Building Bridges in Vancouver Communication spans cultures - multicultural aspects of business and training in British Columbia

Training & Development, May, 2001 by Haidee E. Allerton

Wong says that his number 1 imperative is "to demystify the Asian marker." He says there's a combination of first through sixth generation Chinese in Vancouver and people in service industries in particular need to take the generational differences into account. "For instance," he says, "I have a friend who swears in Chinese very well and plays more mah-jongg than my aunt, but I don't think he's more Chinese than my aunt.

"Actually," says Wong, "I think Vancouver is a model global village. My dream is to help turn it into the most integrated city in the world, to create understanding with dialogue, to build bridges."

Next is Kenson Ho, managing director of The Chinese Agency Canada Ltd. It's raining, and Ho is a bit late for our appointment, which is not necessarily a big deal in the Vancouver business culture. Kraig and I pass the waiting time talking about films, of which we both seem to have seen every one ever made. Ho arrives and apologizes.

Ho, who's from Hong Kong and has worked in the states, says, "When Canadian companies talk about multicultural, they're looking at a much more complex picture than just the Chinese population. There's Chinese, Indo-Canadian, Korean, Japanese, and I believe Filipino is now the third largest Asian population in Vancouver.

"Realistically, there isn't any Canadian agency or company that can claim to be able to deal with all of these groups at once. That would be too costly an exercise. So we worked out a scheme: We talk to someone who can be a representative of the group we're working with in terms of behavior, buying habits, and so forth. Next, we identify a writer in that particular language and a third party to OK the final copy. If an Indo-Canadian writer came up with brilliant copy in Punjabi, for example, we wouldn't know what it was. So we use a third party to judge that. That's the quality control aspect of it. We also have to make sure the concept we develop works in different languages."

About five years ago, Ho started working with the Skagit Valley Casino Resort in Bellingham, Washington--a place halfway between Vancouver and Seattle. "Kind of redneck," he says and then laughs, "not politically correct." Washington casinos are all owned by tribes and are a main source of income.

"A lot of Chinese from Vancouver went down to the casino because the betting limits were higher." The casino, originally managed by Las Vegas-based Harrah's, now has a customer base that's 80 percent Asian. "Asians are more into gaming than North Americans," says Ho, "because many Asian nations are historically unstable and the people are used to taking risks. Filipinos, for instance, are used to volcanos; they dance in the ashes!"

The problem: The casino's service people weren't used to dealing with Asians. Dealers found them rude because they talk loudly amongst themselves, don't smile much, and don't tip. "What the dealers didn't realize," says Ho, "is that in Hong Kong, for example, many people live in small, noisy areas and are used to talking loudly. Also, Asians tend not to talk openly with people not in their group because they're taught that the 'less you say, the fewer mistakes you make'--especially when you have to speak a foreign language. At the major casinos in Macao near Hong Kong, tipping is compulsory; the dealer just takes it, so not having to tip becomes a luxury." So, Ho conducted seminars to make the casino's service staff more culturally aware.