Encountering the Chinese: A Guide for Americans (review)

128 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 1995 need to be copied for any intensive use ofthe data. The adjustments to the data, which have been made to correct, for example, for provincial boundary changes, are not explained in detail. There are no indications of the dates when definitions and methods ofcollecting and compiling particular variables were changed, and so on. For such information, the critical user may have to turn to the referenced sources or to the editors and their institutions: the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Institute of Quantitative and Technical Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the Department of Statistics on National Economic Balances of the State Statistical Bureau. For those who plan to make extensive use of the data, it would be even more helpful if the data were also made available on computer diskettes. And for everyone it would be a welcome gift indeed ifthe series were updated periodically. What greater compliment can one pay than to ask for revised, enlarged, and improved editions of China's Provincial Statistics, 1949-1994 and 1949-1999? Please? Peter Schran University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Hu Wenzhong and Cornelius L. Grove. Encountering the Chinese: A Guide for Americans. Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press, 1991. xviii, 192 pp. Paperback $16.95. With the world's largest population—more than one-fifth ofhumanity—China, the one remaining strong socialist country, is conducting the most rapid economic development during the current slump in the world economy. With these facts and with its policy of openness in mind, we see China attracting the attention of the rest ofworld, particularly the West. However, with the world's oldest civilization , China has also exhibited a remarkable ability to resist as well as to assimilate foreign cultures. Christian missionaries have for more than a thousand years attempted to convert the Chinese with only negligible success. To understand the Chinese, an outsider must associate with the Chinese; to associate with the Chinese , however, one must understand the Chinese. Encountering the Chinese: A , GuideforAmericans has been published with this purpose in mind: to help Westerners associate with the Chinese. As a handbook, it systematically describes what encountering the Chinese involves , and how a Westerner ought to behave in this encounter. There are eight ofHawai'i Press Reviews 129 chapters that introduce the outsider to "Chinese Titles and Forms ofAddress," "Greetings, Conversations, and Farewells," "Chinese-Style Dining," "Appointments, Visiting, and Time Use," "Chinese Modesty and Humility," "Making Friends with the Chinese," "Teaching and Learning among the Chinese," and "Negotiating and Institutional Decision Making." The chapters contain basic and necessary information that non-Chinese need to know. The authors provide not only general knowledge on such topics as "Chinesestyle dining," about which any foreigner who has been in China for a reasonable time will have some knowledge, but also some useful information which a foreigner may not easily obtain through superficial impressions obtained during an ordinary visit. The book points out that "Chinese institutional representatives expect that negotiations will lead to a partnership characterized by trust, obligations ofmutual support, and permanence. For them, negotiations are important social occasions, a basic purpose ofwhich is to foster a relationship between the two sides that will take root, grow, and flower during the present and (more importantly ) long into the future" (page 97). This kind ofsubtlety, well understood by Chinese negotiators, may not easily be understood by a newly arrived foreign negotiator . On "the seesaw battle" of exchanging gifts in China, the author advises: "Ifyou sense that continued refusal is ritualistic, one alternative is to simply leave the gift on a table" (p. 144). This is an extremely wise, skillful, and typically Chinese solution to the problem of giving or receiving gifts without losing face. As Jan Carol Berris points out, another characteristic ofthe book is that it is "coauthored by a Chinese and an American. Hu Wenzhong [has] brought to this project his innate knowledge ofChinese culture; Cornelius Grove [has] brought an American's perspective and insightful questions; both [have] brought cultural sensitivity born ofyears of study and living abroad" (p. xvii). The following is an example of...