As I request, a student from Finland give me the report of his internship in China. It's not so positive when he tried to reflect his cultural-shock in the work environment, but I believe it will benefit the company's staff or other Chinese people to understand and improve ourselves to win the understanding and respect from people coming other countries.

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Some thoughts about my internship period

My 10 weeks internship period in *** Company was very interesting. **** is a state owned enterprise and that fact alone gave thrilling wipes for this experience. Company provided me an apartment which was okay, normal Chinese style apartment. There was bus form my doorsteps to the company but I bought a bike, because I like cycling a lot. Company provided me free lunch at dining hall; food there was good even though variation between different weeks was not so great.

First days I tried to adapt to new environment and to my new colleagues. At first I was asked that what I would like to do. For me it was very strange question, because in my country when you take a intern you already have a task on your mind and when new person comes you tell him that you are going to do this this and this thing. Interns in Finland always replace a normal employee when he goes to enjoy his summer holiday. So we do the same things that normal guys will do. Cultural difference in deed and based on that I replied that I would like to do same things that you are doing.

So at the end of my first week I was asked that can I do 3D models from Autocad drawings. When I saw the software I was supposed to use and understood what I was asked to do I said that I can’t do this I’m not a designer. So I ended up doing some quite pointless research work from very restricted internet. My orders were to try to find something relating to new production technologies. Finding few articles was basically all I did during 10 weeks internship period. I don’t know why I was placed to this project team, but it was not the most suitable place for me. I know that my studies look a little bit confusing; I have two majors and a lot of completed courses. I think that someone didn’t understood what’s the difference between study program and a major. I’m studying in mechanical engineering study program, but my major is industrial engineering and if you look through my study records it’s quite easy to see that I’m not a designer. So again a communication error I think.

So I did what I did independently and all the others in my office were doing their own things. I was not a part of the team at any point and I felt that I’m in a way there. At the beginning I went to another production sites and wrote same kind of comparison between Finnish and Chinese production sites. But that was on a very general level because if I just go there to have a quick look what I can write about that? I don’t have thirty years expertise in engineering and manufacturing. But these visits were highlight of my internship period because it was very interesting to see these sites. I have to mention a funny story from my second production site visit in my first week. In the morning I went to a bathroom and when I came back my colleague told me that you have to go to another plant right now and write a report for next Monday, that’s it. And it was like bus will leave after 5 minutes so go now. My boss only shout me from the back that bye bye and so I went. From that moment I had the feeling that he liked best when I’m outside of the office and most issues were also spoke in that way that I was outside of the office when he told to someone to pass this information to me. So after one hour on a bus I arrived to this factory. I went there and waved my ID card around and asked from everyone who I saw that to you speak English, because in my opinion it’s not wise to go around the factory by myself without any guide. After all it was a casting plant so they handled liquid metal there. So I spend another hour trying to find out someone how could speak some English. My visit came without any warning to people working in this plant but I managed to find someone how could say some basic things in English. After lunch we did a tour around the factory but the most of the questions I asked she didn’t have required information or she couldn’t understand. 12.30 I took bus back to my office as I was ordered to do. Interesting experience but in Finland we handle things in a more professional way. There is no point to just go somewhere and it’s dangerous also in many places. So I proposed that next time I could at least go with my Chinese fellow student how also did factory visits. And we went once together which was a lot more effective way to do this.

At some point I spoke with human resource and they showed me a plan of my internship period. But why they didn’t show me this at the beginning? Why wait 5-6 weeks? Plan was something like to study this and learn something of this. That point I realized that they don’t have anything for me to do; they just want that I can read something and be here. And when I spoke to Chinese students they confirmed that usually employers don’t trust students so they don’t actually do anything, they just be there and try to learn something. Different culture and different ways of doing things but after that I started to think that maybe I should leave earlier. Travelling is my main interest and when I don’t even have anything to do why should I stay here. Final decision to leave earlier I made one morning when my boss wanted me to repair a window! I was like are you kidding, but now he was not. He told to my colleague that I should repair that window as soon as possible and he said to my colleague many times that ask from me that when I’m going to repair it. I could see from my colleague’s appearance that it was not a joke and she was in a very difficult position in the middle of this. Maybe my boss thought that I have broke that window or something, which of course I have not did, in Finland his behavior is called fucking with someone and it’s extremely rude so I went to HR and said that I’m leaving at the end of this month. They said okay and don’t worry about the window. I went back and told to my colleague that I will leave and please inform my boss. Only thing he replied was when I’m going to fix that window. Later that day I was transferred to another office inside same department. I don’t know if these incidents are related or not but I feel much better now. Of course I still don’t have tasks to do, but I have learned the rules of the house so I do my own things and try not to be on the way. Thanks to my own computer and almost private office I can entertain myself 8 hours without any problems J

