
When a Chinese PhD Student Meets a German Supervisor [pdf] - RainforestCx
https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/35697/Zhang_0-349300.pdf
======
denzil_correa
One of my most important suggestions to Asian (Indian and Chinese in
particular) students is to expand your horizons both professionally and
personally. You are going to a new country - don't ONLY mingle around with
your kind. There is a far broader experience to gain that will only help you
professionally and personally in the future. There are many ways you can do it

* Share an apartment with someone from a different country

* Make acquaintances and talk to people _outside work_ with diverse professions - don't stick to scientists ONLY

* Try to understand difference between cultures

Especially once you move to a new country, you have a great opportunity to
understand difference between cultures. Don't miss it!

~~~
paradite
While I agree with your advice, there is one important point that you missed.

The fact that Chinese and Indian students tend to form cliques or enclaves, is
a perfectly normal and natural behavior, because of the sheer large number of
students in the same community.

Do not mistake this as "Chinese and Indians are not good at mingling with the
locals because of their mindset and culture." It is mostly just because their
social circle is large enough to sustain itself in a typical overseas
community. In fact, it requires much more effort for them to get out of the
comfort zone than students from countries that do not have so many students
studying overseas. Another easy way to see it is that, they literally have a
"larger comfort zone" to jump out of.

To put it into perspective, consider a US college where there is only a few
Chinese or Indian students, chances are they will naturally interact more with
locals.

Then consider a group of exchange students in an Asia university, chances are
they are going to be mingling around within themselves all day with minimal
interactions with locals.

So my point is, do not judge them negatively because of this, and do put in
some extra effort in reaching out to them if you are kind enough and want to
change the status quo.

~~~
drieddust
I am an Indian in UK. Culture of heavy drinking and partying even in age group
well past 30 is a real hindrance for me. If you don't drink or want to stop at
a few, you are not really a sport.

Many Indian face similar predicament.

~~~
harry8
That is a stunningly racist thing to say. "All English are dunks so I'm forced
to avoid them." Think if a visitor to India made a comment as wrong and silly
as that about Indian people. British people will brush it off and it won't
hurt them, while the converse may not be true it's the same sin and you should
think on it a little bit.

~~~
tetromino_
Setting aside the odd use of the term "racist" (counting Englishmen a distinct
race sounds very 19th century)...

> "All English are dunks so I'm forced to avoid them."

That's not what drieddust said at all. His (her) problem isn't with the
English being drunk or not - it's with the English _expecting him (her) to
drink_ if he wanted to be part of their in-group. Which is a reasonable
complaint.

~~~
harry8
Taking any nationality as a race is stupid. The whole notion of race is
stupid. And racisim is now impossible because race doesn't exist. It's a
shorthand wherever it is used. Read culturalist if you prefer.

There are a large number of teatotallers in the UK. There are large numbers of
people who don't like to drink much and don't drink often in the UK. There are
people who like to drink often to excess. Rain is wet, sugar is sweet...

It is difficult to find a group of friends when in a new country. I've heard
expats claim Indians don't accept white people and scoffed similarly. I'm
sorry if you haven't (yet) found a social group you like. Blaming the
inhabitants of a country because of their culture, attitudes and practices for
that is not something I have to treat with respect - whoever does it.

------
jimmywanger
It's hard to start from scratch in a language.

Chinese and German share virtually no roots.

For instance, if an English speaker started a PhD program in German, he can
probably figure out some stuff since there are a lot of cognates and the
writing system is similar. Sure, you'll sound like a sedated five year old,
but you can figure out where stuff is in stores and how to ask for things, and
grammatically you'll be in the same zip code.

Coming from Chinese, you really are starting from nothing. You're doing a lot
of memorizing, not only of vocabulary but word order.

~~~
bad_alloc
Especially if you pursue a degree in a technical field, German quickly gets
wierd. You encounter a lot of long, composite words ("Doppelkupplungsgetriebe"
or "Motorsteuerungseinheit") for which the language is already famous for.
Then there also are old terms like "Krampe", "Tülle" or "Flansch" (staple,
sleeve and a widened section of a pipe), which are just standing terms for a
certain part but are absolutely nonobvious and hard to find in dictionaries.
I'm a native German speaker and only recently learned about Tüllen.

