China Recruiting Blog

How Comfortable are China and Korea with Their Own Skin?

Dan Harris at China Law Blog has an interesting post up about Korea being pretty comfortable with their own skin.  He noted Gangnam style as an example of how far Korea has come. See Dan’s whole post here.

I have an example of China making fun of itself. It cannot touch Gangnam style, but is progress.  Here is the video.

The guy introduces his topic in Chinese and then proceeds to stereotypically show how each country would introduce their country in English. He is Chinese and interestingly he also makes fun of China at the end.  If you have no experience with Chinese people speaking poor English then it might be too hard to understand if you have no Chinese help.

I note this video as my wife and I laughed and laughed watching it the first time. He impersonates many countries. Finally, the very last country he does is China.   He says, “We Chinese have 5000 years long history…We Chinese are tough. We are toughest people in the world. We can eat gutter oil and and (other unsafe food) and survive.  If you criticize us we will complain complain complain. If you persist, we will show you some color, understand? ” (and cries out and makes karate chop motion) Then calmly says, “Welcome to China.”  Actually he is better then what I write here, but he is hard to understand unless you have lived in China.

He makes fun of his own country very well. Usually, China can only make fun of other countries, but this guy shows a developing ability to point fun at China in ways that are funny.

So China has a long way to go to be South Korea culturally, but they have started on the path.  Another point, Chinese men can go home at night. Korean men are often just slaves of their companies.  Perhaps China is a little ahead of Korea in work/life balance.

Anymore?