Charles C. Mann Quotes

Always when you go to a new country and they teach you bad words, you just say them without knowing the value and people look at you because you didn't know that value of them.

I don't really have that much contact with Americans. I mean, I see the oddest things on the Internet, I suppose. And I've got a couple of American friends, but they are Anglophiles anyway because they've decided to come live here.

Even when well translated. can we really understand what other cultures are talking about?

China is a company of contradictions. Nothing is what it appears to be. We have to be extremely respectful when we go overseas.

Travelers never think that they are the foreigners

American audiences and European and Asian audiences are so different.

When our diplomats go abroad, they are surprised that they can't do the things that they can do here.

The Foreign Office works hard to remind people of local laws and customs as often they can be very different to British law.

When I worked with Chinese crew for the first time, including production unit, spot boys etc, everyone was so affectionate, sweet and kind.

I wasn't searching for a common denominator - I started wondering about the challenge of working in other cultures. What I reached was the sudden acknowledgment of the universal aspect of filmmaking.

The population increasing, some of it could be in countries we haven't thought of making art in. I've never entertained making comedy in China. Like what world is that? I don't know how they would perceive art or sketch comedy. It's not a matter of intellect; it's a matter of language.

... with every Asiatic country where we operate in cooperation with the existing culture, the need for intelligent understanding of that country and its ways of life will be crucial. These nations will very likely not respond to appeals with which we are familiar, and not value rewards which seem to us irresistible. The danger--and it would be fatal to world peace--is that in our ignorance of their cultural values we shall meet in head-on collision and incontinently fall back on the old pattern of imposing our own values by force.

Our leaders increasingly see fit to lecture the ethnic minorities on the need to integrate, including of course the need to speak English. What about the need, though, for Britain to integrate with the rest of the world?

If you're playing with somebody from another idiom, you can't react to them in the same way that you react to somebody that is closer to your idiom. You don't fall into the same habits. You find a new way of communicating.

When I was living in China, I learned to make things hyper-explicit because often they were being read by people whose command of English kept them from picking up what I thought were obvious signals.

More and more, in any company, managers are dealing with different cultures. Companies are going global, but the teams are being divided and scattered all over the planet.

I say the same thing that I've said for decades now, which is: don't go over to Japan trying to change it, thinking that you know better. Go there trying to understand.

Globalisation has obliterated distance, not just physically but also, most dangerously, mentally. It creates the illusion of intimacy when, in fact, the mental distances have changed little. It has concertinaed the world without engendering the necessary respect, recognition and tolerance that must accompany it.

My new play 'Chinglish,' which will go to Broadway, is about a white American businessman who goes to a provincial capital in China, hoping to make a deal there. It's bilingual. And it's about trying to communicate across language and cultural barriers.

I don't really do Japanese interviews. I don't think there's much call for me in Japan.

When you're writing these things, you're in a room making each other laugh, you really have very little sense of political correctness or incorrectness. This is a question that Europe tends to ask and America doesn't.

I'm always amazed at how much people 'get' when I'm performing overseas. I've never had to change my act on my international shows; I just make sure that I've taken some time to get to know the people in those countries before I perform. That's been really useful.

When you introduce something new to a country, you want to do it right. Generally, that means you have to do it yourself.

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.

The biggest lesson I've learned by living abroad for the last four years is the importance of communication.