“Manmanlai” – Understanding business and the language in China

If we ask each one of you what is the most fascinating country where our Group is present, the winner would probably be… China! Let’s see what our “China Man”, Dirk Matthys, loves the most of the country: “I am intrigued by the Chinese language, intricately difficult, wonderful and ambiguous. It is funny to see that sometimes even Chinese have difficulty understanding each other.”

Living in China is much more valuable when it involves understanding of local culture and language. That is why our colleagues in China Babs Verhoosel (International division), Claire Weustenraed (Logistics), Delphine Renwart (Distribution), Dr Kashinath Sahoo (Procurement) and Lynn Robbroeckx (Communications), learnt the language at the university before joining the Group. In addition, almost all expats and foreigners working for our Company in China are taking language lessons and try to use it in their everyday jobs.

Just imagine learning a language of thousands of characters and four different tones! No matter how many years they have studied the language, all of them still make mistakes. Besides Mandarin, there are 40-50 additional languages and dialects. How to handle all of those? “Manmanlai” as is said in Chinese – Take your time, slowly you will get there.

Would you like to give Chinese a try too?

Collaboration: Lynn Robbroeckx, Communications, ArcelorMittal China. Picture: David Laurent