Try to remember the September - 2009 China tour: Beijing

Terminal 3 of Beijing Airport, at which I landed, is larger than London Heathrow Airport's 5 terminals combined with another 17% to spare.

I spent the first week in Beijing, a city where I lived and worked for over three years. It had been eight years since my last visit. I got excited when I was still flying over the Pacific. Lots of memories about the city came back to me. I kept wondering what the city has changed into now.

It's a mixed feeling.

No difference from the past trips, the first difference I sensed was the air. The smell was a bit odd when I landed in Beijing. But soon my sense of smell was "neutralized". The pollution, which has been much better than before, however, still makes everything looks a bit dull and dirty. That's quite a turn-off to the folks who have been living long in the west.

Post rush hour traffic on a major road in Beijing crossing with the 3rd Ring Road, an in-city highway (the bridge showed in the picture), including bicycle traffic (under the bridge). One big notable improvement - cars are driving in lanes now. But shadowed by pollution, you only get to see blue sky a few times every month.

Almost immediately after I left airport sitting in my friend's brand new beamer (BMW), I saw the biggest growth in China's recent history - cars. It was mind-boggling to watch so many cars, many of which are imported high-end cars, spinning on the streets in the unique Chinese ways - they change lanes every 10 seconds and they cut in & out as if there were no cars around them. I could hardly imagine what an amazing change has happened to the country, including people's lifestyle and many brand new industries, in such a short time thanks to the supersonic growth of the auto industry. To the large auto makers who suffered economy downturn in North America, China is no-doubt their new hope. To me, I hope soon I can drive a made-in-China Hummer.

Then, the third thing that impressed me was the infrastructure. The high way, the telecom system, online services, and the public transit system all have been greatly improved since my last visit. Crazy, for lack of better word, is the perfect match to China's growth in such major cities. Yet, what's equally impressive to me was the level of civilization of average Joes (lao bai xin, in Chinese) as I still see lots of cigarette smoking in public areas and spitting on the street. Apparently, the historical challenge won't be easily resolved in one or two generations.

For about $50 per night, the comfort inn styled hotel room is way better than motels here. Not bad at all.

Before I left Toronto, I asked my friend in Beijing to book me a 4-star hotel. But he said:"Don't waste your money. Just live in a hotel close to my home so I can easily pick you up everyday - you know how bad the traffic is, don't you? The hotel is really not bad and it's cheap." I cannot argue with him since I have to rely on his car, and it turned out he was right. But I did feel funny when he drove me in his BMW 730 to this not star rated modest hotel called Hanting on the Northeast 3rd Ring. Looking could be deceiving. The hotel room and service are much better than I thought (pretty much the motel price you pay in North America for a 3 star hotel hardware and services). Bottom line, talking about cost effectiveness, it's very good. Each room comes with unlimited Internet access. So the first thing I did was getting online and checking if any of my clients missed me.

Naturally the dinner is on my friend - a tradition called "jie feng" or "xi chen" (give a dinner for a visitor from afar) that has been shared by Chinese for thousands of years. Again, riding his Beamer, we went to a Sichuan styled restaurant. My friend had to park his big car on the "island" between automobile lane and bicycle lane. It's legal and everybody does so. Obviously the city planning was way behind the auto market growth. It was a hot day, and the spicy but delicious Sichuan food only made me hotter. I was already sleepy when I returned to hotel - no need to worry about jet lag which was already gone thanks to the long flight.

More to find out about Beijing in the next post ...

Last Train Home: The high price of low-priced Chinese goods

Folks, Last Train Home is a great documentary movie about China that everyone should watch - "an emotionally wrenching portrait of migrant workers in China".

Behind the glamorous ads, displays, and shelves in the shopping center around us, this is the TRUE story and REAL life of people who made the clothes that we wear every day.

Never take what we have for granted.

Read more about the making of the movie at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1512201/. Toronto Star has a story about the movie at
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/article/770425--last-train-home-the-high-price-of-low-priced-chinese-goods.

Kudos to Lixin Fan and his crews for making the movie!

Lifestyle – China vs. North America (IV): Night Life

Night life - sleepless in Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Canton, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Wuhan, ...

Nanjing Road in Shanghai. On such streets, the businesses are never lack of traffic, even at midnight.

