Work-Life Balance China Style

Posted on September 21, 2008 by David Gray

UMassOnline David Gray, CEO BEIJING - Much has been written about the elusive concept of “work-life balance.” There’s a Wikipedia entry for it and even whole web sites devoted to the notion (see worklifebalance.com for one example). We Americans are often accused of being out of balance. Too much work, 24 x 7 schedules, and the stresses of contemporary life threaten to destroy the balance, or perhaps for many already have. What are we to say then of the Chinese, most of whom work a seven-day schedule? There is no weekend to bring that little bit of respite into one’s life, that much needed opportunity to recharge the batteries and get ready for another tumultuous week of work.

When the UMassOnline traveling team arrived in Beijing yesterday afternoon (Sunday), there were our friends from the China Education & Research Network and the China Continuing Education Association to greet us at the airport and to host us at a marvelous dinner Sunday evening. Our colleagues willingly gave up their weekend for a leisurely and friendly welcome dinner. But, wait! Weekends are a non-event in China. Sunday is the same as Friday is the same as Wednesday, etc. Are the Chinese utterly contemptuous of the work-life balance notion?

A closer inspection suggests they are not. It seems to me that the Chinese have learned to balance the whole in ways that westerners have difficulty grasping. Where we tend to compartmentalize so many of the divergent aspects of our daily lives–work, family, social, recreational, etc.–the Chinese seem to deal with these as an organic whole. The boundaries between work and social tend to be much less pronounced in China. Friends and co-workers are perhaps not the discrete groups that we are familiar with in the U.S. We Americans search for balance precisely because the lines of distinction are so harsh. Perhaps we need to take a page from the Chinese and soften these barriers. Find the balance within the whole. A philosophy worth trying. But, I’m not foresaking my weekends just yet!