About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

An interesting conversation unfolded on Meg’s blog post about China Visa problems. Commenter CnInDC offered a well-argued explanation of the root cause of work visa limitations in both countries.

But one thing he (or she) shared helped me understand the feelings that some Chinese people must have:

I agree that the current visa “crackdown” was caused by security concerns about the Olympics. If you watch news in China you’ve probably already noticed that the China’s domestic Olympic propaganda has been dramatically toned down from wanting a most successful Olympic to a merely safe one. The reality is there, that a most successful Olympic is already beyond our reach. The people they wanted to impress the most, the western media and the general public from the western countries, are impossible to please. So they go for the next best one, that at least it’s safe, no ugly scenes (or at least not a major one), and the Chinese can enjoy the party all by themselves. I’ve heard this before from the Chinese people around me and think it may have a point: “大不了办成全运会”, or, “At least we can turn this into a national sports event”.

Photos from my visit to see the Good Luck Games in May:

It reminded me of this poem entitled “My Friends, What Do You Want From Us” I saw earlier in April on China Digital Times (also on China Herald) from cbc forums via C’est la vie blog:

What do you want from us?

When we were called “sick man of Asia”, we were called peril.
When we billed to be the next superpower, we’re called the threat

When we closed our doors, you smuggled drugs to open markets.
when we embrace free trade, you blame us for taking away your jobs.

when we’re falling apart, you marched in your troops and wanted your fair share.
when we’re putting the broken pieces together, “Free Tibet” you screamed! “it was invasion.”

So we tried communism, you hated us for being communist.
So we embraced capitalism, you hate us for being capitalist,

Then we have a billion people, you said we’re destroying the planet.
Then we limit our numbers, you said it was human rights abuses.

When we were poor, you think we’re dogs,
When we loan you cash, you blamed us for your debts.

When we build our industries, you called us polluters.
When we sell you goods, you blamed us for global warming,
When we buy oil, you called that exploitation and genocide.

When we were lost in chaos and rampage, you wanted rule s of laws for us.
When we uphold law and order against violence, you called that violation of human rights.

When we were silent, you said you want us to have free speech.
When we were silent no more, you say we were brainwashed.

Why do you hate us so much? We asked. “No”. You answered, “we don’t hate you”.
We don’t hate you either Bud, do you understand us?? “of course we do”, you said, “We have CNN, BBC, and CBC”.

But why, we still feel, your western people are not happy with us.

What do you really want from us??

My friend, What do you really want from us??

There is plenty of angry rhetoric from people who take extremist political positions on China on the China Digital Times post. There is also some extremely thoughtful points there too. Please read that comment thread first before posting some extreme rant (either highly critical of China or highly defensive against perceived criticism of China) that has already been said over there.

I propose we just take the time to try to understand the feeling expressed in the poem above and figure out how we can all take this feeling into account in our behavior with each other.

(Why am I posting this? I figured this poem would be hard to find in the future and wanted to just capture it on the blog where I know I could find it)

As a pseudo-geek, my RSS Reader includes a subscription to the almighty TechCrunch, an influential blog that covers the internet and tech industry. I woke up today to an entry about Jason Calacanis retiring from blogging and now choosing to only write to a mailing list of about 1000 of his followers. In his first e-mail, he elaborates on this decision and criticizes a potential problem of blogging when it results in “trolls and haters” taking over the discussion:

Why should we all build our homes and give residence to the trolls under them? Comments on blogs inevitably implode, and we all accept it under the belief that “open is better!” Open is not better….We’ve put the wisdom of the deranged on the same level as the wisdom of the wise.

She too has felt the harsh mob mentality, also known as “the wisdom of the crowds.” For the record, crowds are really frackin’ stupid and to put your stock in crowds is about as bright as putting your faith in a dictator-they’ll love you for as long as they feel like it, then they’ll ripe[sic] you apart without mercy.

For some reason, reading this reminded me of what Kaiser Kuo¹ at Ogilvy Digital Watch wrote about China’s Facebook-clone Xiaonei² and their new open platform policies. Reflecting upon the legion of developers angry that Xiaonei’s “open” policies actually ended up NOT being so open and thus negatively affecting their plans for making money through Xiaonei, Kuo wrote:

Tangos³ suggests that there really isn’t a culture of openness, but rather one of control, with Chinese Internet companies, and I agree that’s the case. In this case this tendency is reinfoced by something even more basic to Chinese culture, Internet company or whatever: ruthless pragmatism.

