Chapter 25 — Exercises

These exercises are not a test; they are a gym. Chapter 25 argued that a culture's biggest festival is the moment its deepest values rise to the surface — and that festivals reach a Western professional in three roles: invited guest, working colleague, and schedule-holder. The work below builds the practical muscles for all three, plus the habit-of-mind that keeps you from flattening "Lunar New Year" into one thing or treating a sacred span as a soft default.

Selected answers and sample responses appear in Appendix: Answers to Selected Exercises. Exercises marked with ✍️ feed directly into your Cultural Intelligence Portfolio.

Part A — Check Your Understanding

Short answers in your own words. If you can't answer one, reread the matching section before moving on.

  1. The chapter says Eastern festivals "outweigh" most Western holidays. Name the four amplifiers from the Framework box that stack to make this true.
  2. What are the two load-bearing functions that most of the great festivals share? Give one festival that strongly shows each.
  3. "Lunar New Year" is not one holiday. Name the three distinct festivals and the country each belongs to.
  4. Why do the dates of these festivals "move" against your Western wall calendar? Distinguish a lunisolar calendar from a purely lunar one, and say which the Islamic holidays follow.
  5. The chapter calls the generosity of the Eids "structural, not optional." What does that mean, and what specifically makes it structural rather than sentimental?
  6. What three threads does Chuseok braid together at once? Why does no single Western holiday map cleanly onto it (or onto Obon)?
  7. State the three-verb playbook for working alongside a colleague during their festival, and give a one-line example of each verb in action.

Part B — Check Your Assumptions

The core skill of this chapter is catching your own culture treating a festival as a minor, schedulable, optional thing — when to the other person it is a sacred obligation. For each statement below, decide whether it reflects a safe cross-cultural default or a WEIRD assumption that could cause harm. Then write one sentence on what a culturally intelligent person would assume instead.

  1. "It's just one video call — surely they can step away from a family holiday for thirty minutes if it's important enough."
  2. "A holiday is personal time; the polite thing is to say nothing and not intrude on their private celebration."
  3. "If I send a 'Happy Diwali' message, I'm sort of endorsing a religion I don't belong to, so I should stay neutral and quiet."
  4. "Once I know how Chinese New Year works, I basically understand how Korea and Vietnam do their new year too."
  5. "They didn't push back when I scheduled the deadline over their festival, so it must be fine with them."
  6. "I'll bring a nice clock as a gift to my Chinese host — it's elegant and useful."

The point of this exercise is not that caring about colleagues' holidays is "nice." It is that misreading a festival's weight, plurality, or symbolism causes real, quiet damage — lost trust, an insulted host, a grim message sent by an innocent gift. Noticing the assumption ("but it's only a day off") is the whole skill.

Part C — Decode This

Each item is a real cross-cultural moment around a festival. Write what the Western reader probably assumes it means, then a plausible alternative meaning inside the right operating system.

  1. Your supplier in Shenzhen says an entire week in February is "impossible — everyone will be travelling," and won't budge even for a short call.
  2. At a celebration, a Chinese colleague hands your child a small red envelope. Your child starts to tear it open right there, and the adults' smiles flicker.
  3. You wish your Korean teammate "Happy Chinese New Year," and there's a tiny pause before they thank you.
  4. During Songkran in Bangkok, you see young people gently pouring scented water over an older relative's hands — calm and reverent — a block away from a street drenched in water-gun chaos.
  5. A Muslim colleague seems quieter and lower-energy than usual during the afternoons one month, then unusually warm, generous, and celebratory a few weeks later.

Part D — What Would You Do?

Real situations, each with several responses. There is no single "correct" answer — for each, pick the response closest to your instinct, then write why a culturally humble person might choose differently.

1. The urgent issue during Spring Festival. A real problem lands while your Shanghai team is ten days into a two-week New Year break, and your VP wants it "handled this week." Do you (a) message the team lead with profuse apologies and ask for "just a little help"; (b) tell your VP it's simply impossible and let it wait; (c) solve what you can from your own side and prepare a clean handoff for the team's first day back, while resetting your VP's expectations about the holiday; or (d) escalate to whoever is still working? What does each signal about how you value the team's family time — and which best protects the relationship?

2. The invitation you didn't expect. An Indian colleague warmly invites you to their family's Diwali celebration this weekend. You're flattered but anxious — you don't know the customs, the foods, or whether you'll embarrass yourself. Do you (a) decline politely to avoid getting it wrong; (b) accept, then quietly research and bring an appropriate gift, planning to follow your hosts' lead; (c) accept but treat it casually, as you would a Western house party; or (d) accept and ask your colleague directly, in advance, how to show the right respect? Which choices honor the gesture of being included?

3. The colleague who offers to work. You've carefully kept a deadline clear of your colleague's Eid holiday — but they message you proactively: "Honestly, I'm happy to take that call during the break, it's no problem." Do you (a) insist they rest and refuse to let them work; (b) take them at their word and proceed as normal; (c) accept gratefully but lightly, keeping the ask small and making clear there's zero obligation; or (d) feel guilty and over-apologize? What does the chapter's "let them volunteer" principle suggest here — and how is accepting a freely offered flexibility different from assuming it?

4. The team spread across three festivals. You manage people in Seoul, Mumbai, and Cairo, and you want to acknowledge their holidays well. Do you (a) send one generic "happy holidays" to everyone to keep it simple and fair; (b) learn each festival's name, date, and a correct greeting, and reach out to each person specifically; (c) only acknowledge the ones you happen to already know; or (d) say nothing, to avoid getting any of them wrong? What does the chapter's stance on flattening suggest is the respectful path?

Part E — Cultural Translation

For each situation, write two versions of what you might say or do: a default Western version (your untrained instinct) and a culturally intelligent version (adapted to honor the festival's weight, plurality, or symbolism). Notice how little extra effort the second version costs — and how much more relationship it builds.

  1. Telling a colleague you need to move a project timeline that currently runs over their biggest family festival.
  2. Acknowledging a teammate's upcoming festival when you genuinely don't know much about it.
  3. Choosing and presenting a gift when invited to a Chinese host's home during Spring Festival.

Part F — Reflection & Extension

  1. Your own biggest day. Which holiday in your own culture carries the most weight for you — the one you would not skip, the one that's about family or memory more than fun? Write a page describing it the way an anthropologist would: what it honors, what it obligates, what an outsider might misread about how much it matters to you. Then connect it: this is roughly how your Eastern colleague experiences their biggest festival. What does that reframing change about how you'll treat their dates?
  2. The fused and the split. The chapter argues that Western calendars often separated functions (harvest here, remember-the-dead there, both somewhat muted) that Confucian and Buddhist East Asia kept fused in festivals like Chuseok and Obon. Write a reflection on what might be gained — and what lost — by each arrangement. Is there anything in the "fused" model you find appealing or instructive for your own life?

✍️ Portfolio Builder. In your Cultural Intelligence Portfolio, build the section "The Festival Calendar I Live By" begun in the chapter's Portfolio Prompt. For each culture you work with, enter: (1) the two or three biggest festivals with this year's actual dates (look them up — the dates move; use Appendix C); (2) what each one honors and one practical thing it asks of you as an outsider (a greeting, a gift rule, a span of calendar to protect); and (3) the exact greeting you will use for the next festival coming up, with a calendar reminder set three days before. Revisit and update this every year. Turning a moving, easy-to-miss set of dates into a standing list of low-cost ways to honor people is one of the highest-return pages in the whole Portfolio.