When I first started to put the Dalian site together, there was no team in China. Just me… me and Phoebe. Phoebe was the project manager assigned by the Dalian Software Park team to help us negotiate the task of site selection, business licenses, and the recruiting process. She was my partner in establishing this office.
I have not seen Phoebe since July 2008. When I was last in Dalian in October of that year, she was not here. And then she got sick. She was out of work for over a year. She has a serious illness, but is now stable after a year in and out of hospitals and treatments. The prognosis is good that she will survive with this illness and that it will remain treatable.
So I got the call on Thursday that she was available to meet me for lunch today. I couldn’t help myself – I cried. She looks great and we had the best time catching up over lunch. She is, for me, my first friend in China. She’s the one who helped me understand that Communism isn’t all we’ve branded it to be and how to understand how the Chinese mindset works. When I think about how to foster acceptance between people from different cultures, I always first think of Phoebe… because she has done more for me and my understanding of how to function and operate in different cultures more than anyone else I have ever known. Without trying, she showed me how we’re all really the same when you peel back the socio-cultural layers.
We had a great time at lunch – Phoebe is on the right and Cathy (another colleague from the software park) is on the left.