Chinese millimeters are different!

I cannot complain about my job. Well I can complain about many things related to it but still I like it. But sometimes it's just a bit too much, if you know what I mean. So I'll try to vent my frustration here.

As almost everyone who worked in China will tell you, the biggest problem in China is called "Chinese people". Or to be more precise - their way of thinking. After couple of months in China you will learn to fear the phrase "mei shi" (means: it's nothing, it will do as it is!). Usually it is used as an answer to your request to replace substandard or outright broken product. And your specifications will resemble German novels, being long, precise and very hard to read. Because if you don't include something in specification you may be asking for disaster.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say that Chinese people are stupid or inferior or something like that. It's just different understanding, different perception of the world that makes it hard for both sides. And today I ran headlong into the perfect example of that difference.

You see, the company I work for is ordering lighting fixtures and other such stuff here in Ningbo. One of the important parameters is a cross-section of the power cord, which should be at least 0.75 square millimeters. So I will take a micrometer and check it - only to find out that in reality cross-section is more like 0.60 square mm. Turns out that there are several "variants" of 0.75 mm cross-section (all of them less than real 0.75 mm) - and the guy is genuinely shocked when you say that it must be changed. "But it's OK! There' written 0.75 square mm here!", he would say. Apparently Chinese millimeters (and other -meters) are different from European...