Lessons in China
A few days ago, I returned from my second trip to China. After a lecture tour last year, this most recent trip combined teaching an undergraduate course at Xidian University in Xi’an with a keynote at a conference in Changchun. (If, like me, you haven’t heard of this city of 10 million, it is the capital of Jilin province in China’s Northeast.) I gave lessons on linguistics and intercultural communication, but I also learned a lot myself.
The idea of the industrious Chinese student may have become a bit of a stereotype in Europe, but the students I taught did make an impressive effort. Some of them majored in English and translation studies, but others had just completed their first year in management or computer science. For all of them, it was their first (and for some the only) contact with linguistics - and it happened in a foreign language, during their university’s International Weeks. Overall grades differed of course, but everyone gave it their best shot, and that is a measure of success in itself.
The students’ feedback was valuable, but so was designing, teaching and marking a course at a Chinese University. If culture is “the way we do things around here” (and the “way we talk around here”), then practices around running a course taught me a lot about values and priorities. One example: in Britain, it takes four weeks to mark, second-mark and moderate coursework - in China, it is three days!
A “poetree” in Xi’ans Grand Tang Mall
The second leg of my trip included a crash course in Chinese history of the first half of the 20th century. And I realised what pressures an inspection by the Ministry of Education can mean for a university and how important it is to have joined-up and transparent communication, even in high-context cultures. Having said that, I was grateful to the many conference delegates who postponed their dinner after a long day to hear me talk about the role of computer-assisted and automated methods in analysing discourse.
The practical lessons in intercultural communication that I’ve brought back from my second trip to China now inform the content of the MA in Intercultural Business Communication that starts at Lancaster University in October. They have also made me think more broadly about how we can move from intercultural to intersectional business communication - but that will be the topic of the next blog post.
Glocalisation or cultural appropriation?
Meanwhile, many thanks to my hosts and colleagues in Xi’an, Changchun and across China - I am already looking forward to my next visit!
