5 Life lessons from 10 years in China | Cyrus Janssen | TEDxYouth@GrandviewHeights

now two weeks prior to my graduation from florida state university i was invited to participate in an exit study with nine other university students that afternoon we were invited to meet the dean of the college of business and we were invited into his office and we were asked one simple question what are your plans after graduating university now one by one we went around the room answering this question and the girl seated right in front of me told the story of how she was born and raised in florida and for the first time in her life she was moving all the way to texas now she was extremely nervous about this journey she was filled with anxiety and also excitement and as everybody in the room you know gave her encouragement and some sympathy the dean looked at me and said cyrus what are your plans after graduation and i dropped a bomb on everybody when i said i bought a one-way ticket to shanghai i'm moving to china now 14 years ago at the age of 22 i made a very bold move i decided to start my professional career in china now originally i went to china on a one-year work contract and that one-year contract ended up being 10. now along the way i've learned many lessons from living in china for this time and in today's speech to the youth here today i really want to sum up my 10 years in china with five big lessons that have really shaped who i am today and have really helped me become the man that i am and i really want to share these lessons because i think if you apply them to your life they can also help you as you start off your journey now china is one of the most amazing places in the world its history unparalleled it's beauty unmatched it's energy uncontainable working there as an expat truly was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life now when you start working in china you'll quickly realize that the chinese people are actually some of the hardest working people that you'll ever meet there's a phrase that has been trending in chinese internet over the last two years and that is nine nine six what this refers to is working from nine in the morning until nine in the evening six days a week now this 72 hour work week which is very common in the chinese tech industry and nearly double what we are used to here in the west just gives an insight and a testament to why the chinese economy is growing so fast and rapidly these past few decades the chinese work incredibly hard they work 51 straight weeks out of the year and they get one single holiday per year seven days off during chinese new year or spring festival as we call it in china and being in china during spring festival truly is an absolutely amazing event because it is the largest urban migration in the entire world you have hundreds of millions of people crowding into buses into trains planes automobiles whatever they can and traveling 20 30 sometimes 40 hours to make it home so they can spend china's most important holiday with their family and that is the first lesson is that no matter what you achieve in life whether it is financial success career success or maybe international fame nothing is more important than your family now this principle i applied directly to my life you know as an american expat that was living in china i went home once a year back to florida my hometown but along the way i would make it a point to go to a very small town in iowa to visit my grandmother and this was really one of the most rewarding experiences of my life because my grandmother and i didn't see each other a lot when i was living in america but all of a sudden when i lived in china it now became an annual visit ironically out of all of our grandchildren i was the only one that made an annual visit to iowa to see her and ironically i was living 7 000 miles away on the other side of the world but no matter what you do in this life never forget your family now the other thing that's really interesting with working with chinese people is that all chinese have an amazing ability to save money and this is truly one of the most incredible things and it really doesn't really matter where you are on the pecking order for example you could be a ceo earning millions of dollars a year or you could be an entry-level employee earning a few hundred dollars a month but almost everybody is able to save a large portion of their salary and they really have this savings culture ingrained into the culture now in the west instant gratification really is you know our way of life if you want something go put it on a credit card enjoy it now you don't have to work hard first but in china up until 2012 85 percent of all transactions in china were done with cash the chinese prefer to not have debt and this is really a great habit that you can establish at a young age learn to save money learn to invest if you do it will benefit you for the rest of your life now a person of my age someone in my mid-30s it would not be uncommon for me to send a very large portion of my salary home every month to my family back home if i was a chinese person these are great habits to get into now working in china truly is one of the most amazing experiences and to really understand the culture and to really form these relationships it's important to start learning chinese and learning chinese is one of the most amazing endeavors that i've ever gone on in my life i've been learning chinese for 14 years now and it is something that i will continuously learn chinese is an incredibly complex language some people say it is the hardest language in the world to learn that is because chinese is a tonal language so the same word said a different tone can actually have a different meaning for example with a falling and rising tone means water but shui pronounced with a short fast descending tone can mean either tax or sleep so it's confusing but as you start learning you can get along you you start learning this language you can really start to adapt and you can really start to make amazing meaningful relationships now i would encourage everybody to go out and learn a foreign language it doesn't have to be chinese it can be any language in the world because by learning a foreign language you're going to start cultivating your mind you're going to have a challenge that is going to give you confidence to tackle many other things in this world but my motivation for learning a language really came from a quote from nelson mandela when he said when you speak to a man in a language that he understands it goes to his head but when you speak to a man in his mother tongue it goes to his heart challenge yourself by learning a foreign language you're going to make some amazing relationships as a result now probably the most important skill set for a foreigner to go to china or really anywhere in the world is to have an open mind you see we live in a world that is very polarized and very divided unfortunately many people today form their opinions by looking at headlines and reading social media posts i'm a father of three young children and a lot of times when we go to a restaurant and try new food my children will say dad i don't like that and i always tell them try it first it's okay to not like it but you must first experience it for yourself as a young child we're taught this but unfortunately adults we lose this ability and it's really important to go out and make sure that you keep an open mindset for example if i listen to the naysayers who said that china was bad it was dangerous you shouldn't go there i might not have never gone to china in the first place but because i approached this with an open mind i went to a beautiful country lived there for 10 years learned so much about myself that country other cultures that it really helped make me a more well-balanced and rounded world citizen now ironically the most important lesson that i ever learned in china came during my very first year in china now it became at the end of a very long work week like i mentioned we had a six day work week and at the end of the six day work week three young chinese colleagues came up to me and they said cyrus will you join us tonight for dinner now for many companies in china it's actually standard practice to have a staff dormitory on site and to provide meal and housing for your employees and this was the case for our company in shanghai and these three young gentlemen who were just over the age of 20 they had all come from a very small village in china together all friends and they came to shanghai and what they would do every saturday evening at the end of their work week they would put some money together and they would go down to the market they would buy a big fish some pieces of meat some vegetables and a case of beer and they would go on the third floor of the rooftop and they would cook an amazing meal using a single element stove and a single frying pan and i went up with them to the third floor rooftop and we sat down and they said cyrus we're so excited that you would come and eat with us you know we're so excited about being here in shanghai all of us left this small village we all came here to get a better job to have a better life we're so excited about our future and this is the first time that we've ever had a meal with an american tell us what america is like tell us about you and as i digested what they told me i really thought to myself you know i'm not much different than these people here than these three young men i too also came to shanghai because of a job opportunity i also want better things in my life i also want to work hard and achieve success sure we look different we have different skin colors we have a different language different religion but at the end of the day we're more similar than we are different and this is a really important point that i think everybody needs to realize you can go out in the world and you can experience different cultures but at the end of the day all of our cultures teach us things that are very similar for example every culture teaches us to respect your elders every culture teaches you to work hard advance your career try to be the best that you can every culture wants a better life for their children these are all universal things now our world right now is very polarized it's very divided there's a tremendous amount of hate and what we need to do right now is we need to build bridges so as you're going out and getting ready to experience the real world remember these five lessons find something that you're passionate about and go out and work hard while you're working very hard cultivate the habit of saving money and investing at a very young age it will literally pay you dividends later in your life challenge yourself by learning a new language not only will you improve yourself but when you find somebody that speaks that language you'll be able to build a lasting relationship that will last forever always approach things with an open mind this has been the one thing that i think has really helped me achieve success on the international level and number five never forget that we are more similar than we are different now it's really important to remember that you don't change the world with your opinion you change it with your actions so go out there and be the change that you want to see in the world today thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 101,265

Rating: 4.9189644 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Cooperation, Family, Life Development, Social Change

Id: vAcoaOr4qqY

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 05 2021