India Talks Business, Now in Mandarin
Anshul Khanna went on his first business trip to Shanghai a couple of months ago. His biggest challenge there? Ordering a chicken burger at the local KFC.
“I had to point at the menu to show what I wanted – no one spoke English,” said the 23-year-old, who recently joined his family business in New Delhi, a power cable company that imports equipment from China.
While describing Shanghai as “the New York of Asia,” he said basic communication was a huge problem. In taxis, he had to flash business cards with Chinese characters to get where he wanted. But it was outside Shanghai – in cities like Nantong – that linguistic barriers really drove him up the wall. There “even the KFC menu was just in Chinese,” he explained.
- AFP/Getty Images
- A car drives over Chinese signs painted on a road in Shanghai on September 2, 2010. China
“I had to point at the menu to show what I wanted – no one spoke English,” said the 23-year-old, who recently joined his family business in New Delhi, a power cable company that imports equipment from China.
While describing Shanghai as “the New York of Asia,” he said basic communication was a huge problem. In taxis, he had to flash business cards with Chinese characters to get where he wanted. But it was outside Shanghai – in cities like Nantong – that linguistic barriers really drove him up the wall. There “even the KFC menu was just in Chinese,” he explained.
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