Of course, Calacanis and Kuo are talking about two very different things. Calacanis supports his decision to exit the blogosphere by citing the degradation of dialogue in the face of capricious crowds. Kuo (and Tangos) attributes Xiaonei’s tight-fisted policies to a basic tendency in Chinese culture to regard control controlling your options and controlling how others should coexist with you whenever possible as being pragmatic.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Calacanis’ rationalization has a certain technocratic air about it, which is ironically reminiscent of the Chinese central government. Like Calacanis, the CCP government too doesn’t put much stock in crowds, especially crowds with “frackin’ stupid” ideas that aren’t government approved. Like Calacanis, the CCP government fears the crowds, regarding them suspiciously being one step away from becoming an uncontrollable mob ready to end their rule disrupt “social harmony” and tear apart the country.

Therein lies the complex rationalizations for the necessity of the Chinese central government to control the Chinese people, whether it means increased patriotic education for splittist TIbetans, suppressing grieving parents who lost their children in the Sichuan earthquake, or employing grassroots public relations specialists to shape public opinion with propagandic posts and comments throughout the internet. The Chinese government doesn’t need to show Tibetan young men cutting out chunks of ass-meat or show how the Weng’an mass riot was ultimately a 30,000-strong mob mobilized by rumors and lies. All they need is a video of Cantonese teenagers raping and beating up a single, naked girl and the ensuing public commotion to show that, yes, people are inherently evil, can’t be trusted, and will do really “frackin’ stupid” things when in groups, much less crowds and mobs. So, society needs government to control and control, itself, is a pragmatic necessity for the welfare and continued development of the Chinese nation.

China, like Calacanis, isn’t too keen on letting dissidents and westerners “trolls and haters” take over the discussion. After all, the last time it happened, China became a whore to Western imperialist powers. As a social, poltiical, and economic entity, a CCP-governed China will only be as open as it chooses to be. Just as Xiaonei not wanting to be OpenSocial, China doesn’t want to be a Western democracy. China’s unapologetic embrace of control, like Xiaonei, is about ruthless pragmatism, for good or for ill.

For most Chinese, society is ultimately inefficient, injustices happen, and there is no Holy God in the afterlife to give you your due. “Westerners,” ever confident and optimistic in their socio-political ideologies, often miss that. The concession that governmental control of society is necessary is certainly a defining characteristic of Chinese culture, a culture that has, for thousands of years, hoped for benevolent governance from enlightened individuals to guarantee the most basic right hope of being able to eat, sleep, and make babies in peace.

Of course, the other defining characteristic of Chinese culture is that it is always everyone else–and not oneself–that makes government control and other necessary evils, well, necessary.

Notes
¹ About the only other person in the world I know of that shares my name. Sucker.
² For those who don’t know, “Xiaonei” literally means “inside campus,” reminding us of Facebook originally being open only to university students, you know, before they made it big.
³ Now, “Tangos” is a cool name, far cooler than “Kaiser.” It has more “Spanish street brawler” and less “German world domination.”

Elliott: This post does not reflect the opinions of my co-bloggers, they are solely my own.

Robert Scoble, this one’s for you.

Via Fuzheado on Twitter, Robert Scoble posted on the three day mourning period (translation of the edict on Shanghaiist) and why it was bad:

This is why I’ll fight to the death to protect our freedom of speech…Government control of its people starts with how it treats its media.

Comments on the topic were already ensuing on FriendFeed. This post highlights what I think Westerners don’t understand about China and Chinese people don’t understand about the West.

I felt the opinions of Robert Scoble and the Twitterati (or is it really FriendFeedrati?) were off base and I tried to get away with a rant and Scoble rebuked me into explaining myself. So here goes… (more…)

I tend to give special days special names, like David Day for a certain day in January (when yours truly was “created” aka born), Honey Day (for St Valentine’s Day), and now, Mom Day and Dad Day. It’s a David Feng tradition — what more can I say? David Feng naming innovation… or something like that.

