Do You Have a Calendar?
By Jian Shuo Wang on 2005-05-27 02:25 · West Meets EastLast time when I chatted with my friends from U.S (I think it was on the top of the Jin Mao tower), he introduced a new tool that helps people to use calendar more effectively. He asked me whether it will be a good application for the Chinese market. My short answer was no. My longer answer was “I am not sure how many people in China really use calendar.”
People in China don’t use Calendars as Often
It is a major difference between people in China and in U.S. I don’t know why people in U.S. use calendar, either software or paper based, in daily life.
If I hadn’t worked in a foreign company, I would NOT have used calendar either.
Is it because of the educational system that uses the task based time management theory, or because the schedule of each person depends on the other so much? My friends in have schedules, and I have schedules, but the schedule is flexible enough and not so many and people don’t need something to help remember them.
Restaurants don’t require reservation (Shanghai is the exception). A waiting line is always a good solution.
This is an interesting difference.
Updated July 26, 2007
Recently, I think the question should be asked as “Why people in U.S. use calendars, instead of why people in China don’t use them”.
When I look at the time management theory symbolized by a clock, I found it is not a tradition in western countries either before 1800. The industrial revolution in England forced farmers to go to factories, and for the first time in history, people need precious clock, so the work can be synchronized, and people can depend on the work of each other.
In the recent 50 years, to-to-list as a time management tool get popular in U.S, and task based management, prioritizing, and the concept of goal based time management as a theory get so popular in U.S., that people all rely on calendars and task list to do their work. The current generation of American (and maybe their parent generation) grew up and learn the time management when they are young.
That MAY answer the question of why people (almost everyone) in U.S uses a calendar.
In China, on the contrary, didn’t go through the industrialization revolution yet, and people still keep the pace of the previous hundreds of generations, and time is not that important in the current society.
So, people in China don’t use calendar.
21 Comments
more convenient now! As paper does not talk but I can set alarm to outlook calendar and mobile calendar that 'talks' (...ok, beep only)
If you combine them with your details email/phone record, you usually can find out in which part of the chain and when things go wrong and try to solve the problem in a faster way...
Cheers,
K.
Actually I took a course "Intercultural Communication" in the first semester and we did talk about this phenomenon. Edward T. Hall ever proposed a cultural pattern that might give a reasonable explanation. In his book "The Hidden Dimension" (1969), Hall introduced two concepts regarding the way people deal with time--polychronic versus monochromic (I think polychromic is similar to multitask). "The monochronic time concept follows the notion of 'one thing at a time', while the polychronic concept focuses on multiple tasks being handled at one time, and time is subordinate to interpersonal relations" (http://stephan.dahl.at/intercultural/hall.html).
In this sense, U.S. is a monochromic culture in which scheduling is important and efficiency is highly valued; while China is obviously polychromic in that interpersonal relations or guanxi is of higher priority. You may also find characteristics of monochronic and polychronic cultures listed in a form on http://stephan.dahl.at/intercultural/hall.html
Just FYI.
Examples abound. How many times do we all see things built, then immediately "un-built", then re-built. I remember in my first neighborhood in Shanghai the entire street was torn up and re-paved three times in about six weeks, first for new sewer lines, then for new water lines, then for something else.
At a Chinese company I worked for, one day it was suddenly announced that we would all go to another location for a four-hour meeting. We didn't know the topic until we got there. Since there was no planning or agenda, no one had any information or data that would be useful for reaching meaningful conclusions. So, as is sadly often the case in China, it was all just a big waste of time. This is not unusual.
But maybe this is not so important to Chinese, who seem to also place a much lower value on time itself. For example, I know many Chinese who sleep 10, 12 or even 14 hours a day. Many of my students tell me they stay in bed almost all day during weekends and holidays, getting up only to eat or watch a little tv. I often see people spending enormous amounts of time doing nothing in particular, just sitting there, for example watching someone else play cards.
Whether this is good or bad is a matter of personal or cultural values. Either way, I think it helps explains the indifference toward calendars.
So my comment is that if this is popular or influential among your circle or colleagues, most people will use it, otherwise this cannot become a thing to mention.
I can't agree, however, that planning isn't linked to efficiency (assuming we're talking about "efficiency" in the economic sense). It's pretty darn hard to be efficient without planning for it.
I am sorry to see Chinese increasingly surrendering a more relaxed pace of life to the demands of industrialization, the calendar, and the punchclock (just as westerners earlier paid this terrible penalty).
On the other hand, it's vital that China get more efficient quickly. As consumerism grows here (according to Chinese retailers - for whatever it's worth - retail sales increased 50% in the last four years alone), the demands on China's and the world's resources are going to be staggering. By it's own measure, China is currently about one-third as efficient as India. With numbers on a Chinese scale, inefficiency here results in an enormous cost in resources.
So WJS, please introduce more friends to that calender! ;-)
The Chinese have a serious planning deficit, which is fine for a backward agricultural society, but won't fly in the long run.
It's the same reason the Chinese will buy a $100 heater that won't last 2 months, instead of a $120 heater that will last 5 years. Most of the Chinese are incredibly myopic. I guess that's what happens when your government tells you what to do and can take anything away that you possess without. Why prepare for a future you can't see and can't control?
Even when the Chinese do plan ahead, they always change their mind anyway, so what's the point in writing it down? Anyone who's ever spent any time here has had the experience of a planned event changing dates a week in advance - despite inconveniencing thousands of overseas travellers who did plan ahead and bought plane tickets. This happens frequently with major international conventions in addition to local events.
Wouldn't we all love to live our lives in such an ad hoc (selfish?) manner? Well, that's fine for retirees, drop outs, philosophers, and authoritarians intent on fucking everything up, but it doesn't cut the mustard in the modern world.
cotw