Q&A: What's it like being the only Asian in the company?

I have had a question from one of my readers about my new job and basically, this reader wanted to know if I was the only Asian person in my company and what it is like working in a company where you're the only non-white person there. Well, allow me to address that: yes indeed, my company is so incredibly white and I'm the only non-white person there. There's the core team and then there's the wider network of associates (including sister-companies, contractors we used, other professionals whom we work with on the distribution side) and so far, I've yet to encounter anyone else who isn't white. The vast majority are also male as well, this being finance, it is a domain where it is mostly the preserve of older, white men and it's virtually impossible to see a black or Asian woman in a senior position in this field.

My ethnicity is not relevant to my job.

What Deng Xiaoping said about cats. 

There's a great saying by Deng that comes to mind:  "It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice it is a good cat." 管它黑貓白貓，會抓老鼠的就是好貓 - the fact is I am hired to do a job, not to socialize and be friends with my colleagues. Let's get practical here, my boss wants to make money - he's not running this business as a charity to give young people a chance to get some work experience. Oh no, he expects results and we are all motivated by the same desire to make money. He knows I have proven myself in the field of sales & distribution when it comes to complex financial products. We all have friends and family we see outside work - we don't go to the office to socialize, it's work and that's probably why we have the team we have.

Fitting in, finding common ground. 

I'm working mostly with white guys my own age or older and sometimes, it can be hard to find common ground. For example, they are all married with kids so to make conversation, sometimes I ask them about their children. "So, how is Sandra doing at school? Is she enjoying learning Chinese?" If you try hard enough, you can always identify something you share in common with that person and I then have a list of "common ground topics" that I have with each colleague, just so I can try to establish rapport even if it does seem like I may have little in common with them. Sometimes there's just a simple matter of trying to fit in - so when a group of them were sitting around talking about boxing the other day, I have no interest in boxing as a sport but I thought fine let's learn about a different sport today. I showed genuine interest and asked questions about what it was like to watch a boxing match live, where they would go watch a boxing match, if there are any amateur boxing clubs where they can learn how to box. They in turn appreciated the fact that I was showing interest in something that I clearly had not really considered interesting before.

We're all minorities in our own way - but is that a problem?

I could name you a long list of minorities in the company - there is the only Jew in the company, the only (openly) gay man in the company, the only South African person in the company, the only divorced person in the company, the only Eastern European person in the company, the only woman in a core team of the company - the list goes on, so it's not like I'm the only Asian person in a company which is homogeneous. Indeed, it is a fallacy to treat 'white people' as if it is a cohesive entity. There's only one woman in the core team in the company (ie. if I don't include sister companies, partner service providers and our distributors etc) and surely she must have turned up at work on her first day, looked around the office and thought, goodness, am I the only female person working in this company?  But as long as the fact that she is the only woman doesn't pose a problem for herself (or the others), then how is that a problem? By the same token, I'm far more concerned about the kind of tasks I'm being asked to do (for example, is the workload reasonable?) rather than the ethnic backgrounds/nationality of my colleagues, the latter simply isn't an issue for me.

How is this different from other places you've worked? 

In the world of finance and banking, your skin colour, ethnicity or nationality matters far less than what you're capable of performing. Whereas in the world of showbiz, because I look Chinese, I am sometimes cast in parts specifically written for Chinese (or other Far East Asian) characters and sometimes, my character would need to speak Mandarin. That's when I am a lot more acutely aware of the fact I'm Chinese, if anything, because I'm actually working with other Chinese people for a change when that is rarely ever the case in the world of finance. In the land of the blind, the one eye man is king. In the world of finance, I primarily use English and sometimes French and/or German at work, but in the world of acting, I primarily use English and sometimes Mandarin and German. The fact is my Chinese has never been that great, so it is very unlikely that I will ever do a job where it is contingent on my Chinese language skills.

I am not really Chinese anyway. 

For someone who may look Chinese, I'm incredibly un-Chinese. My first language is English, second language is French and Mandarin is way down in a distant third place. I also speak several other languages from Welsh to Spanish to German - now if you were to compare that with my father who only speaks Mandarin with a couple of other Chinese dialects, he has made it impossible to make friends with anyone who doesn't already speak one of the languages he speaks. Hence his social circles are determined by and limited by his language skills - whereas in my case, I tend to look for friends who have something in common with me and as long as they can speak one of the ten languages I speak, we can communicate. So with my ten languages and a wide range of interests, my social circles are very varied and whilst I do have some Chinese friends in my social circles, our paths have crossed because we share something else in common. So for example, I have a South-African Chinese friend at my gymnastics club (ie. ethnic Chinese, parents from Sichuan, he was born and bred in Johannesburg). I tend to see him when we train gymnastics together, we don't do 'Chinese things' together - our shared ethnic roots is just a coincidence.

Thus by that token, culturally I am far more like my white colleagues at work than a real Chinese person from China or Singapore, which makes fitting in a lot easier than you think. Let me give you an example: we found out that the lady in my office was born in 1994 and us older guys started talking about what we were doing that year. The conversation then drifted to the movies and music from 1994 and being the total jiat-kentang white banana I am, I was familiar with all the movies and music that my white colleagues remember from that year and was able to participate in that conversation. But if you were to put me with a bunch of Chinese people from say Taipei or Shanghai of a similar age, I can assure you that I would not know any of the music they listened to or movies they watched from back in 1994.

My colleagues don't care about my skin colour. 

In so many words, my colleagues are not racists who are bothered by the fact that my skin colour is different. They care far more about my personal qualities - for example, am I trustworthy? Can I be relied on? If there is an important report that needs to be done by Friday, can I be counted on to deliver it on time? Can I be trusted to organize an important event? It does boil down to really quite practical qualities like that which enables us to work together in the office and by that token, the fact that I'm not white really doesn't matter at all. Get real - you know we have to get a lot of work done in that office, that makes us very pragmatic people who just wanna get shit done ASAP. Just because someone has a similar cultural background or comes from the same town is no guarantee that you'll get along with them - heck, my father has a brother he totally fell out with and disowned. They share so much in common - down to the same parents - yet they still hated each other so much. So let's be practical here, everyone's a unique individual and should be judged as such, don't make any dumb assumptions based on a person's nationality or skin colour.

We just wanna get the work done...

Making money, not making friends. 

There's a difference between the kind of interaction that we have as colleagues as opposed to friends - you see, with people I have to work with, there is a kind of guarded formality. For example, I would not swear in front of my colleagues but I would in front of my family and friends. I would also refrain from expressing my personal opinions on sensitive topics such as politics or religion, just so to avoid offending people who may profoundly disagree with me. You see, I am blatantly honest on my blog to the extent where I do express very strong opinions: for example, if I come across someone who is monolingual, I would not hesitate to pour scorn and disdain. However, I would censor myself if I were to come across someone at work who is monolingual because I cannot afford to insult and offend someone I have to work with - it just wouldn't be worth it. It was something that I had learnt in the army when I had no choice over whom I had to live and work with - so when I'm at work, most people find me surprisingly easy to get along with because of the way I choose to conduct myself in a more reserved manner, it's called being professional.

So there you go, I hope that answers your questions on this topic. So, what are your experiences when it comes to working with people of a different background or nationality? And have you ever experienced any challenges fitting into a new work environment? Do let me know what you think - leave a comment below please. Many thanks for reading!