In I Stand Corrected: How Teaching Manners in China Became Its Own Unforgettable Lesson (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday; October 7, 2014; $26.95), international media and communications specialist Eden Collinsworth shares the humorous, lesson-filled, and exceptionally unlikely true adventure story of how a single American woman, raising a son, decided to move to China and write a Western etiquette guide for the Chinese.
As a veteran of the magazine and book publishing industries, the former chief of staff to a global security think tank, and a consultant in international communications, American entrepreneur Eden Collinsworth’s career has, quite literarily, moved her around the world. Witnessing China’s profound transformation, she came to the conclusion that despite the nation’s growing status as a world economy and the unprecedented range of its investments overseas, businessmen in mainland China—well-educated and speaking English—were fundamentally uncomfortable in the company of their Western counterparts. This realization spawned an idea to work collaboratively with a major Chinese publisher on a Western etiquette guide, written in Chinese, for Chinese businessmen.
I Stand Corrected chronicles Collinsworth’s mad cap and revelatory Chinese year abroad—some part of it with her son—while she researched and wrote The Tao of Improving Your Likability – a widely-read and wildly-successful bestseller in mainland China. Offering a clear-eyed account of East-West divide and, at the same time, scrutinizing the kind of etiquette that has guided her own business career, one which has unfolded in predominately male company, Collinsworth creates a counterpart that explains Chinese practices and reveals much about our own Western culture.
Interspersed throughout with entertaining episodes that include, among others, her experience with a client who spent billions of dollars building a resort in Guangzhou that stood empty, her run-in with the censors, and her disastrous introduction to ancient Chinese herbs, I Stand Corrected offers a unique window into contemporary China, and tells a story of how—despite the challenges—Collinsworth became enchanted by the beguiling mysteries of the enigmatic Middle Kingdom.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
At the age of twenty-eight, Eden Collinsworth was cited as one of “Ten People to Watch” by Fortune magazine when she was named president and publisher of Arbor House Book Publishing Company, owned by the Hearst Corporation.
Recognized as a leader in the publishing industry by the New York Times, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, Eden left the book business in 1990 to launch the Los Angeles-based monthly lifestyle magazine, BUZZ. As its founding president and CEO, she shepherded BUZZ through ten years of growth by entering into agreements with National Public Radio, Paramount Studios, and CBS-TV. BUZZ was nominated for a National Magazine Award the year it was sold to Cap-Cities/ABC.
In the third decade of Eden’s career, she was vice president and director of Cross Media Business Development at the Hearst Corporation, responsible for identifying and pursuing development opportunities, which crossed all of Hearst’s divisions, including magazines, newspapers, broadcast, and syndication.
In 2008, Eden became vice president, chief operating officer and chief-of-staff of The EastWest Institute, an international think tank acknowledged for bringing together business, civil society, and public sector individuals in order to shape practical solutions to global security threats. She was accountable for all operations, including the day-to-day performance of staff in New York, Brussels, Washington, D.C., and Moscow.
In 2011, Eden launched Collinsworth & Associates, a Beijing-based consulting company that specializes in intercultural communication. She is the author of a bestselling book on Western Business Deportment for the Chinese, published by Beijing Xiron Books Co., Ltd., one of the largest independent publishers in China. A Personal Guide to Effective Business Etiquette in Today’s Global World is currently used as a textbook in the MBA program at Peking University, where she also lectures. Profiled in Lunch with the FT, which was included in the Viking anthology Lunch with the FT: 52 Classic Interviews, Eden has also been featured on the BBC and CNN.
Eden is the author of a novel, It Might Have Been What He Said (Arcade/Little Brown).
She lives in London and New York.