New Chinese Wisdom, Part 1: On Chinese Creativity

The campus in Langrun Garden at Peking University, Beijing

Weiming Lake at Peking University, Beijing

[This is the first article in a four-part series on Chinese culture, business, and education from a visiting Westerner's perspective.]

Both Westerners and Chinese occasionally say that Chinese lack creativity. Chinese are quick and generous in praising American ingenuity and in admonishing themselves for falling short in this department.

I disagree. A look at Peking University's charming Langrun Garden (above left) or stunning centerpiece, Weiming Lake (above right) reveals the Chinese passion for aesthetic value and their skill at creating it. Given the space, time, and capital, Chinese hands can fashion with a singular facility what the abundant Chinese mind envisions.

The Report Writing and Presentation Skills class that I teach for the Beijing International MBA program also demonstrates Chinese inventiveness. My students proved their vivid imagination in how they developed high-impact PowerPoint decks and delivered engaging presentations in English, in spite of language barriers.

Westerners who think they have a creative edge over the Chinese would be well advised to visit them on their home turf, where divergent cultures and language barriers do not inhibit their artistry.

Really Real and for Real, Really: Adjective-Adverb Confusion, Part 3

Which is right: do well or do good? You've likely heard it either way. The same rule applies to this case as in the sentence Take it slow, which I explained in Part 1 of this series.

Let's start with the premise that well is an adverb, modifying a verb (e.g., She drives well), and good is an adjective, modifying a noun (e.g., She is a good driver). But not always. Both good and well can be adjectives, as in I feel good (state of mind) and I feel well (state of health).

Back to do well and do good. If you perform with excellence on a particular task, such as an examination or a rodeo trick, then do well is correct. If you mean to act in a regularly good manner that benefits others, meaning to generally be in a state of doing good things, then do good is correct. Here are two correct examples:

• Bob did well in addressing the audience's questions.
• Eve did good in giving time and money to charity every year.

Another Look at Style, Courtesy of an Artist

In an earlier post on WORDS ON THE LINE, I wrote that style is the sum of syntax (word order) and diction (word choice). This idea should prove helpful to business and technical writers, but novelists would say that such a definition is too limiting. While they would agree that choosing syntax and diction contributes to the definition, they would insist that a missing third element is the most important one: choice of content. The truth of their point is clear to see in the work of many a great stylist. For instances, think of the influence of characters, time, place, and plot on the style of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and Ken Kesey's One Flew over  the Cuckoo's Nest.

Writers reflecting on style would also do well to look at the work of American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), who created remarkable stories through several series of paintings, in part because he strongly believed that a single painting cannot tell an entire story. His most notable series are:

• The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture (1938, 40 paintings)
• The Life of Frederick Douglass (1939, 32 paintings)
• The Life of Harriet Tubman (1940, 31 paintings)
• The Great Migration (1941, 60 paintings)
• The Life of John Brown (1941, 22 paintings)
• The War (1946, 14 paintings)
• Struggle ... from the History of the American People (1954-1956, 30 paintings)
• Harriet and the Promised Land (1967, 17 paintings)
• Eight Studies for the Book of Genesis (1989, 8 paintings)

You can see nearly all 254 paintings in these 9 series at the Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Virtual Resource Center. But nothing beats the real thing. The collage above is from photos I took yesterday at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In depicting the impact of war on American families, Lawrence's distinctive style—his use of color, space, lines, and depth—makes his stories what they are, quite simply masterpieces. Once studying them, a viewer is likely to feel that Lawrence's abstractions appear more real than photographs.

Of course, writers' tools are different, but content selection most definitely contributes to style for fiction writers and even essayists. Sometimes it even drives the style. Thanks for the reminder, Jacob Lawrence.

Really Real and for Real, Really: Adjective-Adverb Confusion, Part 2

If you pay attention to how most people speak, you have likely heard these grammatical errors:

1. I sure like you.
2. You work real hard.
3. He is an awful slow worker. 

In all three cases, we need an adverb (surely, really, awfully), not an adjective, but for different reasons. Adverbs can modify verbs, other adverbs, or adjectives:

• In the first sentence, like is a verb, so we need the adverb surely to modify the verb like.
• In the second sentence, hard modifies the verb work, so it is an adverb; therefore, we need an adverb, really, to modify the adverb hard.
• In the third sentence, slow is an adjective modifying the noun worker; therefore, we need an adverb, awfully, to modify the adjective slow.

English grammar is tricky. Think about the function of words in sentences before pressing send.

Really Real and for Real, Really: Adjective-Adverb Confusion, Part 1

Do you know which of the three sentences listed below is grammatically correct, which is grammatically incorrect, and which is possibly grammatically incorrect?

1. Drive slow.
2. Be slow.
3. Take it slow.

If you're not sure, here's a hint. If the sentence uses an action verb (e.g., read, write, speak, listen), the word describing it must be an adverb; if the sentence uses a being verb (e.g., am, is, are, was, were), the word describing it, or complementing it, must be an adjective. As a reminder, slow is an adjective, and slowly is an adverb.

Sentence 2 is correct. The being verb, be, requires the adjective slow to complement it.

Sentence 1 is incorrect. The action verb, drive, requires the adverb slowly to describe it.

