I don't really like the way May4 sounds and how she just totally dismisses all other races. However, she does have a point here.
I have interacted with many cultures (middle easterns, europeans, africans and various regional asians) in the USA and find that it is very hard for non-East Asian (east-Asian= Chinese, koreans and Japanese) to understand our philosophy and way of looking at things. Just go read the mistreated maid threads and you will see how misunderstood SGeans are. It is totally understandable why it is hard to get our cultures. East Asians are generally very private and you have to move very close within the circle to get the subtlety.
E.g if you compliment a Chinese on what a wonderful job he did at work (provided it is a chinese environment/company), he will immediately try to deflect attention away from himself and make up excuses to the effect that he is really not deserving of the compliment or alternatively, he will say something like he is just doing his part for the group/company. In short, he is trying to be humble but to a non-East Asian, he may appear to be meek and lack the graciousness to accept an honest compliment.
Another uniquely East-Asian characteristic I can think of is the way we run businesses. Traditional (I use the term "traditional" as there are corrupt and self-centered chinese businessmen out there too) chinese businesses like to treat its employees as part of a large family and believe in sharing the success (and losses) of the company. Two decades ago, depending on company's profitablilty, it was common for employees to receive huge annual bonuses (equivalent to 6 months to 24 months of salary). I think many companies in Taiwan gave out 12 months bonuses while SG lesser. Japan too offered such bonuses to its employees, usually minimum of 6 months worth of salary. The mentality here is to share your wealth with those who has a part in it. Just like how the pirates would share their loot. Sadly, such practices are diminishing (partly due to narrower profit margin) as Chinese companies have to compete in a global economy where the main focus is on the bottom line.
Compared to corporate America, Chinese businesses are not as quick to lay-off workers (meaning they also have to be prudent about hiring practices) as they tend to have more of a "heart" and understand how their decision would personally affect a person.
Many years ago, Kingston Technology (founded by two Chinese immigrants) made headline news in the US when they gave out hefty bonuses to every single employee (not just the top excutives). I guess it made headline news as such a concept (sharing of wealth with every single member of the company) is foreign to US but little do they know it is a very common practice in East Asia. Here's linky about Kingston Tech.
http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/121796/company.htm
http://www.vantaggiohr.com/eMachines%20 ... gister.pdf
