For years, people have been talking about the changing face of Quincy. The historically white, blue-collar city has a fast-growing Asian population that now makes up almost a quarter of the whole. Almost 30 percent of students in the city's schools are Asian. There are a growing number of Asian-owned businesses.

But the official face of Quincy is virtually frozen. The nine men who sit on the City Council are white. There are no Asian-Americans on the School Committee.

Mayor William Phelan said he respects the Asian presence in the city and maintains good relationships with his Asian constituents. But each year, he confessed, he has to be retaught how to say ''Happy New Year" in Chinese.

Next Tuesday and again in May, the city is planning half-day crash courses in ''cultural competency" to raise awareness of the traditions, beliefs, and background of a growing immigrant population that not only speaks a different language, but also jokes, makes eye contact, and even waits in line according to different social rules.

When City Council president Douglas Gutro first proposed the seminar to the council a few weeks ago, ''I think everybody had a raised eyebrow," said Brian F. McNamee, Ward 6 councilor. ''It was a visceral feeling -- a lot of people felt, do we really need this? Are we that bad? Is there such a void or a chasm here?"

But after the initial surprise, councilors embraced the idea, and members of the library staff, the mayor's office, the city clerk's office, and the School Committee have asked to be included.

''I think it will help a lot," said Joe Shea, the city clerk. ''With our community changing the way it is, everyone comes in here looking for various services. They need their birth certificate, their marriage certificate. . . . We supervise the elections, of course, and we're always trying to get new voters on board."

The city has seen some major changes as its Asian population has ballooned to 21,000, or more than a fifth of the city's total population, according to the 2005 city census.

Quincy 2000, a quasipubliceconomic development partnership, counted 172 Asian-owned businesses last year, not including home-based businesses.

A growing number of librarians, police officers, nurses, doctors, and city employees speak Vietnamese or Chinese. Library director Ann McLaughlin said Asian clients often make a beeline for the staff member who looks like them. The mayor said he has actively worked to diversify his staff.

But no Asians have held elected positions. Edward Lee lost a bid for School Committee in the 1990s, and Jimmy Liang lost City Council races in 2001 and 2003.

The lack of official representation makes it essential to ''train people who may not be from that culture to be effective in that culture," said Herbert Wong, a cultural competency consultant who will lead the workshops. ''Every time the population changes, you can't rehire a whole new workforce."

Wong, coauthor of a popular textbook used to educate police departments about multicultural law enforcement, said that often what he teaches people is extremely simple.

In one exercise, he asks people to list the things that make them feel like they are valued, respected, and included in a group, and the things that make them feel unimportant or ignored. Participants generate those lists very quickly, he said. ''We all know when we are treated right and when we are treated poorly," he said, ''but what are some of those items that people from a different cultural environment choose?"

For instance, in many Asian cultures, people do not wait in line. They mob the cash register, or they crowd into a hallway, five people all working to get someone's attention at the same time. For someone used to one-at-a-time orderliness, this kind of behavior might seem rude, Wong said, because the individual is more important than the group in Western society and the opposite is true in many Asian cultures.

Prolonged eye contact is also not appropriate in Chinese culture, unlike in American culture where avoiding someone's gaze may seem like an insult, said Allen So, the coordinator of interpretive services at Quincy Medical Center, which received cultural sensitivity training of its own last summer.

In the ''guess the facilitator" exercise, Wong exposes his students to their own biases by asking three simple questions: What kind of car do you think I drive? What is my favorite food? And what do you think my hobbies are? The answers, he said, are not always logical because ''people bend over backwards to not be stereotypical. They will not even say Asian food or Chinese food."

Participants would tell him, '' 'We wanted to do the right thing; we might insult you.' But that creates as much a problem as it does otherwise. To be oversensitive is not to be sensitive."

While the agenda for the Quincy workshop isn't finalized, communication, demographic information, and examples from the councilors' real lives are expected to come up.

Leo Kelly, Ward 1 councilor who grew up in Quincy, said cultural disconnection shows up in strange places. A few months ago, he attended a self-defense class at a senior housing complex with a large Asian population.

An Asian police officer showed people what to do if an attacker knocked them down and tried to rob them. He showed how to grab the attacker and talked people through what to do. The whole time, an Asian woman was chattering on. Kelly had no idea what she was saying but assumed it was something serious. Later he learned that she was simply injecting humorous asides.

''I think that happens a lot with us: We don't really know what someone's saying, so we interpret it in our own minds, and most of the time, we're really totally off base," he said. ''Things like this" -- the cultural program -- ''are going to be really helpful."

Other city councilors have taken specific steps to reach out to their Asian constituents. Kevin Coughlin, Ward 3 councilor, can greet his Asian constituents in Mandarin (''ni hao") and in Cantonese (''nei ho"). He knows how to say ''goodbye," ''see you again," ''happy new year," and ''How can I help you?" When he first ran for council years ago, he printed his campaign materials in English and Chinese.

McNamee said he translated some of his materials into Chinese with the help of Betty Yau, who has run a Chinese-language radio show in the area for years.

But they all agree they can do better. The city has largely welcomed its thriving Asian population, but Gutro said that nine out of 10 times, when there is a conflict between an Asian neighbor and a non-Asian neighbor, the problem can be reduced to crossed cultural wires.

Even as the city changes -- and places such as the Kam Man Supermarket and neighborhoods in North Quincy take on the feeling of Boston's Chinatown -- some things stay the same.

''I chose [to live in] Quincy because it had a very working-class feel to it. It wasn't a pretentious place. What you see is what you get," said McNamee, who moved to the city 25 years ago.

In a city like that, cultural training helps, but simple kindness goes a long way, he said, in his first year as a councilor representing a ward with a large Asian population.

''I can tell you this: There's one universal sign, and it's recognized by the Asian community and received very well with the Asian community -- and that's a big Irish smile."

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.

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