman—I was also the president of a company. “One who happens to be the host this evening,” I made clear.

  “I can translate what you’ve just said,” volunteered my colleague. “But it won’t matter.”

  “Why not?” I wanted to know.

  “Because he believes that your gender makes your professional rank insupportable.”

  And there it was. A full-in-the-face statement that forced upon me the irrefutable difference between my self-image and my status in China. Whatever I may have considered myself, I was at that time, in that place, a Western luxury item possibly to be purchased.

  “What would you like me to tell him?” asked my colleague.

  It took a moment before I realized it wasn’t so much that I needed to surrender my self-image as that I should consider suspending it for the sake of what might be future business in China. Making a bottom-line calculation with that in mind, I responded with falsehoods calibrated to avoid embarrassment.

  “First, thank him for his interest,” I instructed my colleague. “Next tell him I am extremely flattered. And then let him know that, sadly, I belong to someone else.”

  Five years after a man in China tried to buy me, I gave myself away for free to another in my own country.

  Marriage rewarded me with intoxicating happiness. It also pummeled me with impossibilities levied by a man I nonetheless adored. During a particularly desperate time—believing my husband would change course if he understood what was at stake—I spoke to him of separation. His response was starkly final. He left.

  The end of our fifteen-year marriage unmoored my heart and stole my bearings. It also resulted in our eleven-year-old son, Gilliam, being left solely in my care. Inconsolable, I put my trust in time. And with time I realized that, despite the nonnegotiable requirement to support myself and Gilliam, I could choose what was next for us both.

  It is often our subconscious self that underlies the choices we make. And so it must have been with my far-reaching decision to travel with Gilliam. That decision—more instinctive than cohesive—moved me off a single career path toward a wide vista of varied occupations. For the remaining years of Gilliam’s adolescence, an e-mail service notified me each Wednesday of discounted airfares to international cities. By learning the system of last-min
ute hotel deals, I could afford to take us on a long weekend in a different foreign place every second month. Seamlessly changing countries, we became a nation of two.

  Granted, it was an unorthodox way to raise a son, but there was a screwball comedy buoyancy about it. And nothing in our decade-long saga was as preposterous as the fact that it worked.

  Given his upbringing, it wasn’t entirely unexpected that at eighteen Gilliam, who was attending a Japanese school, chose to study Chinese at a British university. Two years later his academic program placed him at a Beijing university.

  The Chinese have always revered education. Five hundred years before Christ, Confucius set in motion the ideal of rule by educated leaders, and the nature of China’s educational system has been central to its cultural identity ever since. Making education available to the masses holds out the promise of upward mobility for anyone who can survive the rigors of study and examinations. But “survive” is the operative word. In China, college openings are limited, and students struggle under what translates to “the glory of high scores” in preparation for taking gaokao, the life-changing national college entrance exam. Gilliam observed that the extremely competitive nature of the Chinese system, the extraordinarily long hours of repetitive study, the expectation to conform and fit in, the lack of encouragement for creative expression—all of these factors seemed to create roadblocks for the young to achieve an advanced level of emotional intelligence.

  He called me one day with an idea.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion that China’s school system is producing socially disconnected kids,” he told me. “And I’m wondering if their parents would pay for an after-school program.”

  “What kind of program?” I asked.

  “Classes for improvement in something like etiquette,” he said.

  We discussed Gilliam’s business proposition until I remembered unpleasant news. My voice dropped when the subject changed.

  “Bangkok is looking less likely for your birthday,” I said in a sober tone.

  “Something’s happened,” Gilliam guessed correctly.

  “I’m afraid Sondhi’s been shot,” I told him.

  “Is he dead?” asked Gilliam.

  “Luckily, no. But his driver is.”

  “Mother, listen, I’m glad they haven’t managed to kill Sondhi, but I’d like to live to see a few more of my birthdays, and the odds increase if I avoid your friends who incite riots in politically unstable countries.”

  It was a rather harsh reading of events, but I chose not to dispute my son’s point. “All right, dear,” was all I could think of saying. “If that’s how you feel.”

  Several nights later I described the birthday dilemma at dinner with Jonathan, one of my less politically provocative friends.

  “This man who invited you to Bangkok, what’s his name?” Jonathan asked.

  “Sondhi.”

  “Wasn’t he the Thai media tycoon who financed your magazine in L.A.?”

  “That’s right. And now he’s part of Thailand’s yellow shirt movement,” I explained.

  “And there’s someone else you knew targeted for assassination in another country.”

  “Neither was my fault, if that’s where this is heading.”

  “Where was the other one—the one who was shot giving a speech?”

  “East Timor.”

  “East Timor? Christ, Eden. How is it that you met these people on your own, before becoming involved with this … this … what is it?”

  “A think tank,” I answered. “A global think tank.”

  “Which does what exactly?” asked Jonathan.

  “It handles conflict prevention,” I told him.

  “That’s certainly working well,” he quipped.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No.”

  “Are you laughing at what I do?”