To the biggest surprise to many westerners on their first trip to China, the night life in major cities is way beyond their imagination. No matter variety or scale or content, the North American version is absolutely dwarfed. From exotic bars or tea houses to busy Karaoke places, from crowded restaurants of all sorts of styles to crazy nightclubs, from 24/7 shopping centers to late opening recreational centres, from art performances and concerts to underground entertainments, from the ones you see a lot in the West to the many you’ve never heard of, guaranteed you will feel the unbelievable energy and creativity Chinese have for their night lives. On the contrary, North American large cities leave a “countryside” first impression to many Chinese immigrants or visitors who came from the big cities.

It’s true – Chinese love night life and they spend loads of money on it. The younger generations, those who were born after the 70’s, are only crazier. To release their pressure at work or school, to make out with friends, to find a date or one-night stand, to celebrate their achievements, or to simply kill the time, they show up on the street at the hottest places and they have become the biggest group of night events goers. Yet, at the same time, the night events are important social vehicles to businessmen. After getting a bit loosen up at dinner, many business meetings would carry on to private karaoke rooms, where you can hire some “professionals” to serve every guest by singing and drinking with them (the services can go beyond those in many cases if you know what I mean), and recreational centres, where you can enjoy many games and excellent massage services (some of those places could be raunchy). Believe it or not, many deals are sealed off in such “intimate interactions”. If you search in YouTube for “Brits get rich in China”, which by the way is a very truthful production about how westerners conduct their businesses in China, you’ll see what I’m talking about in one of the episodes.

A modern karaoke room equiped with projector video system and advanced touch-screen song selection system.

Actually, in many Chinese big cities, there are two types of Karaoke places. Besides the one mentioned above, which are filled with young hot girls and smell of money, there’s another type designed for family and friends gathering. Their services focus on two things: 1) the AV system, and 2) the quality and variety of food and drinks. In some places, you can even bring in your own drinks without being billed for any surcharges. The second type, which charges by hours of room usage (a few hundred yuan per night), is typically much more affordable than the first type, which makes money from not only room charges but the extra amount of drinks and foods consumed and “inspired” by your professional accompanies. In some top-notch places (first type), one night of Karaoke party of 4 to 6 with accompanies can easily cost you anywhere from RMB6,000 (USD880) to RMB30,000 (USD4,400), tips to accompanies included, depending on what and how much you drink and eat. For any “additional services” you absolutely have to pay extra.

The well known "Pink Army" of a famous Beijing entertainment center run by someone deep rooted in the government. At guests' requirement and price tags, the selected "professionals" can provide any services from the basic singing to "special services". One of the hottest army members, after being murdered last year, was found to have over RMB100 million (USD14.7 million) on her bank account. Go figure.

Unlike some North American cities, in which alcohol is regulated and even banned in nightclubs, the large cities in China never restricted the consumption of alcoholic drinks except for driving. You can purchase alcohol anywhere in the city and you can drink it anywhere you want. However, the Chinese government is damn strict on drugs. According to the law, anyone who produces, smuggles, sells or transports 400g or more heroins will be sentenced to death. The recent news buster that the Chinese government, despite the appeal made by the British government, executed a British who was caught in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province, for smuggling 4kg heroin into China was a perfect example. The message was clear – don’t even think about it. If you want to get high in a pub or nightclub in China, go with alcohol, never drugs.

Prostitution was never legal in China but it’s everywhere. If you ask for “special service”, the Chinese euphemism for sexual service, in the Type I karaoke places and night clubs, 10 out of 10 you will get a positive answer. It’s a lucrative business and everyone in the loop gets a cut. In fact, prostitution has become such an open phenomenon and also a serious challenge to the public health in China that the government has to face it by sending experts to educate the service providers how to have safe sex and avoid STDs including AIDS. At the same time, the government would regularly raid the underground brothels every year to stop it from growing rampant. The action is called “sweeping off the yellow”, a color Chinese use to symbolize pornography and prostitution (for instance, an adult movie is called a yellow movie). In reality, each “sweeping” is a double-edged sword which sets back local economy a few years only because so many related businesses, such as hospitality and entertainment, would be immediately affected. Now you know how big and powerful the “special service” industry is.

Almost no exception, all the night clubs and recreation centers are backed by local government, mostly police force, one way or the other to keep trouble makers (gangs & mobs) off the ground. For foreigners who typically have no local roots (family or connection to key persons), my best advice would be – have fun but stay out of trouble. Or you could be in big trouble.

110 Years difference of dragon stories

You might not believe me if I say China’s dragon culture has been well known to the world for over 100 years. But it’s very true. The westerners started to use dragon to symbolize China over 100 years ago, and here’s the proof. Below are a few westerner-drawn cartoons reflecting China’s changes in the world history.

Let’s first flash back to a century ago and review what the China dragon looked like in the westerners’ eyes then.

