Chinese parents, a plastic raincoat and microwave ovens

Hi there. I would like to deal with a myth that I have been told as a child by my father and of course, my regular readers would know that my father is a retired primary school teacher who doesn't understand the complex adult world beyond the gates of the primary school where he worked at. My father taught Chinese as a subject and he often told his students that Chinese would be an extremely useful language in the future because China was becoming a very prosperous country and most Chinese people still can't speak English - thus being bilingual in English and Chinese would allow you to be the bridge between East and West, placing you in a strategic position to do a lot of business to make a lot of money. I'll like to dispel that very simplistic myth especially since I'm now working in corporate finance and I easily make in a month what my father used to make in a whole year as a primary school teacher - so it suffices to say that I know a lot more about making money than my father and you should always turn to a businessman (rather than a primary school teacher) if you want useful advice about making money and becoming rich. If I make a disclaimer please: I'm by no means attacking school teachers now, I'm merely addressing a myth often used by many Chinese teachers in Singapore.

I could have been studying a more useful language instead of Chinese!

Now it is possible to get a job in Singapore working at a hotel or a popular tourist attraction where you would definitely have to deal with many Chinese tourists - many of whom would not speak much or any English at all and thus you would definitely get to use your Chinese language skills. However, the people who do such service-sector jobs are often very lowly paid - now when I mention this, many people would have this knee-jerk reaction of screaming, "how dare you look down on these honest, hardowrking people in the service sector! You're being so elitist!" But here's a reality check: there are all kinds of jobs out there ranging from very lowly paid ones to those that will make you so much money you can't spend it all in this lifetime. If you're going to trust your teacher in school to point you in a particular direction, then at least that advice should be well-informed and come with the right disclaimers and warnings. I remember a conversation I once had with a teacher in secondary school who shared with us very frankly a story about his sister: she was a professional photographer and you have to bear in mind this was in the time before we all had a decent camera on our mobile phones. We thought it sounded like a really fun and glamorous career, showing up at important events and taking pictures of famous people but my teacher simply shrugged her shoulders and said, "yeah you'll think that, but most of the time she ends up at weddings taking pictures of brides in Punggol and Tampines rather than famous A-list celebrities on the red carpet and she is very bored with a lot of the work she has to accept just to make ends meet. She is not making a lot of money, but still, she isn't as stressed as a teacher, that's for sure. But hey, at least she is pursuing her passion!"

Having spent time in Shenzhen, China last year, I did encounter plenty of successful Chinese people who do speak English pretty well - they were mostly educated in places like Canada, Australia or America in any case. Allow me to explain please: I was at a business event in Shenzhen rubbing shoulders with the Chinese business elite there and indeed, many of them will speak English or at least hire someone who can function as an interpreter for them. Are there highly successful local Chinese business people at the event who didn't speak any English? Yes, there were - but they were the exception rather than the norm. A lot of the more successful people at the event were highly educated as well, so either they were sent abroad to be educated in the West or at least if they studied in a Chinese university, English would still have been taught as part of the degree as it is widely seen as a useful skill to have. These highly successful and impressive Chinese people either don't have a problem with English or at the very least, would be so rich and command a big team of staff that would include a fluent English speaker or two who can help them facilitate communication. These are the most interesting people to network with in China today and trying to get their attention of course is a huge challenge. What can you offer them? What kind of ideas do you have to help them make more money? What kind of special skills do you have to offer? Because it is clear that if all you are is a translator or an interpreter to facilitate communication, then you're just adding too little value compared to say an engineer, a designer or a financier.

I can already hear some people offering examples of people who have managed to start at the bottom say working as a receptionist in a bank or waiter in a restaurant and somehow working his way to the top. But let's address the issue of 'exception rather than the norm' - allow me to offer you a case study: Mimi knew that she had an important physics test coming up but she simply didn't study for it because her cousin was in town and she hung out with her cousin instead of revising. She thought she would either fail the test or if she was lucky, she might just scrape a pass. However, it turned out to be a multiple choice test: Mimi somehow remembered the answers from some of the lessons in class and along with some lucky guesses - Mimi actually scored remarkably well and topped the class. She was even praised by her teacher for her outstanding performance and Mimi was rather shocked at how well she did knowing that she had put in zero effort for this test. So in this case, would you look at what Mimi did and use it as justification never to study for a test or an exam since Mimi somehow managed to deliver excellent results despite having done no revision at all? No, what happened to Mimi was unusual - even bizarre, it was the exception rather than the norm. We all know that if we do not prepare adequately for a test, we would normally perform very poorly and probably fail it. All you need is a bit of common sense to realize that your odds of doing well without studying for the test are very low - yet so many people out there do lack that common sense because they refuse to acknowledge how they have so many odds stacked against them in life.

