Doing research in China - Difference between being a native and a foreign researcher

This came into my mind recently after talking with a PhD student who recently got NWO funding for her PhD study and research in China. She did her master thesis in China and has spend more than half year over there. I had very similar experience several years ago, so we had a meeting and exchanged our interest.

My field work told me that some gated community in China was under high level surveillance. I remember when I tried to enter into a gated neighborhood, the security guard stopped me immediately. He knows everyone who lives inside. I was allowed to go in only if I made a phone call to someone living inside, and that person answered the phone and told the guard that I was allowed to enter. Once I was able to enter into a neighborhood during the busy after-work hours. There were too many people crowded around the gate area, and I was able to slip through. However, I was soon spotted by some other guards inside, and asked to go out.

That is not a problem for her! Why? She is a foreigner. She said that her foreign look really helped her in getting through many neighborhoods' security check points. Maybe people would assume that foreigners would have no other purpose to come other than visiting someone they for sure know living inside. It sounds really unfair...

What can be problem for a foreigner? Communication. She had someone volunteered to help her in interpreting the interview process. What happened at the end is that the volunteer wrapped up a total an hour discussion with the interviewee in two sentences. What else? The answer was, oh, you do not have to know the rest.... I am wondering who is the researcher in this case.

I would imagine it might be very hard to find a Chinese language translator who could exactly interpret everything. Maybe the best way is to record and later translate and transcribe. It is so easy to have some meaning lost in translation if you do it intentionally.

I find some balance for being a Chinese studying China.
The image is from GettyImages.

Academic writing - working with co-author

It is my own fresh experience and lessons after working with someone together on a writing project. Finally I submitted the final but it is a lot of thoughts after this working process. It was not really a happy experience, but I am still hoping for a happy ending, in which I can only know in June.

We two are together writing a proposal. He was very busy and traveling when it was due. In the morning I was ready to submit the proposal, I got an email from him saying he was really not happy. The main reason was because I replaced part of his text with mine, since I don't feel his writing make enough sense to me... ... I was not happy either. Anyway, do not want to focus too much on the details, just want to share with you what I learned from this process. Maybe it would save you from some bad experience in later time. One thing is necessary to keep clear from the beginning: this applies to a co-authorship between persons with similar experiences. If you are working with a much respected person, stories might be different.

1. Discussion is never too much. When you want to work with someone, discussion with the person about this work is all the time the best way to make things clear. The biggest lesson of mine is that I realized very late that we do not share the same value in judging some issues. What happens in the writing process, is his trying to delete my words that he felt too biased. On the other hand, I do not like his words the same way around.

2. Read the person's work before hand, and decide whether you would like it or not. I actually read his work in which he asked for my comments, I did give quite some comments, and I knew I did not like the kind of work he was doing. But all these did not warn me enough to stop working together on a proposal, since I felt the topic was also my interest. The writing process became a battle of both our interests: he wanted to pull it towards his expertise and interest, and I wanted to drag to my direction. It is quite a painful battle. Really, you need to get to know this person well, and like his work.

3. Write together and exchange with comments. It is better to write upon an agreed structure, and exchange between with added writing and comments. You need to give reasons on why you like or do not like some part of the text. Bluntly delete other people's writing effort is all the time hurting to the other party.

4. Stay open between each other. In the writing process, if you seek advice or comments from other people, do share it with your co-author.

Now I am writing on this, it seems that I just made so many stupid mistakes in writing up an three pages proposal. It is a little piece, but it does give chances for all these little stupid problems to occur. We thought it was small, we thought it might be easy. Then it turned out to be the worst co-authoring experience I have had. Maybe you will never come across situations like mine. Be careful if you do.

The image is from here.

PDF printing tips for PhD

It is my first try in making a video, and I try to make it useful to people. I am not very sure, but hope it can inform some.