Wealth is their goal and when they reach it they will probably be
still unsatisfied. The Chinese are, of course, not averse to wealth.
They can enjoy the jingling coin as much as anyone,
but money is not their only thought. They carry on their business
calmly and quietly, and they are very patient. I trust they will
always retain these habits and never feel any temptation
to imitate the Americans in their mad chase after money.
There is, however, one American characteristic my countrymen
might learn with profit, and that is the recognition of the fact
that punctuality is the soul of business. Americans know this;
it is one cause of their success. Make an appointment with an American
and you will find him in his office at the appointed time.
Everything to be done by him during the course of the day has its fixed hour,
and hence he is able to accomplish a greater amount of work in a given time
than many others. Chinese, unfortunately, have no adequate conceptions
of the value of time. This is due, perhaps, to our mode of reckoning.
In the West a day is divided into twenty-four hours, and each hour
into sixty minutes, but in China it has been for centuries the custom
to divide day and night into twelve (shih) "periods" of two hours each,
so that an appointment is not made for a particular minute,
as in America, but for one or other of these two-hour periods.
This has created ingrained habits of unpunctuality which clocks and watches
and contact with foreigners are slow to remove.
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