Ousmane Bocoum
helping Chinese find gold in AfricaUpdated 2y
How has living in China changed you?
I have been in China for the last three years and this is my last year here, my experience of living in China Changed me a lot, here are some off the top of my head:

The Importance of leadership
During my time in China, I had the Chance to be a first Class witness of how the Chinese Leaders(Governors) cared about their people.

I have been At Universities and in the Enterprise world and in both the leaders treated their collaborators as their brothers, they cared genuinely about them and did their best to make them happy. I realized how important is leadership.

Eating on time
Chinese are very strict when it comes to eating, at the beginning I found it annoying when my friends asked me （吃饭了没）, they would always ask me if I had breakfast, and at lunchtime and dinnertime we would go and have our meals together religiously every day at the same time(11 am and 6 pm).

Before I came to China I was someone who would eat Randomly when I was hungry, and Chinese people taught me how to feed myself in a healthier way.

Do more talk less
Where I come from people tend to talk lots of shit but do nothing lol,I was also like that;After having some interactions with my Chinese friends I noticed that they tend to be very discrete about their projects, they would let no one know what they were working on and focused instead on bringing results(pragmatic). Let your results speak for you.

No one can help you but you
I learned from Chinese people the sense of standing for myself, never complain, no one can influence your success but you, no one owes you something.

Start from scratch and climb your way up(Fake it until you make it)
I am in the Software engineering industry and I learned from Chinese that the quickest way to build something is to start from scratch, copy what others are doing(do not reinvent the wheel) and finally personalize the product..

People around the world tend to associate Chinese with only copying stuff but not innovating if it was that easy everyone would have done it(intellectual property is important though)

Family above everything
Where I come from, Chinese are portrayed to be selfish, materialistic, without any sensitivity,so I used to believe that elders in China have any care from their Children and that they were left by themselves because their own Children were busy working,It was an eye opening experience to realize that most of my Chinese Friends lived with their parents and took care of them, and walking around I would see a typical Chinese family with one kid on a stroller pushed by his grandpa and followed by the grandma and the parents;The family sense of Chinese is very strong.

中华文化博大进深 haha