Posted in reflections, tagged saving face, shame on October 28, 2014| 2 Comments »
Photo by Luigi Morante
By Dorcas Cheng-Tozun
When I started managing Chinese National employees while living in the industrial city of Shenzhen, China, the biggest challenge to my cross-cultural relationships was not language, as I expected it to be. Nor was it my ignorance of Chinese labor law or typical business practices. It was, to my great surprise, the concept of face. (more…)
Posted in reflections, tagged conflict, culture, ethnicity, personality, saving face on April 16, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Photo by SodanieChea
By Tina Teng-Henson
I wonder if there’s a season in ethnic identity development where you feel like “your” ethnicity has the corner on all the tough stuff: Asian Americans have toxic shame…why can’t we communicate more directly?…Chinese immigrants are frugal to a fault (“cheap!”)…notoriously conflict-avoidant…always saving face.
Recently, I mediated a conflict between an Asian friend and a Latina friend – both dear to me, both unique and beautiful in their own right. Somehow, they’d become the best of friends in the fall – but then by December, something had shifted, and their friendship ended as unexpectedly as it began. (more…)
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