Onwards. This Mom Day special of our famous Mind the Gap series is here because — well, today’s Mom Day! Happy Mom Day first of all to my mom — a one and only mom who made my 26 years all that bit more special. In this special, I’d like to point out to some special characteristics about moms and Chinese culture. (more…)

Nag Nag Nag, Yak Yak Yak, teachers getting on your back…

To the Swiss-educated David Feng, this is probably too old school. After all, he was being yelled at, shouted at, and yak yak yakketed at back already in school. The nagging continues, with mom yelling at David to get off the Net at around 11 PM ever day. (Traditional family practises, apparently, don’t mix very well with the virtual world online.)

Yet the yak yak yakketing continues online in the private (ahem; we mean the “mentionable” bit, lest you think otherwise) realm of David Feng — to be precise, in his Twitter World. Having passed his 5,000th tweet just today, it’s no wonder that bits and bobs of paint on his MacBook is coming off. (The thing’s been put to excess use; read: tweeting.) (more…)

Via blackandwhitecat.org, one of fellow CN Reviews blogger Kai Pan favorite blogs, we got turned onto a recent BBC World Survey (pdf)on international public opinion on world countries. Warning: this is a Kai Pan’esque mega post written by Elliott.

The seeds of polarization are already clear in this survey

Blackandwhitecat came up with an unsurprising, but somewhat depressing, conclusion:

One of the interesting things about this poll is that each country seems to have quite a rosy view of its own influence on the world, even if the world doesn’t agree. The Chinese, however, have taken this tendency to extremes - a whopping 90% positive appraisal. Either the Chinese are extraordinarily perceptive, or they are somewhat lacking in introspection….

Throughout most of the poll, when one country has a negative view of another, the feeling is mutual. So China and Japan both gave each other bad marks. An exception to this is Germany, which gave the most negative of all the European assessments. China, on the other hand, was quite positive towards Germany. It probably isn’t anymore.

I don’t think people in the U.S. really know how positive Chinese people are about their role in the world. So these differences in opinion lay the seeds for misunderstanding.

What does the US invasion of Iraq and the Tibetan crackdown have in common? Both events have polarized the views of the citizens of the country against the views of the world.

Polarization has continued, most recently through the Tibet events and the subsequent Olympic protests

• Danwei posted on Who is winning the Olympic PR War? Jeremy’s conclusion: In the West, Free Tibet organizers. In China, the Chinese government.
• Global Voices Online posted on China Fallout from the Free Tibet Protests. Conclusion: increasing polarization on the China BBS’s that don’t tolerate minority opinions especially from Han Chinese.
• FT/Harris Poll showing that China has overtaken the US as the biggest threat to stability according to Europeans.
• Mutant Palm’s translation of Fanfou tweets (Fanfou is a microblogging tool, like Twitter) that demonstrates that Chinese people are not “brainwashed” by the government but carefully considering Western sources and see them as being just biased as their own sources.
• A plaintive cry from a Chinese person on cbc forums: “My friends, what do you want from us?” (h/t China Digital Times and China Herald) Even well-educated, cosmopolitan Chinese are feeling persecuted by the world and boycotting French products.

These posts, and the data from the BBC World Survey cry out for the need for people to seek to understand first and to see the world from each others eyes.

US people take note: the world still doesn’t like the US government. In fact they like China’s government more.

Views of China’s Influence by country

Views of U.S. influence by country

Which country has a more positive influence in the world, U.S. or China?

• Overall: China. 47% for China vs. 35% for U.S. (excluding subject country)
• Latin America: China. 45% for China vs 32% for U.S.
• Europe: China. 39% for China vs 31% for U.S.
• Middle East: China. 63% for China vs. 34% for U.S.
• Africa: United States. 66% for China, 70% for U.S.
• Asia (ex-China): China again. 40% for China vs 39% for U.S.

Advantage: China.

In fact, only 9 of 23 countries rated the U.S. higher than China: Portugal, Italy, Israel (just barely), Kenya, Ghana, Phillipines, South Korea, Indonesia, and Japan.

Caveat: Data was collected in December 2007 before the recent March Tibet events and the torch run. Things may have changed.

The only good news: things used to be worse for the US. The BBC looked at historical results and concluded that the “World views US ‘more positively’” than before.

So what should we do about this?

Listen first. Then understand. Then discuss. Then debate. Then convince. Only then will you gain the long-standing respect of your fellow world citizens.

