Product Description
Knowing and understanding these eight lessons on how to succeed in China could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars, earn you millions in profits and save you years of time. Read case histories on Wal-Mart, Micro-Soft, VW and DMG illustrating the lessons. This is a practical how-to book giving you insights into the psychology and behavior of how and why the Chinese act the way they do.
It is written by a senior Western manager who successfully managed an American-Chinese company in Shanghai. It will give you the information you need to decide if you should be in China and if so, what to expect and prepare for and why.
The first eight chapters trace his background and preparat… More >>
“First-time author Tadla delivers an eclectic volume that may be of use to North American businessmen. Even at well under 200 pages, How to Live & Do Business in China is a sprawling work that is part-memoir, part-travelogue and part-primer on Chinese culture. Tadla writes of his experiences as a 61-year-old Canadian adjusting to Chinese norms while serving as a consultant to a U.S.-owned, Chinese-operated commercial production company. He struggles at first, hindered by his Western prejudices, but eventually achieves what he calls a change in paradigm and meets with success. As a first-person narrator, the author is a likable fellow with a rough-edged yet generally readable writing style. As he contrasts Western and Chinese approaches to just about everything–likening the cultural differences to the difference between left- and right-brained thinking–Tadla includes personal anecdotes to illustrate his points. Discussing Chinese medicine, for instance, he relates his apparently successful efforts to beat back prostate cancer using a method blending Western and Eastern approaches to health care. The book is organized somewhat haphazardly, and the author tends to run off on tangents, a few of which–a touching tribute to his late wife, for one–stray from the thrust of his work. Most of his observations, however, prove useful in illuminating Chinese standards to Westerners otherwise unfamiliar with the territory. Several sections–an overview of Confucianism, an essay on the crucial concept of “guanxi,” a description of the Chinese haggling process–may help ordinary tourists and businessmen. The author mangles a sentence here and there, and he unsettlingly glosses over Chinese human-rights abuses while lauding the government’s ability to get things done, but altogether this is a friendly, handy beginner’s guide to navigating the society of a vast, ancient country. Short, wide-ranging and serviceable.”
KIRKUS REVIEW: Kirkus Discoveries is one of the most prominent, professional, and respected book review publications in the book industry
Rating: 5 / 5
I ordered 3 books on living in China and this is the worst by far. There is information in the book, but it is very sparse and it is a very short book. You will learn far more with “Doing Business in China”, and Moons, “Living Abroad in China”. I learned way more about Ernie Tadla than I wanted to know, and way less about China than I expected. How this book got 9, 5 star ratings I’ll never know, but they fooled me.
Rating: 2 / 5
I read your book “How to Live and Do Business in China” in two hours – could not put it down! It has to be one of the most caring accounts of experiences of a Westerner in China! I am hoping to move to Chengdu or Luzhou in Sichuan Province in the coming years and found the answers to many difficult questions.
Rating: 5 / 5
I met Ernie some months ago not knowing he had written a book. Our conversation took us all over the world and we shared many views. It was only towards the end that Ernie told me he had written this little book which he would love to give me…
The title of the book somewhat did not give me any indication that what I would read was my conversation with Ernie that evening – this surprised me, but only made me want to finish the story Ernie had started telling me. Its marvelous little book, that shows us how to be better world citizens, and for which I have only one suggestion; the title should be “How to Live and Do Business”. No matter if we are living or doing business in China or the Middle east or South America, the book gives you a framework and examples for the type of openmindness any person should have towards a global world where cultures have intertwined as never before in the history of humankind.
Rating: 5 / 5
Ernie Tadla gets it right. You can’t do business in China without really living. And these days, you can’t really live in China without doing good business. Pre-Olympics, it’s starting to get too damn expensive.
So, How To Live & Do Business In China provides wonderful, insightful instruction into these two very necessary and intertwined areas that combine to make the best of China adventures.
Mr. Tadla, though married (at least at the time of book publication), guides us through sex in Shanghai just as insightfully and humorously as he does through Chinese communication styles. I wish my significant other would let me write so honestly. Kudos, Ernie (and wife, Lovy).
Rating: 5 / 5