TITLE: The real trouble will come with the "Wake"; CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1900; REFERENCE: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cartoon_1900.jpg

The cartoon was published exactly 110 years ago when China, thanks to the inept government of late Qing Dynasty, was a weak country but full of treasures and resources. China, other than a dragon, was more like a lamb to the western countries which were aggressively expanding their international domain to feed the greed of capitalism. In the cartoon, animal personifications of Russia, England, Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Japan fight over body of China (dragon) as U.S. (eagle) looks on.

TITLE: Dissection du monstre chinois (French for “Dissection of the Chinese monster”); CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1902

Similar to the first cartoon, the image shows how the western countries humiliated China and fought to get a piece of China. The most notorious event happened during the time frame was the looting and complete destroy of the Old Summer Palace (originally called Imperial Garden), known for its extensive collection of garden and building architectures and other works of art worth hundreds of millions pound back then, during the Eight-Nation Alliance invasion in 1900 (Note: the first looting and burning was done by British and French army in 1860). Now the majority of the collections are still scattered in western countries, over half kept in top museums, such as the British Museum and Rutherford Museum, and the other half in private collections.

Now, let’s return to 21st century and see how westerners are using cartoons to depict today's dragon.

In this cartoon by Morten Morland from The Times, China is portrayed as a fiery dragon, defying the rest of the world. Uncle Sam (i.e., the USA) is caught up in the dragon's coils. He is waving a fan with IOU written on it (by May 2009, the US owed China $772 billion). The British bulldog is easily kept at bay with a single finger (China disregarded the UK government's pleas not to execute a British man convicted of smuggling heroin). The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is being squeezed out, while the Dalai Lama is imprisoned in the dragon's claw. A fin on the dragon's back has cut the Copenhagen climate deal in half (standing for the third world countries, China was widely blamed by developed countries for the failure of the summit). Around the dragon's neck hang some pendants in the form of a dollar sign and a map of Africa.

“The meaning is obvious: China is the most powerful country in the world and does whatever it wants”.

Well, personally I believe it’s an overstatement. China has certainly grown into a strong country. Yet, it’s still a developing country with a GDP (PPP) per capita of only $5,963, much less than developed countries such as USA whose number is $47,440. Moreover, China, unlike some aggressive western countries, has been a modest and conservative country in history. Even at its peak times, such as Tang Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, China never invaded any other countries or “does whatever it wants”.

TITLE: USA & China Talk Money

Uncle Sam (USA), holding a sign of “Fix the Yuan” (the Chinese currency) says: “I’m terribly sorry… But if things don’t change… I may be forced to bring trade sanctions to bear...”. And the China dragon, sitting at the wall of “$1.33 trillion reserves” reservoir and pulling the floodgate, replies: “Thanks ever so much for the warning! Just one quick question… did you bring your swimming trunks?”

In fact, the number quoted in the cartoon is outdated. As of 2009, China’s foreign exchange reserves have increased to $2.27 trillion, while USA only has $83 billion, about 3.66% of China’s. At the same time, US-China trade deficit is still climbing, hitting over $268 billion in 2008 (U.S. Census Bureau data).

Once approached by a New York constituent who complained of loss of manufacturing jobs and asked “Why can't we get tough on China?”, Hillary Clinton replied: “How do you get tough on your banker?" The conversation happened in early 2007, and, as of the end of 2006, Chinese investors held $350 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, about 15 percent of the total foreign holdings of Treasury securities. The most recent stats shows, as of November 2009, the numbers have gone up to $789.6 billion and 21.95% (according to U.S. Treasury, http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt).

Since the US economy is still struggling, thanks to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis starting from 2007, Uncle Sam would better think twice when talking money with today’s dragon.

The dragon story hasn’t ended yet, especially with Uncle Sam. Here is what are happening now:

• The world's biggest and third-biggest economies traded angry words about Internet policy after the search engine giant Google Inc earlier this month threatened to shut its Chinese google.cn portal and pull out of China because of censorship and hacking attacks.
• China threatened to impose sanctions on U.S. arms firms and cut cooperation with Washington unless it cancels a $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, in an unprecedented move signaling Beijing's growing global power.
• In coming months President Barack Obama may meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader China calls a dangerous separatist. Beijing is likely (guaranteed, I would say) to condemn such a meeting.
• Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to visit the United States later this year.
• …

The game has just started.

