Fili’s world

China’s business culture is very different than how business is conducted anywhere else, with the world is still trying to figure out what Chinese culture means and the ingredients for business success in China. With the recent visit of the Israeli PM to China, newspapers were full of articles about China and the Chinese culture, [...]

How different are the Asian cultures? can people really tell them apart? It was always a bit hard for me to pinpoint the differences between Asian cultures, being the ignorant westerner that I am, and with the Asian globalization and the mixing process of the Asian cultures it’s becoming even more difficult to tell the different [...]

One of my Chinese language teachers is an Israeli woman who got her Chinese education in Taiwan. The special thing about the way she likes to teach is that she finds Chinese jokes that are suitable for our very limited level and brings those to class so that we can practice with them. Aside from this being a great way [...]

Weddings are a complicated issue for me. I’ve never been really able to relate to the Israeli weddings I’ve been to and the ceremony that surrounded them. I guess what bothered me the most was that I didn’t find those weddings magical anymore, as every wedding seemed to be an exact duplicate of the other [...]

Westerners studying Chinese and Chinese studying English makes sense. An Israeli fascinated with Chinese language and culture shouldn't sound all that strange, right? But how about a Asian interested in Hebrew and Judaism? Wouldn't you find that to be special? Well, I've come to know and hear-about a few of those.
On my first week in [...]

Today's TheMarker financial news in Haaretz has an article about westerners doing business in China titled "The Confucius Business Model". The article summarizes with 12 tips on "How to succeed (or not fail) doing business in China". Here's my translation of the article (from Hebrew):

Take an interpreter to the first meeting. "Never expect to convey [...]

If you could research anything that's related to Asian culture - China, Taiwan, Chinese culture or expat life in Asia, what would it be about? What are you interested in?
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In the past few months I've been contemplating about a research subject. The main theme for such research combines subjects that I've been involved with academically [...]

I'm still a rookie when it comes to Chinese cuisine, but the few steps that I've taken in the road to Chinese food enlightenment have been a real treat. I believe the closest that I got to having a full Chinese meal was last year's Chinese new years with Vanina's family and that was [...]