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Week Around the Ists
Seriously, it could happen. From Xinhua:
A recent survey on "how you address your peers or bosses" conducted by Zhaopin.com, one of China's influential web sites, showed that 66 percent of Chinese employees call their peers by full name or simply given name, Seventeen percent call their peerswith their English names, 5 percent like to address their colleagues "brothers" or "sisters", while only 1 percent is still inclined to use the term "comrade".The sample survey picked nearly 6,000 respondents from governmental departments, foreign companies and state-owned enterprises.
Most staffers working in foreign businesses, usually address others with English names like Joey, Ross or Monica, which have become well-known among Chinese empoyees after the popularization of "Friends", the American sit-com.
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I thought Tongzhi (comrade) was slang for a gay guy these days - therefore that new meaning would raise a few eyebrows in some offices.
Wait ... does this mean that Chinese employees assign Friends-characters names to everyone who has an English name? Like, all American men are referred to as either Ross, Chandler, or Joey? That's kind of awesome.