There's a saying in Chinese that summarizes this situation: 守株待兔 (literally: waiting by the tree for the rabbit - "to wait idly for opportunities"). But there are plenty of people out there who do give in to that kind of thinking: they will go through their education without making much of an effort, they end up with some qualification not worth the paper it is printed on but they cling on to some vain hope that they will become wildly successful and rich one day with actually very little justification to even hold on to that slightest glimmer of hope. Now I'm a very pragmatic person, so I like statistics, I like to know what my odds are. So let's start with something quite straight forward: firstly, let's compare the average earnings of Oxford graduates vs those who have a degree from a private university like SIM. Whilst there may be a few anomalies like an Oxford graduate who is earning a lot less than his peers (I did meet someone like that - but that's another story for another day) or someone from SIM who is incredibly successful, but on average, when you look at the entire cohort, Oxford graduates will earn a lot more than SIM graduates. Now let's look at people in Singapore serving Chinese people who don't speak any English at all (eg. someone working in a hotel, restaurant or casino) vs Singaporeans engaging Chinese people who do speak English in the business world - obviously there will be a small number of anomalies, but when you look at the average, the latter will be earning a lot more money than the former group. So, is this surprising? 

Given that I am self-employed, I'm often approached by people who want to go into business with me and I've got a very simple litmus test as to whether or not I want to work with them. Let me give you an example from a while ago - I go to a lot of networking events for my industry and at one of these events, I met this guy Mac (not his real name). We actually kept in touch regularly after the event. He couldn't wait to spill his guts about how unhappy he was in his company, how he didn't get along with the boss there and at first I thought, I don't know you well enough for you to share that kind of information with me. Then Mac asked if we could work together and I was very hesitant - I knew he wanted a way out of his current company and I was nervous at the thought that he was going to depend on me to come up with a new project or company to solve all his problems and make his life better. No, that's not what I wanted to do - like dude, I can't even solve all of my own problems and you expect me to solve yours? No thanks. I don't know what gave him the impression that somehow I was going to be the man who was going to change his life, but I wasn't prepared to take on that role. I wanted to meet people who were smarter and more successful than me at such events because I believe I can benefit a lot by working with people who are far superior than me. The trick of course when you meet someone like that is to convince them that you're just as smart as them but you have different kinds of gifts and talents that they don't have, but you're by no means any inferior to them. I think Mac had revealed his hand too soon and he simply lacked the social skills to convince me to work with him. I'm sorry, but the world of business is really that harsh if you want to make money.

So turning our attention back to the opportunities in China - of course there are opportunities to make money in China, but you have simply got to focus on the top end of the food chain and these multi-billionaire Chinese business tycoons are looking for someone who's a lot more than a translator who can help them communicate with the West. The people who do need a translator are probably those a lot lower down the food chain who don't have that much disposable income - good luck trying to make money from that lot, they're poor. I'm not saying it's impossible, but you're far better off trying to work with rich and successful people. And I'm not saying that you're not going to find rich and successful people who don't speak English but it is evident that they have already achieved a lot without knowing much or any English at all, so that renders anything you have to offer in the language department irrelevant - these people are rich, monolingual and don't need someone to help them communicate with the West. Let me give you an example: whilst in China, I've met Mr Zhang who is a multi-millionaire and he owns a number of factories in Guangdong province that manufactures various parts for air conditioners and air filtration systems - whilst you could argue that he could export some of his products, the domestic market in China is so huge that he doesn't need to bother with that and still continue to grow his business for a long time to come. Thus Mr Zhang is dealing only with local customers and distributors in Chinese and has become fabulously wealthy without ever having the need to employ anyone who speaks English in his company. There are many rich people like Mr Zhang in China today: rich and unabashedly monolingual. They have no need for Singaporeans at all.

Allow me to offer you a case study to make this point: I have a friend called Andy here in London who is an engineer, designer and inventor. He is technically gifted and creative as well: his flat in East London is full of his own inventions - even for something like a lamp in his living room, he would go to the junkyard, salvage some unusual looking piece of waste metal and then build a lamp out of it to create something beautiful and unique (whilst the rest of us ordinary folks just go to IKEA). He has turned his spare bedroom into a workshop where he creates these unique pieces - some of which have sold for a lot of money. Often Andy would often order various components he needs for his inventions online from China, but he would encounter a lot of communication issues - like they would send him the wrong part, in the wrong dimension or made of the wrong material and when he tried to communicate with them by phone, nobody would speak English and communication would be done via Google Translate on email. Whilst he is buying a lot of these parts very cheaply from China, the process is often difficult and he said to me, "if only there was someone like you in the UK I could deal with - then I could simply tell you what I need, you could liaise with the various parties in China in Chinese then I know there would be no language barrier. It is a service I would gladly pay for because it would save me so much time and energy, I want that peace of mind knowing that I will get exactly what I ordered. Have you ever considered providing a service like that? There must be plenty of people like me out there in the world ordering stuff from China."

