Management consultants like to warn companies trying to do business in Asia about the dangers of cultural misunderstandings – handing over business cards, refusing to drink rocket-fuel grain alcohol, declining the offer of a snake sandwich, that kind of thing.
Mostly the rule is that if you behave in a genuine way and try to show respect, you can’t go wrong. But sometimes even government ministers and mayors, both presumably backed by teams of culturally sensitive advisers, can mess up badly.
Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je, who has a bit of a reputation for off-the-cuff remarks to reporters, was given a pocket watch by British minister of state for transport Susan Kramer.
Giving watches or clocks as gifts is taboo in Chinese culture because the phrase “give a clock” sounds similar to the phrase used to say farewell to the deceased at a funeral.
The mayor laughed off the unintended snub, saying: “I can just give it to someone else or take it to a scrap metal dealer and sell it for cash.”
This comment got him into worse trouble, and he later apologised for causing offence. He said he was not superstitious – he even lived on the fourth floor, considered unlucky by some as “four” sounds like “death”.
