CN Reviews Mind the Gap Wednesday: Mic in Hand
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.
3 Responses to “CN Reviews Mind the Gap Wednesday: Mic in Hand”
This may be true. Keep in mind that the tech industry and the Mac community in particular may be more egalitarian than many other fields. It seems like in other tech circles in China the culture seems much more open, with a focus on subject matter expertise and the substance of what people have to say. However, in more “traditional” businesses, there is much more emphasis on title, status, and age. I think this is true for both Western and Chinese businesses. Thanks for this point of view. (BTW, nice photo of the early David Feng!)
Talking to people in the West is easy, I agree.
Getting them to listen is a bit more of a challenge.
Getting them to pay you for your thoughts is the real trick.