Lifestyle – China vs. North America (III)

From bicycles to cars

If you say US and Canada are countries running on wheels, China deserves the same title, except many ride on two wheels. China has been the largest bicycle manufacturing and consuming country for a few decades. However, things are changing fast. Quoting Reuters, “China's auto market, which overtook the United States as the world's largest earlier this year thanks to a raft of policy incentives, has been a major bright spot amid a global industry downturn”. Read on at http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60722O20100108 for details.

In China's large cities, parking is another big headache. The existing transportation system and buildings were not designed to meet such a tide of growth in the personal vehicle market. Pedestrian walk naturally became the makeshift public parking lot (in most cases, not free, though). In some narrow streets, you have to be really good at parking to get the spots. Plus, you'd better watch for the bicyclists all the time, as the two-wheelers still outnumber the four-wheelers in big figure.

Today, in large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, traffic has become one of the biggest headache to the city managers. Taking Beijing as an example, the city added over 100,000 passenger cars in the peak month of 2009. Yes, the number is not mistaken – over 100,000 new cars sold in a month! The city has built numerous new roads, including the well known 4^th ring and 5^th ring semi-highway, as Beijing quickly expands its territory (the 6^th ring is under construction). Yet, the traffic is still pretty bad during rush hours. Last September, it took me over one hour traveling from North-East 3^rd ring to the China World Trade Center, a distance just about 10km, for a dinner appointment.

Cars have become a new culture in China merging into the 5,000 years old legacy. All sorts of vehicle clubs and businesses are born every day, some out of the imagination of westerners. Since the four-wheelers were not part of Chinese everyday life until just a few years ago, Chinese had to creatively come up with many ways of parking cars in narrow streets, mostly on pedestrian walks. For many rich Chinese, luxury cars and sports cars have become their status marker despite the fact that such cars are minimum twice more expensive in China than in western countries, thanks to China’s protective tariff on automobiles.

Recently, in a high profile wedding in an affluent town in Jiangsu Province (one of China’s most developed provinces) triggered a heated discussion over Internet. Over 30 high-end cars showed up in the “wedding fleet”, including 4 Rolls-Royce Phantom, 4 Bentley, 1 Ferrari, 1 Lamborghini, 20 Audi A8-W12 Quattro, 2 Audi S8, plus a few Land Rovers and Hummers as “guards” (see http://www.naol.ca/news/world/1001/0126-2.html for pictures). And among the wedding gift, there’s a brand new white Lamborghini. Yet, the family members, when interviewed, said it’s just a normal wedding, definitely not the top line in town. Go figure…

To become part of the “modern life” westerners have enjoyed for decades, more Chinese will drive cars instead of bikes to commute. The American Dream is being tweaked to form its Chinese version in the one of the world’s oldest civilizations. Regardless, the four wheelers have significantly changed not just the “living diameter” but lifestyle of many Chinese.

To be continued.

Lifestyle – China vs. North America (II)

Behind the fast growth

Similar to what happened in the west during its fast growing process, China has its costs behind the fast growth. Put aside the economy development costs such as over consumption of natural resource and pollution, which I will elaborate down the line, the cost in culture alone is huge. On the top list are destroyed trust system and lost respect to privacy.

The trust crisis started from the notorious Cultural Revolution which happened between 1966 and 1976, the darkest 10 years after the People’s Republic of China was established. To survive the nationwide political storm, millions chose to trade their soul for personal and family security. Since then, trust among people was severely damaged and went straight to freezing point. Unarguably, it's the most devastating event to the trust system in China's history. The second wave of attack actually came with the reform. When the whole country suddenly opened up to the world and the market oriented economy was at its infant stage, chaos was an uninvited friend. Money changed the original simple relationship among people and all sorts of frauds only accelerated the breakdown of trust system. When a society dramatically switched from “Trust talks” to “Money talks” mode, the people’s paradigm shifted – a side effect and a big cost of economy development.

Today’s North America has gone through pretty much the same process and is rebuilding a healthy trust system which makes China look bad. In fact, many Chinese immigrants agreed that they don’t have to be so alert when living in North America.

[Image above: A classical example of the Red art from the early Cultural Revolution - a worker crushes the crucifix, Buddha and classical Chinese texts with his hammer, saying: "Destroy the old world; build a new world" (1966). In reality, the revolution went way beyond culture and became a countrywide political storm reshuffling the power and positions at every level of government and the society. It eventually went rampant and out of control until Chairman Mao's death and arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976."]