A conclusion, a lot of communication problems I think. I think that the idea was to take in someone and just see how it goes. It went somehow; of course I have to admit that I failed to find my place form this department, so in the end I felt like outsider all the time. All in all it was very educational experience, but 10 weeks is definitely enough. In that time I learned everything I could from Chinese way to run and act in office. Professional experience point of view I didn’t learn a lot, but because I’m studying also management and in that point this was a valuable lesson of how about different kind of way to manage things. 

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My personal opinions for the cross-cultural problems are as follows:

1. It's very important of the Chinese companies that they shall give an orientation to a new staff:

As I know, many of the Chinese companies don't have a very good orientation. The orientation shall not be regarded as announcement of the company's rule or only introduce your colleauges or supervisor. A good orientation will include the following parts:

1)  Company's business and organizing structure
2)  Aim, Competitiveness, Challenge and future strategy
3)  Culture, Rules and daily work/Life important details
4)  Job for the new staff, work aim and evaluation system
5)  How to report to supervisor, How to get support from the colleagues
6)  Communication with new staff to make sure they can understand what's going on and what they shall do.

2. It's very important to stop the staff's situation that has no work or no task
It's popular that in the Chinese companies, all the managers are fully occupied and some new staff just have been assigned no work because of lack of skills or experience in the new work. It's reported that  over 70% of senior managers are overloaded in China so that result no coaching people of those new staff in the companies.

It's a dynasty that youth want to be respected and need to encouraged to obey the rule in the company. The youth will escape from the work if they feel ignored and meanless of work especially the foreigners. All the Chinese managers can't expect those youth will keep silence and not make troubles in the company and show respects to the authority like former years. So that all the Chinese companies shall think of how to avoid wasting the HR resource of those youth in the company. As I know, many of Chinese companies choose to not recruit youth without experience, then cause the bad cycle of manager's overwork. The whole China society shall review and improve our capability for developing the HR resource of those youth in a new way. It's said the youth are the future of a country and China will lose our competitiveness of future if we don't know how to utilize our youth HR resource.

3. The best way of improving the communication is from both side
The bad part of the employment during the foreign interns is supervisors don't know how to issue task to foreign students, then the good part is they can propose what they can do and they want to do to explore their understanding and interests.
It's usually very comfortable for foreigners that your supervisors can't play their role to issue the work properly, but actually it's the best chance to develop personal leadership for a youth if they can overcome the cultural tends from their countries. There are other very successful cases that foreign students have done great job surprised the companies, usually those students are very flexible and have the consciousness to organize work themselves by communicating with supervisors properly.

Then how to develop the skills to approach the Chinese manangers, it shall be the most interesting and biggest meaningful part of foreign interns' experience in China. I will work hard to help all the interns, but I want to remind all the people:

Nobody can approach others if you feel their behaviour and styles are weird. So have the interests to accept different people is the precondition of cross-cultural success.  Therefore, there are many failure cases are aroused by the  foreigners’ unwillingness to change the way they are comfortable with in communication.

Anyway, foreigners are more willing to share their feelings, like this student's long article to express himself to me. So Chinese shall learn from those foreigner's positive attitude, because only frank expression will lead to understand, and no share actually means no confidence to the others. Then I will try to share all of you of those successful cases to prove:

There is no misunderstandings if we can communicate well.
There is no way to figure out  a successful team if we have no willingness to communicate.