An American woman invites a Hong Kong Chinese colleague to her home for afternoon tea. She's baked a cheesecake. He eats it.
As an American, she's into superlatives; as a Chinese, he's more accustomed to modest understatement. Perhaps searching for a compliment, she asks him what he thought of the cake. He answers in a flat tone: 'It's OK.' For him, OK equals 'good'; for her, it's all rather disappointing.
'We're using a different index system,' explains Emily Chan Lai-yee, who teaches Chinese culture and language courses at the American Women's Association and the YWCA. 'We won't say your cake is excellent, delicious; we'll say it's OK or maybe even good.'
Intercultural communication can be a sticky business, even if the same language is being spoken. Meanings, inferences, tone and saying yes when you mean no all help to blur the lines and make misconceptions and misunderstandings a common reality in Hong Kong between expatriates and Cantonese.
Chan found she was receiving so many questions about etiquette, traditions and culture in Hong Kong during her talks and classes that she recently wrote Hong Kong Life & Culture, A Quick and Easy Guide for Expats and Visitors, as a response to those questions and to provide practical tips on how to integrate into local life.
'I'm interested in intercultural communication. I lived in New Jersey for six years and I'm sort of bicultural. I observed some misunderstandings arising from different communication practices,' says Chan. 'Also, when I studied for my master's degree in language studies, my dissertation was intercultural communication. It's how I got the theoretical background and everyday experiences to make this course.'