The same thing happens with VR glasses because your body is moving, but the virtual reality you are in is not quite up to speed with what is displayed on the screen. The technical term for this is latency, but being able to explain that in English rather than Chinese is pretty difficult for my team members. It is easier for them to switch to speaking Chinese and then give me a recap of what is happening. I can only reply back in English and they do understand what I am saying, but they are embarrassed that they cannot include me in every single discussion as it is happening.
Being embarrassed here in China is not the same as the embarrassment that is in our American culture. "Face", which is a sociological concept, is defined as the dignity and reputation amongst one’s peers. You do not want to lose face and you do not want to be the reason why someone does lose face. A broad example in Chinese culture can be shown if an employee presents a new idea in a room of his peers. If the idea is a terrible and everyone in the room acknowledges that it is bad, there will still not be a single person that will tell the employee that they are proposing a bad idea. Rather, the typical Chinese approach would be to say, “Hmm, we can think about that idea. Let us sit on it”. The boss is easy on the employee because the boss does not want to make the employee lose face. I had to get used to this very quickly, because back home in the United States you would tell someone exactly how it is. My internship this past summer was the exact same way where my boss told me exactly where and when I messed up, but working with different groups here you have to be able to be cautious of what you say in order to save face.