Add regional dialects to that which often contain grammatical shifts and even
more obscure synonyms for high German words and you'll get a lot of cunfused
foreign students.

~~~
maxerickson
"Krampe" and "Flansch" look a lot like crimp and flange to me.

If I've understood "Krampe" correctly, crimp is a better word than staple.

~~~
Leon
Good call on crimp / krampe, I was trying to identify the origin by phonetics
on that one. Using krampe as a noun for the action of what something does or
have happen to it sounds like a German language thing to do.

~~~
maxerickson
I'm not convinced it's a correct interpretation.

------
theparanoid
The fallacy of sunk cost - "the result of his careful consideration was that
he could never give up, because he had already invested too much."

Ming should have quit. An instructive example is the Chinese physics PhD
student who exploited the system for his own benefit,
[http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-
science](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science).

~~~
sliverstorm
You could read that part different ways- if some of his "investment" was
allowing other doors to close (such as becoming a salaryman), then truly, he
has "invested" too much to turn back.

------
rahrahrah
> It seems to be a norm for Chinese students to “report only the good news but
> not the bad news” when they talk to their supervisors, as reporting bad news
> could be seen as complaining. In Germany, reporting bad news is as important
> as reporting good ones.

Yup, I've seen this.

~~~
alecco
That's for Asians in general. But it's creeping into US with the Smile-or-die
push everywhere.

~~~
internaut
> But it's creeping into US with the Smile-or-die push everywhere.

Including Hacker News.

"Speak the truth to power!"

"Oh, and be polite."

...

Then it comes to the point you don't know if anybody agrees with you or not
because they're being so coy.

~~~
karyon
I don't see how speaking the truth and being polite could ever rule each other
out.

In fact, HN is the one place where i've seen the phrase "I disagree" the most
often. Not because people are so disagreeable, but because they openly, and
politely, state their disagreement if there is any.

~~~
internaut
> I don't see how speaking the truth and being polite could ever rule each
> other out.

Saying something negative or critical can be interpreted as being being
impolite. It happens all the time.

There is a spectrum of civility and we're ascending that spectrum towards
political correctness, not away from it.

How I know this is:

If you articulate your premise, don't use abusive language, but still are
attacked for taking a bite out of something, then there is a bias.

This is natural. I have it. You have it. We all have it.

The social world is in constant conflict with reality. In fact it seems like
some kind of game for people to increasingly be in denial of the extremely
obvious so they can score points and be social climbers.

The result is a world where you have to have Straussian interpretations of
everyday speech.

> In fact, HN is the one place where i've seen the phrase "I disagree" the
> most often. Not because people are so disagreeable, but because they openly,
> and politely, state their disagreement if there is any.

I disagree!

Well not quite. HN is better than most places where geeks gather to ponder
thoughts. It is still heading in the wrong direction.

This is a testable proposition.

Make a list of five to ten statements, right now, that contravene majority
held opinions. You don't have to agree with the statements and indeed you
probably won't. Poll somebody to check if you're doing it right. Then post
those statements on an active current thread on HN and see what happens.

You are likely to find that tone policing goes way beyond merely preventing
spam and maintaining some kind of civility.

------
wslh
Are there good resources for learning how to culturally communicate with
customers from different cultures? Even reddit groups where we can
participate. I am not talking about speaking multiple languages but being
multicultural.

Since 2003, I have been working directly with customers from more than 30
countries but there are cases when I am stuck at the project requirements
phase in an already sold service. For example, I am talking with a customer in
Malaysia to do something that seems almost impossible because of regulatory
issues. He understands the difficulty but it seems like he cannot engage in a
logical discussion about this and definitely change his idea. In a way he
respects me but thinks I can do some magic to overcome regulatory issues with
software only. If I were talking with a typical American customer he would
realize that the problem doesn't have a solution earlier on and would try to
reformulate the requirements. BTW, any recommendation will be helpful!

~~~
paradite
This is quite off-topic, but one logical and appropriate thing to do is
approach a consultancy firm in Malaysia that specialize in business
development/regulation/IT to learn how to talk in their "native language".

~~~
wslh
Yes thanks. I am not doing exactly this but contacting an American who is well
versed in Malayan culture, language, and has studied there. Beyond this, I
think it is interesting to fomalize cultural differences to learn how to
handle these situations.

