No single thing has been harder about the ‘normal’ world then getting used to people who seemingly don’t even CONSIDER the power structure of an engagement let alone actively alter their behavior in the moment based on who they are talking to.
When you'd made an arrangement to meet them at a certain time? Man, to me that's just cold.
your wife no doubt picked up from China’s strong nationality
One thing that I picked up from dating then marrying my wife, is that China is waaaay more diverse and varied within its borders than most people in the US imagine. The basic philosophy towards friendship between the north and south varies, and even that is an oversimplification. One province over, the dining habits are waaay different from where she grew up. She comes from a Mandarin speaking region in the south, where before I'd heard that the south speaks Cantonese, but even there it's more complex than I'd thought. Turns out the real traditional languages are two entirely different dialects I'd never even heard of.
China's not so much a nation-state, as a "civilization-state."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhUmLtlZpw
and authoritarian paradigm.
Maybe there's something to that.
Of course, this also applies to the workers under the manager as well. My wife drives me crazy in this way. There are some people who will interact in a group by modeling the future pathways, tasks, and schedule of everyone around them, then navigate those models to avoid conflict in time and space. Then there are some people who can't. As far as I can tell, my wife doesn't have a fine-grained enough internal sense of time to be able to do that. I almost stopped dating her early on, because she once kept me waiting 45 minutes in front of the locked door of her apartment, because she was having a conversation with her CEO. I also recall a recent instance cooking with her in the kitchen, and was rinsing 3 pieces of raw meat (1) -- she interrupted me between piece 2 and piece 3 and left me hanging there with contaminated hands while she washed/processed an entire leek. I also remember a band-mate of mine who couldn't "add time" in her head when travelling to gigs, so would always be late. (I know this is the specific case from conversations while planning to drive somewhere.)
It was a very good lesson on how job satisfaction doesn't need fancy cafés, ball pits and slides.
I think one of the best possible rewards is "good working." When people really mesh, there can even be a high.
(1 - Which you're not supposed to do in the US, but I do because my wife grew up in China, so she has a much greater distrust of commercial food processing.)