To those who do business in China, they must understand the importance of building a good network. It sounds pretty similar to North American businessmen. However, the difference is at How. In China, a whole lot of business relationships are built and maintained at dinner table or over Karaoke microphone or in steamy bathtubs, after work. No matter you like it not, business life is blurred with personal life. Even the social events between coworkers only happen after work. It's not a surprise at all if a company’s employee gets a call from his/her boss or client at 11:00 on a weekday night or on 10:00 on a Sunday morning. The aggressiveness of Chinese younger generation (see the last post) only made the situation worse. Many of them choose to work extra hours to get more done. In many cases, I witnessed them voluntarily working until 2am or even 3am, up to three times per week. Literally, their cell phones are on 24/7. Feeling the pressure? You bet.

In contrast, except a few coffees and golf games, I haven’t treated my clients a single meal after working as sales and running my businesses in North America for over seven years. Seldom did I get calls from my clients or coworkers for business after 6pm or on weekends.

Huawei Electronics, China’s top computer networking equipment manufacturer (some say China’s Nortel), had multiple employee suicide cases in the past two years. Mostly the tragedies were caused by overstress at work. Was Huawei alone? Definitely not. Similar cases happened in almost every developed countries before. Japan would be the best example featuring many employees died of exhaustion and overstress in the 70’s and 80’s.

To the talented Chinese who are tired of such blurred business-personal life and who aspire for peace of mind after work, North America is no-doubt a nice hideout, if not heaven.

To be continued.

Lifestyle – China vs. North America (I)

Many folks here asked me: why do so many Chinese immigrate to Canada or US while China is growing fast and full of opportunities? That’s a very good question which might have thousands of answers from the Chinese immigrants. I cannot answer on their behalf each and every one of them, but I can categorize the main reasons as following:

• For a different lifestyle


• For a better education (many for their kids)


• For a better health care system and natural environment


• For opportunities China cannot give them


• For international experience

I’ll talk about them one by one down the line. Today let’s first start with China’s major cities and compare the lifestyles between China and North America.

The dramatic changes

In simple words, for most young and middle-aged Chinese who live in large cities, their lifestyle is much more hectic than the ones in North America. Yet, it was totally opposite if we flash back to 20 years ago.

The open and reform policy enabled China to quickly transform from socialism to capitalism (although the government insists it’s a special time frame of moving socialism forward). The changes in China were simply phenomenal in the last two decades. A large amount of private owned companies and foreign invested companies emerged and expanded like wild fire. They introduced competition into the country that used to run a planned economy with thousands of SOEs (state-owned enterprises), many of which quickly ran into bankruptcy when capitalism kicked their butt. The folks who used to go to work with a cup of tea spending hours on newspapers and gossips were forced to compete against their coworkers or laid off (in late 90’s, over 10 million people had to “xia gang”, the Chinese for being lay off). The nationwide inflation only made the life of those people more miserable. After tasting the cruelty of capitalism, the attitude of China’s work force went from one extreme to another – get or keep a job at any cost.

Today, when you visit China’s major cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Canton or Chongqing, you can easily feel the rhythm of life much faster than North America. Everything happens in a fast forward mode. You feel the vibrancy, and you feel the pressure, too.

The aggressiveness

In 2006, when CBC’s China Rises team returned to Toronto, one of the team leaders was interviewed in a local TV show. When asked about China’s job market, he commented: “… Chinese young people are far more aggressive than Canadians in pursuit of success…”. I had to agree with him for it’s the truth. Here’s why – actually one of the many whys.

Starting from late 90’s, China pushed forward its reform in its residential housing system, privatizing residential houses by encouraging people to buy houses with governmental subsidiary. Only since then, China’s real estate market tool off (There was no houses or apartments you can buy before the reform. Everyone lives in the state owned apartments). In merely 10 years, accompanying the fast growing economy, the housing prices in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have skyrocketed over 10 folds. However, the affordability went straight down.

For instance, the current average housing price in Shanghai is about RMB10,000 per square meter, which means a 100 square meter (930 sqft) apartment would cost RMB1 million. (Note: Because China’s large cities are heavily populated, e.g. 20 million in Shanghai alone, few people can afford living in a house, or “villa” in Chinese term, which costs millions in US or Canadian dollars. Most people live in high-rise condo apartments). The average annual personal income, however, is only RMB40,000. That means a double income family need 12.5 years income to pay off their home without spending a dime on food or entertainment. Here in North America, we only need 4 to 5 years. Many experts have been saying for years the real estate bubble which still hasn’t busted – that’s another hot topic in China and we’ll discuss about it later. No doubt, the housing pressure is on everyone, especially the young couples who are trying to establish their life in large cities. That’s why a recent TV program “Dwelling Narrowness” has become the best seller in China. Simply put, the young people there just cannot afford to be not aggressive, no matter at work or in business.

To be continued