One particularly annoying part of this book is the author's practice of compling long lists of Chinese vocabularly, phrases, place names, and historical references, and then failing to provide the character or "tone" marks. As anyone with an even cursory knowledge of China knows, Chinese is a tonal language and, hence, without tone marks a vocabulary item is completely useless to a foreigner. Moreover, the author misspells many of the pinyin transliterations, and often provides phonetic transliterations that are non-standard or inacurrate.
De Mente obviously does not have a clear understanding of the northern Chinese psychology when he states that Chinese downplay the status one's friends and employer. This would certainly depend on who is present when the "downplaying" occurs. Northern Chinese often laud their friend's accomplishments in order to give them face and would never speak in a negative fashion about their employer while he or anyone who might inform him of what was being said was present because of the obvious consequences. Furthermore, the essence of interacting within northern Chinese culture is personal friendships which can be very intimate rather than being between organizations as De Mente purports. Normally, Shandongnese businessmen do business with an organization because of the personal friendship between two members of the respective organizations.
De Mente also suggests to "look the other party directly in the eyes, and say something simple in Chinese" in order to break the psychological block many Chinese have a! bout Chinese speaking foreigners. This tactic may appear to be effective in the immediate encounter, but it would be much too direct for most northern Chinese to accept. Furthermore, it would be a direct affront to their face. Rather than facilitating interaction with them, in the long term, it would more than likely cause them not to want to interact with an individual even though he has the ability to speak Chinese. Because one can speak Chinese, the expectation is that he also has a certain level of understanding of the culture. Therefore, this very un-Chinese behavior would be more damaging than not interacting in Chinese at all.
In his chapter on eating and drinking etiquette, De Mente states that the host is seated nearest the door and that "In Chinese etiquette, the left side is the seat of honor." However, in Shandong banquette culture the principle host is always seated furthest from the door and the seat of honor is always to the principle host's right. Furthermore, if a Shandong host were to only sip his alcoholic beverage while his guests were drinking full glasses, as De Mente suggests is the case, he would be seen as not fulfilling his responsibilities as host. Moreover, such an action would be a direct affront to his guests' face. Refusing to drink with someone, which includes the amount that is consumed with each drink, is tantamount to refusing to give that person face. This type of host would also be deemed as not being forthright because he refuses to drink to his ability. Thus, Shandong guests would not want to conduct business with such a host because he is not willing to reveal everything about himself to them.
Also, De Mente translates suiyi as 'to sip.' Sip might be what some guests do when the host tells them to suiyi, but suiyi does not mean to sip. This is a phrase commonly used by hosts to accomplish one of three tasks. One, it is a means for calling a time out in the performance. Actors can then eat a few bites of food and chat freely. This suiyi can be transla! ted as 'as you please.' Suiyi can also be used by hosts to display to the guests that he is performing his duties as host. In this usage, it should translate something roughly equivalent to 'Make yourself at home.' The third use of suiyi comes in the drinking context. Sometimes it means '[we are not going to play the Shandong banquet game today.] Don't stand on formalities.' However, when used in the context of drinking wars, it should be translated as 'Since you can't handle drinking very much, you do not have to drink your entire glass.' Combine this with the fact that glasses are filled almost to the point of overflowing, and the result is De Mente's 'sip.'
Finally, one glance at De Mente's glossary should inform the reader of the book's major flaw. It is a hodgepodge of Cantonese and Mandarin terms thrown together without being distinguished. Were the reader to adopt many of the phrases listed in the common business vocabulary section, he would have great difficulty being comprehended by Shandong businessmen.
Therefore, I would not recommend the person not familiar with Chinese culture who can not distinguish among the regional subcultures to use this book as a guide to interacting with Chinese professionals. The notion of subculture must be considered when professionally interacting with Chinese businessmen.