Thanks a lot for the documentation. Chinese culture really intrigues me, so I'll begin there, but first I need to make a little research on the books cited in your article, to be sure to choose something that I will be able to fully understand.

Egyptians are interesting too, but I have much more doubt about the exactness of the translations and the authenticity of their texts. I don't have this problem with ancient Chinese texts. But that's purely subjective on my part (even if I could argue about why I have this opinion).

For "Frenchies", we clearly are more of a "thinking" civilization than an "acting" one. For the stress, I think the problem is the same for all "developed" countries, as we lost our links to our root culture, and more than that we never had a real "spiritual" base as our mentality was only forged by paganism and christianism (no confucianism, buddhism or other "fullness" (holistic) religious traditions - I don't know if I'm making myself clear on that point). Maybe we're just more suicidal around here because of our tradition of social protection - making injustice more difficult to support (but that's the french side of me speaking).

For the meetings, in France we have a different approach. A meeting is more a place to exchange ideas (like the roman agora) than a place where decisions are taken. We sure love complaining, but it's not all bad, we also have a tradition of compromise and listening to all points of view before taking a decision based on only one person's will or vision (Macron is changing that, because as you said, you never advance with that kind of thinking, but that's also what makes French People (and more generally France) the persons / country they are / it is).