UPDATE 4/19:  Lots of continuing examples of how extreme nationalism, amplified by the Web, is creating real cost to be a moderate.  Rick Martin at PandaPassport highlights Duke University Grace Wang’s actions to bridge the gap between pro-Tibet and  pro-China demonstrators, and also Jin Jing statements requesting moderation from Netizens, and the violent response from Netizens that turned a heroine into a traitor in less than a day as reported by Liang Fafu and translated by China Digital Times (h/t to PandaPassport):

Below is a news item:

2008-04-16 14:24:00 Source: Xinmin.cn. Netizen Comments: 480. Summary: Olympic torch bearer Jin Jing has publicly said she hopes netizens will be prudent in handling calls to boycott Carrefour as the first victims of such a boycott are likely to be the many Chinese who work for Carrefour.

Below is some of the commentary from netizens:

Netizen from Jinan, Shandong: “Jin Jing is bullshit! Speaking on behalf of Carrefour. I think she’s a traitor.”

Netizen from Beijing: “Torch bearer Jin Jing, I earnestly request you to shut your mouth. You’ve done your duty already. Don’t go around making irresponsible remarks. First she’s missing a leg, now she’s missing a brain.”

If an Olympic torchbearer, selected for her excellence in her sport to represent the Chinese people, and who happens to be handicapped, can be attacked with this degree of hatred from Chinese netizens, it means that anyone who shows moderation can face the wrath of extremist Netizens.

On the other site, I was disturbed by the TechCrunch article about Chinese Internet Users Say “Enough” to International Bullying to write a 450+ word rant in defense of what I thought were relatively level-headed commenters who were pro-(L) China against what I thought was shameful anti-(L) China commenters who appeared to be primarily American (or at least Western).  Frankly, my homeboys made me ashamed.  Now, I’m seeing a side of Chinese nationalism that frankly makes me concerned about where things are going.

I just got introduced to that great big labor world recently — or pulled out of the job market, rather, with my recent gig at the Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall. It kind of fits in well with my passion in Beijingology — or the interest in the city of Beijing.

Having worked there for about a full week, I’m beginning to spot the differences — the gaps — between the average “tu sheng tu zhang” (土生土长) Chinese co-worker who never left the PRC and the rather Swiss me. Here’s a run-through in no particular order:

• The Swiss uphold the law like you’ve never seen before. Frequent reviews of work ethics and work codes are frequent for your Swiss David Feng. In contrast, the vision of “laws first” is surprisingly absent in many a Chinese fellow co-worker.

• Mainland men appear to be commandeering, always in firm control of the situation and sometimes coming close to (heaven forbid!) “trampling” (so-called — note the presence of the quotation marks!) on the ladies. To them, men are above women. Swiss men, however (especially for your Swiss David Feng), treat everyone as nicely as possible and try to neutralize any possibility of being “above” women.

• Productivity is key with the Swiss. The Swiss spend much of their time working, while locals can at times “take it easy” and just hang out when there’s not much to do. To your Swiss co-blogger, work time is strictly work time (the odd tweeting excepted).

• The Swiss are serious, but they also get a bit humorous at times. Locals giggle a bit, too, but more often than not, the Swiss sets those fellow co-workers off.

It would probably take me until 8 AM next morning to finish the entire list, so I thought I might give you a little starter. For those of you from Western Europe (in particular), all of this might be a bit familiar to you (as in what the rather Swiss me actually “does” at the workplace).

We all speak Chinese. We can also speak a bit of English. We’ve the same job — make sense of Beijing for incoming guests. Yet even here, there’s a gap — between the way a Swiss does his work and the way the average Chinese finishes the tasks given.

Swiss, Chinese, or wherever you may be from — have a great start to the new week!

In traditional China, women were locked inside the average compound and were never allowed outside the “2nd gate” (they had many gates inside the compounds at that time). In modern China, though, we see our “female comrades” (to quote a Mao-era “pop phrase”) just about everywhere, some looking outright gorgeous, some looking biz-like.

It’s the biz bit that I’m into today. Carly Fiorina may not exactly be omnipresent in China’s biz world, but what cannot be stopped (fortunately, for an equal society) is the move of women into the workplace. It’s no longer a case of a young lady waiting for her man after graduation or women locked in homes, caring for the baby (although that is still pretty commonplace in China). No, we’re talking about business leaders who are women.

