Searching for a Role Model

I guess I first starting wondering about this issue while I was enjoying the Shanghai Auto Show this past winter.  And now you are wondering what I was perplexed about, was it how the country can afford to have some many models of cars?  Or why there are so many car manufactures in China?  Or how can a low income economy sustain such a huge industry?  Or how is it that they have the highest number of Rolls Royces, Astin Martins, Bentleys and Ferraris?  Good guess but actually this was not high on my mind, rather it was how do they find so many very tall Chinese Models (beautiful girls).  And let me just say that there were more pictures being taken of the models than there were of the cars (by far!). 

So although I know there are millions of Chinese on the streets everyday, I have yet to see a tall woman on the street.  So I asked one of my colleagues if they were actually from Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan or some other Asian country.  He let me know that China is very proud of their “Models” and that the Shanghai Motor Show was all about the Chinese Models!!  Only the Ferrari stand was allowed to have Italian girls. 

But after I obviously insulted my colleague with this question I dare not ask where they grow them this tall.  Well they actually  borrowed a system from the Japanese.  Yes the Sumu wrestler system.  Now the two couldn’t look any more different but actually the methods are similar.  So come to find out, the girls are identified at and early age for their beauty and for their apparent capability of growing tall and are “Breed” this way.  Now as you can imagine, things can change so the Chinese have invented a procedure to cope with that as well.  Believe it or not, they have invented a surgery just for this purpose.  If you are a bit queasy then stop reading now.  They actually go in and saw the leg bones apart being careful not to cut into the bone marrow and then add steel “stretchers” to their legs and continue to pull the bones apart as the bone re-heals.  This can add as much as 4 inches to their height and is becoming a popular elective surgery.  So why are the tall girls preferred?  I think it is that the Chinese culture tries to model itself after the US culture in many ways and this is one of them.  They like the look of the tall American models but they prefer the Chinese culture, therefore there is a growing demand for this “LOOK” in a Chinese model. 

This type of surgery is gaining in popularity, and cosmetic surgery is becoming more popular as the middle class emerges.  The most popular cosmetic surgery is the Eye Lift, giving their eyes more of a American/ European look; this is followed by the nose lift and then by the breast augmentation.  I guess this should not be surprising but I must say I WAS SHOCKED!

So I think we all know that the Chinese are great at copying most everything but I never really thought that they would go this far!   I must say that it is very interesting to watch the culture grow at an alarming rate.  I guess if we were in their position and had the means to grow at such a fast pace and really did not know how to do I,t then we too would probably start off by copying the traditions of others.  They should be able to pick the good things of each culture and establish themselves as the best of everything but I see that they want to grow big overnight and that mean cutting corners (I eluded to this issue in my previous blog entries).  So as they continue to “SEARCH FOR A ROLE MODEL” I am sure we will see them slowly loose their own Chinese culture as they scramble for success but I just hope one day that they look back, remember who they were, and where they came from and restore some of the great things about the Chinese Heritage.  The one thing that I hope they do not loose is the “FAMILY”.  Today it really is the most important thing and even if they have nothing they are happy because the family is strong. 

Culture or Tradition?

Like with so many things here in China, it is often hard to determine where tradition ends   and culture begins.  This seems to be the case with my most recent learning experience.  It all started when I decided that I needed to try to change the company (and maybe the country) culture to be able to inspire creativity and innovation.  Now this may seem like an impossible job, and I must say that I agree.  So this issue has consumed much of my waking thoughts and I have recently come up with some tangible / creative ways to try to do this.  I believe that to be able to inspire creativity, the people have to see it in there everyday life.  Now this is so far from reality that it becomes difficult to envision how to start.  As Tommy may remember this was also my topic of discussion at Kalamazoo College when I asked the question of the facility: how do you teach passion and creativity; two values which I believe set people apart from others.  As you can imagine; there fell an eerie silence for what felt like eternity until finally the president uttered some meaningless crap about setting high standards for achievement.  But to their credit they took this comment to heart and within one year they had revised the curriculum to enable students to follow their passion more effectively.  So what does all this have to do with my situation in China, well I am trying to answer the same question that the faculty of Kzoo college faced all those years ago, What is creativity and how does it become part of ones DNA? 
So off I headed to the board of directors meeting to convince them that this was the primary principal need for the transition to a creative, sustainable, organization.  Now I had to make it look like I knew the answer to this and more other perplexing questions because after all, this is why they hired me.  So my game plan was this, as simple as it may seem, Make Innovation visible in the employee’s everyday life.  My approach was simple, put unique examples of innovation where every employee had to experience it; yes;;; revise the lobby to add an innovative centerpiece on which we can display things from everyday life that go against normal thinking.  And with this in mind we should also be able to transform the impression of visitors from OH WHAT A NICE LOBBY to WOW THIS COMPANY THINKS INNOVATION.  So I have gathered a couple of examples that help display this lateral thinking and innovation and the next step is to make the lobby transition happen.
So by now (if you are still reading) you are wondering where all this is going.  Well my issue actually buts itself head-on with tradition and the unique teachings of Buddha.  OK you give up? How can this be? And no we don’t have a Buddha statue in the lobby.  But what we do have is a wall which goes almost all the way across the lobby in front of the elevators.  The problem is that this wall will need to move in order to transform the lobby.  But this as I am finding out, goes against tradition.  Come to find out, this wall is a necessary part of every office building and not because it is structural but rather because it "prevents the money from flowing out of the company".  How does this happen; well that is a mystery of the Buddha tradition.  The reasoning seems to have been lost in the generations but the belief is alive and well.  This becomes even more unsettling when we realize that although there are many Buddha temples in the country, the vast majority does not practice any known religion. But nevertheless, the tradition is an important part of office life.
Seeing that this intrigued me, I decided to explore this a bit further; and lo and behold, these types of features seem to be part of the fen sway china culture.  We find that these features, feature predominately in the architecture of the traditional Chinese house.  As you enter the house, it is bad if you can see from the front door through to the back door.  In addition, it is also not appropriate to be able to see the actual toilet when you open the bathroom door.  We find yet another example of this in the bedroom where you should not be able to see the bed when you enter the room.  So surveying our place, it is very evident that we do not live in a traditional Chinese house as none of these architectural features figure predominately in our flat's architecture.  But then it really does not offend us but we really don’t have good fen sway. 
So tradition lives on in Shanghai even though outward signs have now all been replaced by huge skyscrapers and sprawling suburbia.