Americans and ethnocentrism

My husband and I leave for our university teaching assignments in China in 29 more days (yeah!) and so, we've been researching China and Chinese culture quite a bit. We're also taking our almost 16-year old son with us, and so, we've made this a family project. It's been pretty cool learning Mandarin together each day, and trying to gather information about our new home.

In our research, we've concluded that Americans are ethnocentric - and this may explain in part why we're getting our asses kicked in the global economy.

How many Americans speak a foreign language or even know much of substance about a foreign culture? We tend to expect people to speak our language and conform to our ideals...even when we're in their country.

One of the really cool things that I've learned about is "English Corner." All universities with foreign faculty, and cities and towns throughout China have a designated night for "English Corner," where native English speakers go to designated places throughout the town or city one night per week and Chinese people come to socialize with them and eat dinner while practicing their English skills. It's also very common for Chinese people to have an "English name" in addition to their given name.

Somehow, I can't see things like "Spanish corner" or "Chinese corner" ever coming to fruit in the US. It's too bad...

In an interesting twist, I will be teaching Human Resources Management to Chinese students while teaching a group of American students International Human Resources Management online. I began wondering about the possibility of creating some sort of listserv for my Chinese and American students to interact on - I'm almost afraid to do so though, for fear that my American students would spout off some of the things about outsourcing and immigration that they do on classroom discussion boards.

We've been perusing YouTube and ITunes and watching podcasts and videos uploaded by other American professors talking about their experiences with their Chinese university students. I've found two guys with series of videos that are particularly entertaining:

Drew Fralick, a young professor who proclaims himself to be "The Ambassador of Detroit to China" -
http://www.youtube.com/...

Ron Simms, an English teacher and comedian from Cleveland, who lived in Fuzhou (in the same province as where we'll be) for two years and diaries his unique experience in a series of podcasts he calls "Black man in China"-
http://www.youtube.com/...

It looks like we will be needing to practice our singing, because we'll be expected to go to karaoke with our students.  I've never sang karaoke before while sober, so it will definitely be an interesting experience.

Any ex-pat or international teaching tips are welcome here!