WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE"If you are a foreigner, you must get into that routine. You
must remember that going out to dinner, drinking, and eating is
a big social thing, more important than it is here."
There is very little cultural life in Hong Kong, Elaine told
me, and dining and social engagements seem to take the place
of theater and music. Foreigners, however, are rarely expected
to reciprocate in terms of entertainment. "They understand that
usually you are only passing through."
There is, however, a darker subtext to being a foreigner in
Hong Kong. Foreigners are still referred to as "foreign devils"
by the native Chinese. Although there is a surface camaraderie,
"backslapping, handshaking, a lot of physical contact, in general
they do not accept strangers," Elaine remarks. "To get to where
the power base is, you have to be an insider. Making friends,
even on a superficial level, takes a long time."
I asked how a foreigner could overcome the ethnocentricity of
the Chinese in Hong Kong, and Elaine shook her head. "With
difficulty. Of course, it helps if you speak the language, which
in the business world is usually Cantonese. It also helps if you
are a senior partner in your firm, an influential person or an
older citizen. Influence and importance helps, but age has a very
strong subtext in Hong Kong. Once, on a job interview with a
Chinese entrepreneur, an older man, I found that his wife and
children, present at the interview, treated him with extraordinary
respect. The women were silent, waiting on him and even anticipat-
ing his wishes, and his son referred to him as 'The Chairman,'
always in the third person."
It is best, Elaine stressed, to act deferential in your dealings
with older or important businesspeople. "They won't see it as a
sign of weakness or a lack of power. In fact, you would project