  “This has nothing to do with what you do. This has to do with you thinking it’s perfectly normal to celebrate your son’s birthday with someone other people want dead.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I pointed out. And not wishing to dwell on a misrepresentation of my shortcomings, I shifted the conversation to the observations Gilliam had of his Chinese friends as socially ill equipped, and to how our phone conversation had led me to think on the larger issue of the East-West divide. I told Jonathan it seemed to me that, despite the growing status of China as a world economy and the unprecedented range of Chinese investments overseas, businessmen in mainland China—well educated and English speaking—were still uncomfortable in the company of their Western counterparts. I recalled my own ordeals of doing business among the Chinese and suggested that Gilliam’s proposal for Western etiquette lessons in China was not without validity. I admitted to Jonathan that though my work as the chief of staff at a think tank was fascinating, it kept me on call in five international time zones, seven days a week. After four grueling years, I wasn’t entirely opposed to recapturing my personal life and moving on.

  “What would you say if I told you I was thinking of developing a program for Western business etiquette in China?” I asked.

  Jonathan’s expression spoke before words could. He put down his martini, uncrossed his legs, and shifted his weight to center himself for what had to be said. Locking his laser stare on me as if sanity itself were on trial, he asked a question posed by more people than I care to count during the course of my unruly life.

  “Are you kidding?”

  PART ONE

  Introductions and Greetings

  A person without a smiling face must never open a shop.

  —Chinese proverb

  CHAPTER ONE

  The word “etiquette” is rooted in the seventeenth-century gardens of Versailles—one of many reasons the French feel superior.

  Set in a low valley between two lines of wooded hills, Versailles was the location for Louis XIII’s hunting lodge, which he upgraded to château status. His son, Louis XIV—determined to build a lasting monument to his own regime—remolded the château to an over-the-top level of grandeur. That required a daily workforce of twenty-two thousand men and six thousand horses, and the exorbitant expense impoverished the country.

  Before discontent among his citizens festered into rebellion, and rebellion triggered the Revolution, life at court was based on social rank. Versailles was entered by many different gates. Only the lucky few possessing the right to bring their coaches into the great courtyard of the Louvre were granted the right to enter Versailles by way of its main entrance. That left a large number of lower-tiered aristocrats with no immediate access.

  When Louis XIV’s gardener realized it was impossible to prevent those not invited through the front gate from trampling the lawns and flower beds, he put up signs. Already defensive about their lesser point of entry—fearing they were being left behind—the aristocrats ignored the postings, which resulted in a royal decree that no one go beyond the signs without a ticket, known in Old French as estiquette.

  Louis XIV’s insistence that his retinue uphold manners had an influence on the bourgeois, and the term l’etiquette became a broader reference to signs of correct behavior.

  Temporarily banished during the French Revolution, etiquette was eventually recalled from exile and it still holds sway. When, after a joint press conference, French president Jacques Chirac muttered into—unbeknownst to him—an open microphone that British prime minister Tony Blair was mal élevé, those deadly two words formed the worst kind of insult. The expression translates to “badly brought up” and casts aspersions on not only the offender but also his parents.

  Though not badly brought up, I certainly can’t claim to be a trusted source on etiquette, but Gilliam’s idea of Western etiquette lessons in China would not leave my imagination alone. It nagged at me until I decided to share the idea with a former colleague experienced in evaluating emerging markets. He, too, saw an opportunity.

  My previous role as an executive at the Hearst Corporation inclu
ded expanding its many brands. Prior to Hearst, I had implemented the same kind of brand-building strategy for Buzz, the L.A. magazine I launched. With contributing editors ranging from Jan Morris to Edmund White, Buzz built a reputation for its editorial quality. My partners and I were quick to leverage that reputation by launching Buzz Weekly, an arts and entertainment guide, by establishing Buzz On-Line, and by founding Buzz Books.

  In order to pursue Gilliam’s idea in China, we would first need to build a platform of brand recognition there. What about a book on Western business comportment for the Chinese? I thought. Not too unlikely a consideration, but one requiring a next step.

  A train of incidents moved me forward: I’d written a novel published the year before.… My literary agent, based in London, had an associate in Beijing.… That associate was taken by the idea of a book for Chinese about Western business comportment.

  In a combined state of ignorance and enthusiasm, I resigned as chief of staff at the think tank and moved to Beijing during Gilliam’s summer break.

  That way madness lies, as the English would say, and I would have to agree—it was a fairly mad thing to do. Without a guaranteed source of income, I would be living off my savings; I didn’t speak Chinese; and I am far from an authority on manners. In point of fact, this is where I admit to several nasty tendencies, including a knee-jerk reaction to verbally wound those I think deserve the worst of me after they have tortured the best of me, which is my patience. That said, I’ve always made an effort to veer away from bad behavior and move toward the common sense that is good comportment. I do so because it is a shrewd approach to business and because I believe that there is value in the social contract humans have with one another.

  To a large degree, our beliefs are instilled by our parents. My parents were of the mind that upholding values required honorable action but, when all else failed, it was sensible to leave the premises. Both were only children who never returned to their places of origin.

  My father left the South to attend Harvard Business School. His only relative in the North was Sherman Billingsley. After a stint in Leavenworth during Prohibition for distributing liquor in the drugstores he bought for that purpose, Billingsley redeemed himself by creating the Stork Club, a glamorous gathering place for café society in New York.