Sentence 3 may be correct or incorrect, depending on the context. If I mean that in general you should  take a slow approach to life, then Take it slow would be correct. If I mean that you have been taking a specific thing too quickly and you ought to slow down (e.g., your lunch), then Take it slowly would be correct.

Since adjective-adverb confusion plagues most speakers and writers of English, I'll provide additional examples in future posts.

BOOK REVIEW: "The Art of Fiction" by Ayn Rand

Choosing to read either Ayn Rand's The Art of Nonfiction or The Art of Fiction is tricky. The Art of Nonfiction relies greatly on fiction passages, notably Rand's, to illustrate process, substance, structure, and style; nevertheless, it renders many profound insights about the writer's task. (Read my review of Rand's The Art of Nonfiction in this blog.) On the other hand, writers looking for inspiration and encouragement from a consummate professional will find it in abundance in The Art of Fiction.

Many of the points I made in The Art of Nonfiction applies to this book. For instance, Rand is extremely fond of herself as an exemplar of great literature. She writes, "In regard to precision of language, I think I myself am the best writer today." She is equally unforgiving of other writers, especially Sinclair Lewis. Once again, it's fair to say that Rand's two books, published posthumously, come from lectures that she delivered in her home exclusively to friends, so she never intended to publish them.


But you can't argue with quality. Early in the book, Rand offers a simple admonishment to would-be writers: "If a writer feels that he was unable fully to express what he wanted to express, it means that he did not know clearly what he wanted to express. ... That which you know clearly you can find the words for and you will express clearly." From there, she delves into Victor Hugo, Isak Dinesen, Mickey Spillane, and Thomas Wolfe, among others, to reflect on the do's and don'ts of style. 

In The Art of Fiction, Rand takes a refreshingly pragmatic and helpful approach to many writing topics. About the writer's muse, she notes, "If you keep on storing things in your mind for your future writing and keep integrating your choice of theme to your general knowledge, allowing the scope of writing to grow and your knowledge widens, then you will always have something to say, and you will find ever better ways to say it." Her strong opinions lead to uncompromising propositions, such as "The purpose of all art is the objectification of values."

Rand unflinchingly leaves herself open to criticism from literary theorists. Those who favor character as the premier element of fiction would find arguable her position, "The most important element of a novel is plot." Also, her division of style into the two categories of content and diction might puzzle those who argue that style is the sum of syntax and diction. 

Here are other Rand gems sprinkled throughout the 176 pages with in-depth illustrations:

• Coincidence is always bad in writing, and it is disastrous in plot writing. ... it is to be avoided at all costs.
• Concretize your abstractions.
• Learn to think in terms of conflict.
• If the essential situation ... can be told in one sentence, this makes for a good plot story.
• Your characterization will never be better than your power of observation.
• One of the beauties of a good literary style ... is that it combines clear denotation with the skillful use of connotation.
• The purpose of metaphors, or comparison, is epistemological.
• A symbol should be legible; otherwise, the form is a contradiction in terms. 

Fiction writers and students will find far more in this book than they would likely get in a semester-long writing class, unless they were lucky enough to attend Rand's lectures.

Four Elements of an Audit Point—Really?

Good writing at work requires addressing the issues before anything else. The auditing world nicely illustrates this truth. The general operating principle for auditors is that an audit point includes four elements: criteria, condition, cause, and effect. These elements attempt to answer the following questions:

• criteria — By what standards is the auditor assessing the situation?
• condition — What is the situation?
• cause — Why does the condition occur?
• effect — To what risk does the condition expose the auditee? 

Here is an example:

XYZ Corporation should pay invoices within 30 days of the invoice date (criterion). XYZ pays invoices on average 45 days after the invoice date (condition) at the direction of management (cause). This delinquency could lead to poor vendor relations and subject XYZ to costly, time-consuming litigation (effect). 

But auditors should think twice if they believe that this audit point is comprehensive. They may need to consider other elements:

• method — How did the auditor determine the condition?
• limitation — What prevented the auditor from conducting a more thorough assessment?
• finding — How would the auditor summarize the condition?
• recommendation — What should the auditee do about the condition?
• follow-up — How will the auditor address this finding in a future audit?

Let's see how the narrative has to change once these additional elements appear in the same audit point:

We examined a random sampling of 400 invoices and disbursements of the 1,975 total transactions (20.3%) of XYZ's West Coast office for the period January 15, 2014 to February 14, 2014 (method). Given the two-day audit schedule, we were unable to review a larger sampling or a longer period, and we did not review XYZ's East Coast office at all (limitation).

Our review shows that XYZ's West Coast office's Account Payable Department is delinquent in disbursing funds (finding). XYZ should pay invoices within 30 days of the invoice date (criteria). In the sample, XYZ paid invoices on average 45 days after the invoice date (condition) at the direction of management (cause). This delinquency could lead to poor vendor relations and subject XYZ to costly, time-consuming litigation (effect).

XYZ management should develop a mitigation plan to pay invoices within the contractually committed period and present it to the auditor within 30 days of this report (recommendation). In 90 days, we will return to XYZ to audit Accounts Payable disbursements for this criterion (follow-up).

The seasoned auditor would rightly say that even more elements exist (e.g., auditee response, aberrations, benefits), so less experienced auditors must understand that the four-element template is there just as a jumpstart, not as a complete formula.