There’s a big reason why they’re in the biz, by the way: yours truly just happened to join tracks, ideologically (so to speak), with another Mac compatriot, Guy Kawasaki. In his The Art of the Start, he realizes the bits and bobs that make women special when it comes to starting up a great new biz — and I quote:

My final tip is that you ask women — and only women. My theory is that deep in the DNA of men is a “killer” gene. This gene expresses itself by making men want to kill people, animals, and plants. To a large degree, society has repressed this gene; however, starting an organization whose purpose is to kill another organization is still socially acceptable.

Hence, asking a man about a business model is useless because every business model looks good to someone with the Y chromosome. For example, Sun Microsystems wants to kill Microsoft. When is the last time you bought a computer based on whom the manufacturer wanted to kill?

Women, by contrast, don’t have this killer gene. Thus, they are much better judges of the viability of a business model than men are. Don’t agree with me? The book The Darwin Awards provides irrefutable proof of women’s greater common sense. These awards commemorate “those individuals who have removed themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion.”

For example, in 1998 two construction workers fell to their demise after cutting a circular hole in the floor while they were standing in the middle of the circle. The Darwin Awards contains nine chapters about the stupidity of men, and one chapter about the stupidity of women. I rest my case.

The David Feng version is a little unlike the Guy Kawasaki version, which (especially if you read the last bit) implies that all men are stupid and nearly all women are supposed to be super-smart. But to kind of balance the Kawasaki quote, David Feng presents a real-life example: Ketty, the former secretary (and still a powerful Standing Committee member) of the Beijing Macintosh User Group.

When Ketty came in back in September 2005, the entire Membership Congress took the risk — a very smart and sensible one at that — at electing a total dark horse candidate who had just nominated herself at that very meeting. Like someone who knew the horse off by heart, Ketty leapt into the group as the newly-elected secretary. Barely younger than the President (then at around 23 in age), Ketty turned out to be a massive driving force behind the group, which had more than double in membership by the time she left in June 2007.

Ketty immediately found out about the power of the press, summoning even reporters from the mainland mouthpiece People’s Daily to the 4th BeiMac anniversary meetup. The group went on Beijing TV as it celebrated its 4th year in existence. Ketty was an able diplomat, linking up with fellow groups in Beijing, and flew to Hong Kong to meet fellow Mac group leaders down there. She was able to silence just about any controversy, especially in executive meetups. And her English was on par with that of the President.

To David Feng, having such a powerful secretary was a blessing. The icing on the cake: this was a lady. It showed that a great group needs great leaders — men and women.

One of Ketty’s final acts in office was to co-host with David the 5th anniversary meetup of the user group. It turn out to be a resounding success, with about 90 people in attendance. The entire event was lively from the start, and continued to be lively until the meeting ended about three hours later. Not only did the two make great hosts, but they — along with the membership — lead a great team.

If Ketty and Guy’s examples are any indication, it’s that women are just as important as men in the workplace. Maybe this isn’t picking up so quickly in China as is the case in the West. But at least there’s one indicator that it’s big in China — in David Feng’s plans about corporate establishment, one of the fundamental principles is that one of the top execs (or more) — have to be women.

And that’s a good and fair thing.

Please mind the gap between China and the West…

• The West: The mic is more “for everyone”. Everyone has a chance to speak.
• China: The mic is for those “with the credentials”. Expertise and professionalism preferred.

We’re not talking about the egalitarian mics you get at KTV parties, where just about everyone has the right to pollute the ears of just about everyone else in the booth. No, we’re talking about something a bit more pro than just mimicking Stefanie Sun or Jay Chow; we’re talking about things such as public speaking or hosting big events.

Beyond than just grabbing the “voice roll” (which is what the Chinese word for the mic, 话筒 (huatong) breaks down into), we’re also talking about participation when it comes to anything speech-related.

The West: Everyone Can Speak

In the Western World, just about everyone can speak. There’s less on the “exclusivity” of the speaker and more on interaction.

When I went to Macworld in 2006, I was “immediately” a speaker at both a Mac user group event and at the conference itself (in the form of the user group lounge). This kind of told me: “credentials” or “experience” is not necessarily as “big” as it is on this side of the planet (as in China). As long as you’ve quality content, it’ll be fine.

In the West, you’re more likely to be discovered as a previously undiscovered talent. If you can pull it off with good Keynote slides (yours truly has a natural allergy to Microsoft PowerPoint — for revolutionary, ahem, Macintosh reasons), and if you’re engaging to your audience, you’ll be called time and time again. The mic’s yours if you can perform in the West. Additionally, when you perform in the West, you allow the audience in — there’s quite a bit of interaction.