I then pointed out to Andy that whilst I'm happy to help him as a friend should he ever needed to communicate with a vendor in China who didn't speak any English, it is not a viable career choice for me for the simple reason: the profit margins are way too thin, you just can't make enough money to keep a dog half alive, never mind make me rich. Andy may be able to sell his unique products for a lot of money, but his costs are very low and the components he orders from China are inexpensive. The vendors in China have a very slim profit margin and they are relying on high volumes of business to make a profit. If he was buying a high value item like jade or gold, then perhaps there could be a role for me to play - but such vendors would probably already employ someone in China who speaks English well to sell such expensive items to the West. Rather, what Andy is describing is probably an ideal part time job for a high school student in China who has studied some English at school and can help these mass market vendors who sell millions of items online communicate with clients in the West. The standard of English required isn't particularly high, just enough to resolve a dispute when someone like Andy is sent the wrong item and needs an exchange or a refund. In short, Andy was suggesting that I do a job that could easily be done a lot cheaper by a 15 year old schoolgirl who has studied some English at school in some remote province of China (and she probably needs both the money on the work experience). There is just way too little money to be made in this and whilst the money she makes may make a huge difference to her life, it probably wouldn't even be enough to pay for my groceries on an average visit to my local supermarket. Hence, what is the moral of the story? Just because you're good at doing something doesn't mean you can actually monetize it. 

Let me give you another example of this: modesty aside, I'm a very good cook. This takes my family by surprise as I didn't learn cooking from my parents or grandmother as a child - instead, I remember missing the food from Singapore when I first moved to the UK and I started looking up recipes online to recreate my favourite dishes. I had to learn to improvise with the ingredients available to me in an average British supermarket and that's how I started cooking - but at the end of the day, if you able to carefully follow instructions, it is quite hard to go wrong when it comes to using recipes! Anyway, so when I cooked for my mother, she complimented me on how good the food was and told me I could open a restaurant - I laughed and I said no, it is so hard to make money in the catering trade, no thanks. I'll just cook for my friends and family rather than try to monetize my cooking skills. The best cooks in the world aren't necessarily highly rewarded for their cooking skills - take McDonald's for example, they are one of the world's biggest and most lucrative fast food chains. Sure they're making a lot of money but are their burgers that tasty? No, they are cheap and convenient at best, I wouldn't even go as far as to call it delicious - but therein lies that disconnect between being talented at something and being able to monetize it. Heck, my favourite Chinese restaurant in London closed down and it was not because they were not producing quality food - no, it was simply their business model that didn't work and they could not make enough profits so they had no other choice but to cut their losses and close down. Yeah, I don't expect a teacher to understand that principle - after all, they are paid their salaries regardless whether their students pass or fail their exams.

So why is my father's advice so salah  (Malay: 'wrong') then? I feel the word salah captures the essence of what is going on here because people like my father are not setting out to deliberately obfuscate or mislead young people - he is genuinely trying his very best to help them yet because of his ignorance and stupidity, he ends up giving them really bad advice instead without any malice involved. So let me tell you the story about the plastic raincoat: as you know, I travel a lot and I enjoy my trips - even if I were to go somewhere for work, I'll always try to extend the trip by a few days to include some sightseeing. There was this time when my parents gave me a gift - a cheap, disposable plastic raincoat. I said no thanks, I don't really use things like that and they then got really defensive. "What if you are abroad, somewhere far away from home without an umbrella, then suddenly it starts raining very heavily? You will get soaked, that's when you'll need a raincoat like that." Because I wasn't prepared to have an argument over this, I took the gift and it has been sitting on my shoe rack since at home, collecting dust. But every time I tell my family that I'm off on another trip, my mother would remind me to take the plastic raincoat with me as if it was as essential as my passport. Here's the thing: my parents want to think that they are helpful, but even if I told them "I'm going to Georgia" they would have absolutely no idea where that is or what I may need when visiting a country like that. But instead of accepting that they are not in a position to help, they want to insist that the plastic raincoat is going to be useful on the basis that it may rain in Georgia whilst I'm there.

