When I first visited Jakarta, Indonesia in early 90's, I was to explore what could be done in biz with some people there. I met with a well-known local Chinese businessman who was a descendant of many generations, but spoke little Chinese.
We could converse in some English but most in their Indonesian language, which I could understand to some intelligible extent, as it is rather similar to our Malay language. I brought some product samples to do a demonstration to test their interest in it. It was so funny that he had all his family members to surround me to watch me and my product demo, as if I was sort of playing a magic show.
I was made to understand that all biz types then had to undergo a personal engagement before anything of substance could be developed further. The key was that all parties must come with a lot of patience, making sure any decision making process would take time, if it did occur at all.
The host was very courteous and offered to us the traditional Chinese tea and some local snacks in the midst of the lacklustre conversations. It was easy to detour into non-biz topics of discussions which was not my visit objectives.
But then when in Rome, one must do with the Romans do. Enjoy as much as possible on what transpired and learn a new culture of the people we came across and their unique ways of making a good living for themselves.
It was hard to find out their strengths of doing biz, perhaps as usual, when we didn't know about it, we always said it was their 'Guangxi' or 'Personal Connections'. How about that?
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