As is the case anywhere else, though, experience in speaking in front of the masses will help you out in the West. But even if you’re missing that, there’s sure to be a mic there for you. I mean, I got started at age 10 when I was visiting London and when I started brainwashing people at the Speakers Corner at Hyde Park about my “astronomy discoveries”. I had amassed quite an audience in about 5 minutes — a dozen or so people.

Mom says I was born to perform.

China: Credentials or Experience Preferred

In the Sinosphere, not just “anyone” can grab the mic and yak on for hours on end. You must be a “noted personality” or have the experience to make it.

Probably because China is less individual-based and more a collective community (this was the case as early as back when Confucius was around, so it’s not really a case of pre-1949 or post-1949), people have got to be known in circles. The way I see it, you are discovered first within your own circle, then you spread to other circles, and you work yourself around in ripples.

Regarding the interaction: to describe the audience as “deaf-mute” would blow the whole thing out of proportions. I’m not saying that there aren’t the odd speech sleeper (sans the snoring!), but the Chinese are much more used to the guy (or gal; let’s not forget the ladies holding up half the sky!) hogging up the mic for your average 90-minute lesson in university. I once — in essence — suffered through a whole semester of zero-interaction lessons when the teacher was fixed in one position and one position only for the whole 90 minutes: it looked something like this:

• Eyes: fixed on the monitor
• Hands: fixed on the mouse (with scroll wheel no less)
• Lips: fixed on the microphone

She’d maintain this posture even when I was sneaking a secret peek into my Lonely Planet guidebook to Hong Kong. Just about zero questions were asked throughout the whole lesson. I kid you not…

If the speaker in China has experience or has like a wardrobe of titles, accomplishments and “stuff like that”, all of that is likely to end up on the promo flyers given to the masses en masse before the speech. Wearing many hats certainly helps in this part of the World.

Speaking in China is probably not all that much about being entertaining or jazzy. It’s more the case of an info session (or if done badly, an info deluge or info dump). Of course, if you’re entertaining, you’ll stand out probably even more than in the West.

People will come to like you when you do that.

Sorry for the late post — just got in as Wednesday wounded up my time (as in timezone). There was one big thing I noticed today when we (as in the thesis team) had a reunion; out of all the folks in the team, I was the only freelancer. And I was the only one doing what I wanted to do — and getting paid for this.

See, that’s the thing. For too many Chinese folks out there (especially for those “born local, grown local”), the first thing that they want to do — is to remain “alive”. They need to earn the money. They’ll have to accept the fact that they have to go through what is considered in the West as cruel and unusual punishment to get the money. As a result, many a modern resumé (by that I mean the resumé of the average guy/lady in their 20s) can easily span pages upon pages — they give up on their present job and look for new ones faster than you shift gears in your average auto.

The Chinese, by the way, have reason to do this: they’re more “reality-based” and are less likely to spend time what I call the “ideological ivory tower”. Folks like me pursue what we want to do (regardless of the econ results; it’s a miracle that I’m paid at all to do what I do, in the eyes of the average local), but folks in the Chinese world pursue what makes their ends meet.

There’s a saying that in the mainland job world, women are used as men, and men are used as livestock. That’s probably too grotesque and graphical, but it’s — well, how can I say this — true. Keeping people in the office over weekends, forcing them into millions of meetings, and making the receptionist stay until late (because the boss is there) — these are the things that many a Westerner probably won’t really come to accept, but many a local do. They “have” to, to some extents; this is how they get paid.

Freelancing is probably not viewed with a negative predetermination; the reason why freelancing hasn’t taken off in China lie mainly in two possible reasons. First and foremost, you have to make ends meet, and you need the money to live to the end of the month. Second, the “traditional bits” in the average Chinese, plus the relative “newness” of freelancing, has meant that few people get to try this new job — or collection of jobs — or few people even have a chance to freelance.

Yours truly, by the way, doesn’t think he’s a freelancer. He thinks he’s a multi-gig guy working from 8 AM in the morning to 11 PM in the evening. Now the only thing that prevents him from being a full-time 8-to-11-er are those Spanish lessons in the morning…

But seriously, can learning a new language be considered as a detriment to productivity?