First this book is about American companies who want to do business in Japan and then with the Japanese. The author seems oblivious to the fact that a company might want to do business with the Japanese in the U.S.

Second, the book has no index. For someone who is pressed for time and wants to find out the peculiarities of a particular Japanese custom, don't expect to find any advice quickly.

I returned this book after reading half of it and skimming the other half. I can't find a single original observation to point to, and many of the observations about "Chinese etiquette" are really just observations about etiquette in general - such as the universal practice of starting a conversation with small talk.

One particularly annoying part of this book is the author's practice of compling long lists of Chinese vocabularly, phrases, place names, and historical references, and then failing to provide the character or "tone" marks. As anyone with an even cursory knowledge of China knows, Chinese is a tonal language and, hence, without tone marks a vocabulary item is completely useless to a foreigner. Moreover, the author misspells many of the pinyin transliterations, and often provides phonetic transliterations that are non-standard or inacurrate.

After reading Boye Lafayette De Mente's Chinese Etiquette and Ethics in Business, I felt it imperative to respond because I found major flaws in his analysis. De Mente has spent thirty years in Japan and East Asia, but is clearly not an expert on Chinese etiquette and ethics in business. He appears to have collected information from a wide variety of sources and thrown them all together claiming that he is writing about Chinese business etiquette. However, he does not distinguish which Chinese culture he is referring to and often mixes characteristics of the etiquette observed in different Chinese subcultures. Many of the tips he gives as things to do in Chinese etiquette would cause serious social blunders in Shandong business culture. He frequently mixes Cantonese customs and northern Chinese customs which, under certain circumstances, are incompatible. I have included a few examples of where De Mente's analysis does not fit in the business culture found in Shandong Province.

De Mente obviously does not have a clear understanding of the northern Chinese psychology when he states that Chinese downplay the status one's friends and employer. This would certainly depend on who is present when the "downplaying" occurs. Northern Chinese often laud their friend's accomplishments in order to give them face and would never speak in a negative fashion about their employer while he or anyone who might inform him of what was being said was present because of the obvious consequences. Furthermore, the essence of interacting within northern Chinese culture is personal friendships which can be very intimate rather than being between organizations as De Mente purports. Normally, Shandongnese businessmen do business with an organization because of the personal friendship between two members of the respective organizations.

De Mente also suggests to "look the other party directly in the eyes, and say something simple in Chinese" in order to break the psychological block many Chinese have a! bout Chinese speaking foreigners. This tactic may appear to be effective in the immediate encounter, but it would be much too direct for most northern Chinese to accept. Furthermore, it would be a direct affront to their face. Rather than facilitating interaction with them, in the long term, it would more than likely cause them not to want to interact with an individual even though he has the ability to speak Chinese. Because one can speak Chinese, the expectation is that he also has a certain level of understanding of the culture. Therefore, this very un-Chinese behavior would be more damaging than not interacting in Chinese at all.

In his chapter on eating and drinking etiquette, De Mente states that the host is seated nearest the door and that "In Chinese etiquette, the left side is the seat of honor." However, in Shandong banquette culture the principle host is always seated furthest from the door and the seat of honor is always to the principle host's right. Furthermore, if a Shandong host were to only sip his alcoholic beverage while his guests were drinking full glasses, as De Mente suggests is the case, he would be seen as not fulfilling his responsibilities as host. Moreover, such an action would be a direct affront to his guests' face. Refusing to drink with someone, which includes the amount that is consumed with each drink, is tantamount to refusing to give that person face. This type of host would also be deemed as not being forthright because he refuses to drink to his ability. Thus, Shandong guests would not want to conduct business with such a host because he is not willing to reveal everything about himself to them.

Also, De Mente translates suiyi as 'to sip.' Sip might be what some guests do when the host tells them to suiyi, but suiyi does not mean to sip. This is a phrase commonly used by hosts to accomplish one of three tasks. One, it is a means for calling a time out in the performance. Actors can then eat a few bites of food and chat freely. This suiyi can be transla! ted as 'as you please.' Suiyi can also be used by hosts to display to the guests that he is performing his duties as host. In this usage, it should translate something roughly equivalent to 'Make yourself at home.' The third use of suiyi comes in the drinking context. Sometimes it means '[we are not going to play the Shandong banquet game today.] Don't stand on formalities.' However, when used in the context of drinking wars, it should be translated as 'Since you can't handle drinking very much, you do not have to drink your entire glass.' Combine this with the fact that glasses are filled almost to the point of overflowing, and the result is De Mente's 'sip.'

Finally, one glance at De Mente's glossary should inform the reader of the book's major flaw. It is a hodgepodge of Cantonese and Mandarin terms thrown together without being distinguished. Were the reader to adopt many of the phrases listed in the common business vocabulary section, he would have great difficulty being comprehended by Shandong businessmen.

Therefore, I would not recommend the person not familiar with Chinese culture who can not distinguish among the regional subcultures to use this book as a guide to interacting with Chinese professionals. The notion of subculture must be considered when professionally interacting with Chinese businessmen.

De Mente is an excellent writer who provides a good description of why the Chinese behave the way they do, and how they behave (which, I have decided, is enough to drive most western businesspersons mad). I found the book slightly lacking in practical advice, and suspect Mr. De Mente has few good stories to tell that he didn't. But overall quite good and well worth reading if you have any ideas about getting rich in China (don't quit your day job)

This book has good intentions, but unfortunately falls very short. There are things about Korean pronunciation and grammar that romanization cannot convey. Although this book may be decent for a tourist who wants to be able to ask for basic things at a department store or restartaunt, it is completely inadequate, even as an introduction, for someone who wishes to truly speak Korean.

As someone who can speak, read, and write Korean, my advice to you is that if you want to speak Korean you should learn Hangul and Korean grammar. It is difficult at first, but once you do that you will find that you can learn and speak more effectively.

Trying to use this book to actually communicate with Koreans is a painful process. All of the translated text is in Romanized format. The Romanizations are not standard either. At best, Korean pronunciation is difficult to express in English characters but the method used in this book guarantees that Koreans won't have any idea what you're trying to say. Futhermore, because the writers don't print anything in Hangul, you couldn't even show Koreans the book to get them to understand. Buy Barron's "Korean at a Glance" instead.

It provides a list of several words that you would need if you were in a primarily Korean-speaking area, and provides a couple examples of sentences that you would use them in, both in Korean and in English, but it leaves several important phrases out that might end up becoming very useful. It probably would be sufficient for any quick trip where you wouldn't need much, though.