------
zhemao
I find it kind of funny that a guide for Chinese and German academics is
written in Chinese and English. Is there even a German translation of this, or
did the authors just assume that German academics are all proficient in
English anyways?

~~~
zhemao
Also the guide on German cultural expectations for Chinese is pretty
hilarious. The thing about always making appointments and staying in queues is
very different from how it is in China.

Also, do Germans seriously need to separate out green glass, clear glass, and
brown glass bottles? Do Germans need to keep 7+ bins in their homes as well,
or do they just separate it out later?

~~~
wolfgke
> do Germans seriously need to separate out green glass, clear glass, and
> brown glass bottles?

It is indeed done in Germany.

> Do Germans need to keep 7+ bins in their homes as well

At home in Germany there are four bins: paper, organic waste, residual waste,
Green Dot (recyclable waste) - at some places the recyclable waste has to be
put in yellow bags (Gelber Sack) instead. I have also seen cans for metal
waste at large apartment buildings in the past.

In a typical residential district there is a central place where there are
bottle banks for clear, brown and remaining (including green) glass from non-
returnable bottles.

Here is an excerpt which makes fun of the complications of separating the
garbage from the German comedy "Otto - Der Außerfriesische", where the main
actor tries to convince the people that if you throw away a teabag you have to
separate it into tealeaves (organic waste), paper, staple (scrap metal) and
string (residual waste):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBPIPzGBxYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBPIPzGBxYE)

~~~
pieterr
You probably mean: Otto - der Ostfriese.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Waalkes](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Waalkes)

EDIT: Ah, you're right, he made a film with that title:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_–_Der_Außerfriesische](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_–_Der_Außerfriesische)

------
countryqt30
Also a very cool read for a Swiss guy (Zurich) who moved to Beijing :D.

------
xeed
Any mirrors?

~~~
sasvari
it works for me, but you can access the content also via google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy-
ab&...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy-
ab&hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fkops.uni-
konstanz.de%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F123456789%2F35697%2FZhang_0-349300.pdf&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fkops.uni-
konstanz.de%2Fbitstream%2Fhandle%2F123456789%2F35697%2FZhang_0-349300.pdf&gs_l=serp.3...7133.8378.0.8607.6.6.0.0.0.0.66.225.5.5.0....1...1c.1.64.psy-
ab..1.0.0.irVMbpPfhzo&pbx=1)

------
xoher
It is mentioned in the first line that this is the second book in the series.
Anybody knows where I can find the first book?

~~~
raphman
[https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/handle/123456789/23719](https://kops.uni-
konstanz.de/handle/123456789/23719) (Advice for (new) professors, only in
German)

------
nshm
The language of this book looks like it is targeted to a mid-school teenager.
Not sure about German students, but I would expect someone with masters degree
to know a lot more than this. At least a guy should be familiar with German
history/culture/philosophy/literature.

------
gohrt
May we assume that the Chinese side (how Chinese students get funded to go to
Germany, etc) applies pretty well to Chinese students at other nations'
universities as well?

------
reyherb
I am also a foreigner living in Konstanz, Germany. I've been here for the last
10 years and i can tell you out of experience the people around the Bodensee
area (lake Constance) have a complete different mentality compared to those
living in larger cities like Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, Köln or even Berlin.

-One thing i know works very well in Germany is that you need to learn their language and culture. Try to understand how these people think and why they think like that. That will make your life easier.

-As foreigners we also want meet and mingle with our own kind. And that's okey because it's the best way to beat homesick. However, sometimes it's also recommendable to mingle with other foreigners from other countries. Find out what works for them. At the university for example, you could find such English speaking people like the Americans, UK citizens and even established Africans living and working in that area.

-Also, thankfully there are 'meetups' nowadays. You are able to meet and connect with local and international people with different professional backgrounds

~~~
LeanderK
what i never understood is why learning the language and culture is not the
immediate #1 priority, i think its the only way to really integrate and
prosper in an foreign country. Of course there are more pressing issues
(getting a place to sleep, get to know you working environment and
responsibilities), but i would dedicate every second i can to practice the
language and understand the culture (not in the academic sense).

~~~
wsy
It seems so, but in Germany it is not #1 priority. In my research lab in
Germany, we were PhD students from about 15 countries, and the work language
was English. This is very common for science and engineering research. So a
student from China can either spend time learning German to improve his/her
social life, or spend time reading and writing in English to achieve better
academic results. Usually it is difficult enough for them to become fluent in
English, which is necessary to publish papers. Guess what happens.

