Walking Backwards

Imagine that you are walking backwards along an unfamiliar road unable to look over your shoulder.  You have to go onwards only guessing what is to come.  You draw your conclusions about where to place your feet based on what you can see.  This is, indeed, life. 

We cannot see a nanosecond into the future even when we are looking squarely down the road ahead.  Practically speaking we are getting a useful picture of the present, of the lay of the land ahead, but strictly speaking, even when we look down the road at what is ahead, we are looking at the past because by the time the light reaches our eye the situation has moved on.  In daily life we are happily unaware of the speed-of-light problem and consider, sensibly, that we are seeing the present.  Indeed, we walk happily down the road believing that we are seeing the future and place our feet with total confidence.   This works fine most of the time and this ability to compute and predict the future well beyond the road ahead has made us what we are as humans.

Unfortunately, we are not always right.  Black-swan events teach us this.  We are unable to predict the future even a nanosecond ahead.  As we walk down the road confidently seeing what lies ahead there is nothing other than past experience and probability to back our confidence.  A sinkhole could open beneath our feet or a meteorite might obliterate us before we can take that next step.  (In practice think of 9/11 and the GFC).  Fortunately such events are rare and our ability to predict is an effective guide in daily life and decision-making, but it is important to keep in mind that we are not actually seeing the future.

This idea is particularly relevant when one finds oneself in a totally unfamiliar environment.  The entrepreneur or executive arriving in China probably has several decades of experience in life and business and has a high degree of confidence in his or her abilities.   However, past experience is of only limited use in a place as different as China.  The ATM incident comes to mind in this context.  I am surely not the first foreigner to experience this.  We all know the drill: you put in your card, enter the password, enter the withdrawal amount, take back the card, get the cash and probably get a receipt or the option of one.  Three hours after my first ATM withdrawal and two hundred kilometres down the tollway, I realized that I did not have my card.  The cause of this disaster was that I failed to notice that in China it is money first, then receipt then press finish and wait for the return of your card.  After almost seven years I still have to remind myself before every ATM transaction to make sure I do not forget to take back the card.  Another simple example is the expiry of cheques.  The first time we were paid by cheque we did not bank it immediately for some reason.  A little over a week later when we did take it to the bank we were told that it had expired!  That was news.  In my country that does not happen for one year, a period that in practical terms is of no consequence.

un·pre·dict·a·ble

ˌənpriˈdiktəbəl/

adjective

1. 1.

   not able to be predicted.

   "the unpredictable weather of the Scottish islands"

   synonyms:

   unforeseeable, uncertain, unsure, doubtful, dubious, iffy, dicey, in the balance, up in the air More

The lessons in China come thick and fast for the foreign entrepreneur, especially the pioneer without the backing of a large organization or head office.  I felt such “oh-fuck” moments were a daily occurrence in the first year or so.  They were then weekly and now, after more than six years, perhaps less than monthly.  There is no way to know!  All one can do is to try to avoid making assumptions, but that is not a simple matter.  Can I assume that my food is not poisoned?  Probably.  Can I assume that I can drive through a green light safely without slowing to crawling pace?  It depends on which city or, part of the city, you are driving in.   Can I look at the laws and assume that what they appear to say is what they mean?  Probably not.  Can I rely on people to do what they say they are going to do without scrutinizing the transaction at every stage?  It depends, but mostly not.

So walking backwards through China is hard, because your past experience is only a very rough guide to what lies ahead.  So the lesson fellow Sinophytes is to be very, very careful and to assume as little as possible.  Ask lots of questions of lots of people before you make any decisions.  Tread carefully.