The business case for fiction

In a recent blog I passed on Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s praise of philosophy and other serious reading. I want to make the case for reading fiction.

There are good reasons for reading including novels of all kinds – basically it’s enjoyable.  More than that though, I suggest there is a business case for fiction. So much of business is about people – your colleagues, your customers, your business partners – and a good novel provides insight into their hearts.

So, when friend asked me recently what to read before she went to China, I lent her three novels. I could have recommended a textbook which explains what it means to live in a communist country with a rampant capitalist economy but stories make it much more real.

People in Beijing - richer or poorer?

I chose to fly back home during the Christmas period mainly because of my mother's severe back pain. It is an old problem that has bothered her for a few years, yet it gets worsen recently. My mother is a tenacious woman. She does not believe in surgery. A friend of our family recommended traditional Chinese massage as an alternative and thus we found her a reputable hospital in Beijing, well-known for its massage techniques and recovery treatments.

For this reason, I need to go to the hospital every Monday and Friday to make an appointment for her. Guess when I woke up? 4.30 am! The hospital sells "numbers" to patients on a first come first serve basis. Its official opening time is 8am. Since there are so many patients and limited medical resources, most "ordinary people" - if you are not as ‘important’ as those government officials or as rich as those celebrities - would have to join a long queue, about 200 people, in the cold winter mornings enduring the temperature hitting below -10 degree Celsius. Believe or not, online booking and telephone booking are totally out of question.

Will the boat sink the water?

I don’t have the temperament to do a PhD but if there is a me in a parallel universe who is patient, meticulous and detailed she’ll be doing a dissertation on protest and political unrest in rural China.  So even in this universe I’m interested that a protest in a village in Guangdong province is now making international headlines.

Wukan villagers claim that the local government confiscated land for development. This is in one of the wealthiest provinces in the whole of China so the gains from development are enormous. This is not an isolated incident. Skimming off the gains from the sale of land is one of many temptations to poorly paid local government officials and one of the main aggravations to farmers.

China and me

I’m sitting in front of a photograph which shouted China to me before I even looked at the caption.  It’s not the Great Wall or people doing tai chi in a public park, not a Terracotta Warrior or the Water Cube, not the exuberant skyline of Pudong which has sprung from nothing since the 1990’s to be Shanghai’s financial and commercial centre.

What I’m looking at is a close-up of a block of flats and it was The Independent’s picture of the day recently.  It’s a close-up in the sense that you can’t see the ground, the top or either side of the block.  You can clearly see clothes drying at the windows.  Nevertheless, it is distant enough to see 12 floors and probably six apartments on each floor.