More than you think

Shanghai from my hotel room window, 5am.

As a Planner, I'm always on the hunt for cultural nuances. Details we can use strategically or creatively, ways to understand a problem, a group of people, etc. But since I've arrived in China I feel like a cultural idiot, and my nuance meter feels about as sharp as bowl of ice cream.

That said, I'm going to start a little exercise in similarities and differences between our two worlds and try to make sense out of them using what I know from my decidedly western point of view.

(Which is kind of what we do as we move through the world anyway, acting as one-person cultural islands, constantly sizing up every other person from our familiar view point. (We see it our way, we think we see it their way, we measure similarities and differences between those two points of view and, within a split second, decide whether we're curious to compromise our view point, learn or experience more.) And yes, that's where I say relationships come from.)

So, getting on with it...

I discovered that if I smash my face up against the window of my hotel, and peer directly down, I can see a gang of construction workers demolishing a giant building (a very common sight in Shanghai). When I did so yesterday, I counted 16 orange-hatted men standing around and watching two giant claw-things tear stuff down. A few milled about the vast pile of rubble, but no one seemed to be doing much of anything. Which brings us to...

Cultural similarity #1: Too many construction workers, not enough destructive tools to go around.

Just like home! The ceaseless pounding, the apparent excess of man-power, even the orange hats. Already my cultural nuance meter feels just a little bit sharper.

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As I make my way through China this month I'll keep an eye out for fun similarities and differences, try to take a picture or two, and post them here. Feel free to offer up questions and challenges, and maybe-- if they don't chain me to my desk 20 hours a day-- I'll have time to do a little investigating and report back. I'm already considering an investigation of bras...I hear only the flat chested survive, which strikes me as a little strange given all of the large-bosomed Chinese grandmas I used to live near in San Francisco. But that's probably just the American diet at work.

So long for now.