They pretty much have the same attitude when it comes to having taught me Chinese - do I use Chinese in my work? The answer is no, the language of business in my work is mostly English and in some instances, French, Spanish or German. Have I used Chinese at work in the past (bearing in mind I'm going to be 43 this year)? Yes, I have - on a few rare occasions. Is it as useful as say Spanish, French or German to me in my work? Hell no, not by a very long way. Thus allow me to state the obvious: it was a bloody stupid waste of time for me to have spent all that time and effort studying Chinese back in Singapore given how little value I have derived from it in my working life - I would have been far better off learning a European language like French or German or doing something else, anything apart from wasting my time on learning something as useless as Chinese. Now I need explain to that my father isn't highly educated - he worked as a teacher in a primary school and all he had to offer me to help me in my adult life was the knowledge of the Chinese language. So of course, he wants to assume that he has somehow contributed greatly to my success today by teaching my Chinese; but if I point out that Chinese has been as useful to me in my work as a disposable plastic rain coat, my parents will go into complete denial because I'm telling them, "I became very successful in spite of you, not because of you - you wasted a lot of my time by making me learn something as totally useless as Chinese when I could have been doing so many other more useful things as a child." No, they don't want to face that because they don't want to acknowledge all the mistakes they made as parents. If the best your father could give you turned out to be totally useless - well, what do you do? Hurt his feelings by being honest and telling him the truth or letting sleeping dogs lie?

So if we were to take that same principle and apply to to all the students that my father has ever taught over his career as a teacher, then he has spent most of his life imagining that he has given his students the most important tool they will ever need to get a job. Is he delusional? Well, I would like to refer you to the finale of latest series of Dr Who - one of the protagonist is this guy called Ryan who was brought up by his grandmother after his father walked out on the family and his mother died. In the finale, Ryan's father suddenly turns up wishing to make amends and reconnect with his son but he does so carrying a rather large box containing a microwave oven. And that's when I thought, why are they making that character carry such a heavy prop? It must be central to the plot later in this episode and sure enough, they use the microwave oven as a weapon against the Daleks to save planet earth from an imminent Dalek invasion. Yes I know it all sounds quite ridiculous but do try to keep up, this is after all science fiction and Dr Who is a very popular show. So somehow, despite having done very little for Ryan over his lifetime, Ryan's father somehow becomes the hero of the day because he saved the world from alien annihilation with his microwave oven and all is forgiven - like Ryan seemingly forgets just how much he hated his father before this microwave oven showed up. Is my father somehow hoping that my Chinese language skills will be like that microwave oven - seemingly useless and peripheral to most of the story line and suddenly, just at the most crucial moments, it becomes the most useful thing in the world and saves the day? That may have been a convenient plot twist for a BBC science fiction drama, but that kind of thing simply isn't going to happen in real life. Thus my ability to speak Chinese isn't one day going to be like Ryan's father's microwave oven - get real people.

But this goes far beyond whether or not Chinese will ever prove to be useful for me in the world of corporate finance - Ryan's father is somehow forgiven for his years of being a terrible, neglectful, absent father because he saves the day with his microwave oven. Now my parents are probably hoping that one day, I may pull off some impressive investment deal with China or Taiwan which will require me to negotiate with the clients in Mandarin - this deal will earn me a lot of money and then I will suddenly turn around and say, "wow, I am so grateful my parents insisted that I learn Chinese - I owe my success to my parents." No that is not going to happen and this is why: I think it's bullshit to hope for someone else to come along and change my mind about how I feel about my parents. If my parents wanted to convince me that they were good parents, they have had over four decades to do so and right now, my opinion is that they were awful parents. Even in the unlikely scenario that I somehow do pull off a big investment deal in China or Taiwan - guess what? You think it is so easy to simply wade into the Chinese market and do business there? My dad was a Chinese teacher, why did he settle for earning the modest salary of a primary school teacher instead of going to do business in China if his Chinese was that good then? No, it takes a completely different set of skills to do business like that and I learnt those vital skills on my own as an adult with zero help at all from my parents. I'm never going to change my opinion about how awful my parents are and if they want to have a better relationship with me, the door is always open for them to make a real effort to get to know me better as an adult, rather than wait for some third party to change my opinion about them. 

So that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? What kind of relationship do you have with your Chinese teachers? What kinds of career advice have you received from your teachers when you were a student? Or if you are currently a student, who do you turn to for good career advice? What kind of skills do you think you need to get your dream job then? What's the best career advice you've had? Did your parents prepare you well for the working world or did you, like me, pretty much just had to figure it all out by yourself? Have you ever had a 'random microwave oven saves the day (or even saves the world)' moment? Leave a comment below and share your experiences please - many thanks for reading.