Downtown Shanghai is turning into one enormous construction site. Roads are being widened, narrowed, and completely rerouted as the city undergoes an historic metamorphosis.
Walls and barriers are being erected all along the main thoroughfares obscuring many of the city's most common landmarks and shielding blocks of the storefronts from view.
One imagines that one day all the walls and barriers will suddenly be removed revealing a brand new city.
In the meantime, all the construction plays havoc on traffic patterns and even seasoned drivers find familiar routes have changed direction or completely disappeared. Maneuvering around all the sites, many of which are unmarked, can be treacherous and there are many tie ups that result.
I joked to a taxi driver who narrowly missed a gaping hole in the middle of an off-ramp from the Yan An Expressway that it might be more useful to drive a tank in Shanghai. He responded matter-of-factly that he knew how to drive a tank and would give my proposal further consideration.
I find that usually Chinese don't make statements like this in jest, so I decided to find out what he meant when he said he had driven a tank. It turned out he had been in the army for a number of times and during his service had learned how to drive a tank.
As we swerved around another pile of rubble and some pylons along Tianmu Rd. I asked him whether it was tougher to drive a tank in the army or to drive a cab in Shanghai ? He didn't hesitate: "driving a cab in Shanghai"
Friday 18 July 2008
Sunday 13 July 2008
Deconstructing the Cookie
I bought a box of chocolate chip cookies from the Watson’s convenience store on Zhangyang Rd. yesterday.
The cookies were produced by a company called “Nissin”, (“Nissin” being the Japanese pronunciation for the two characters that appear just above the company logo) The name alone identified company as Japanese and the elegantly decorated box the cookies came in made the identification even more clear.
As I broke open the box to get at the contents, I happened to glance at the fine print on the bottom of the box and to my amazement discovered that “Nissin” is, in fact, the brand of a Chinese company operating on the outskirts of Shanghai. This discovery prompted me to take a closer look at the packaging and on further investigation I discovered a number of other intriguing items that elevated the box from a bit of clever packaging into a bona fide cultural artifact
Chinese young and old are not shy about expressing their dislike for the Japanese. This is not surprising given the frequent and portrayal of Japanese as either villains or buffoons in films and in the consistent stream of historical dramas shown on television
And yet when you look at the numbers, Japan is consistently at the top of the list of China’s largest trading partners. Shanghai is home to thousands of Japanese expats and hundreds of Shanghai residents are employed by Japanese companies.
So why would a Chinese company go out of its way to masquerades as a Japanese one especially if it is promoting its products to the local market?
The implication is that despite an avowed and widely publicized dislike for the Japanese, Chinese nevertheless recognize an inherent value in Japanese products and appreciate their quality. Capitalizing on the opportunity, Chinese companies are not squeamish about putting commercial gain ahead of national sentiment.
The rest of the box’s cover features text in English that describes the product as “A delicious cookie manufactured by traditional European method”. According to a recent New York Times article, creation of the first chocolate chip cookie is ascribed to a Mrs. Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn in Wakefield, Massachusetts and has no European antecedents.
So why the fictitious reference to “European methods” and the use of English ?
Chinese companies are becoming more refined and subtle marketers who realize that they can enhance the cachet of their product by cashing in on a growing penchant of Chinese consumers for European goods and a long-standing obsession with English, a “porte d’entree” for those who have designs on joining the swelling ranks of China’s middle class
The icing on the cake, or rather the cookie, is a band of Chinese characters featured prominently at the top of box that reads “Qu Qi”, a word that at first blush has absolutely no meaning in the Chinese language. But when you sound the characters out you realize that they are not being used for their semantic content, but rather for their phonetic value. They are quite literally a transcription or a rough approximation of the English word “cookie”
The number of English words that have been transcribed into Chinese is growing by leaps and bounds. “Hei Ke” (hacker), “Mo Te (fashion model), and the ubiquitous “Tuo Ke Xiu” (talk show) have become staples of common parlance and represent the pinnacle of Chinese literary fashion
“Qu Qi” or cookie then is clearly an exponent of this trend, but more than just a mere example that makes the point it sends a signal to customers that the company has caught the spirit of the time and perhaps more subtly enables those customers who can’t read English to appreciate the “foreign” cachet.
The cookies were produced by a company called “Nissin”, (“Nissin” being the Japanese pronunciation for the two characters that appear just above the company logo) The name alone identified company as Japanese and the elegantly decorated box the cookies came in made the identification even more clear.
As I broke open the box to get at the contents, I happened to glance at the fine print on the bottom of the box and to my amazement discovered that “Nissin” is, in fact, the brand of a Chinese company operating on the outskirts of Shanghai. This discovery prompted me to take a closer look at the packaging and on further investigation I discovered a number of other intriguing items that elevated the box from a bit of clever packaging into a bona fide cultural artifact
Chinese young and old are not shy about expressing their dislike for the Japanese. This is not surprising given the frequent and portrayal of Japanese as either villains or buffoons in films and in the consistent stream of historical dramas shown on television
And yet when you look at the numbers, Japan is consistently at the top of the list of China’s largest trading partners. Shanghai is home to thousands of Japanese expats and hundreds of Shanghai residents are employed by Japanese companies.
So why would a Chinese company go out of its way to masquerades as a Japanese one especially if it is promoting its products to the local market?
The implication is that despite an avowed and widely publicized dislike for the Japanese, Chinese nevertheless recognize an inherent value in Japanese products and appreciate their quality. Capitalizing on the opportunity, Chinese companies are not squeamish about putting commercial gain ahead of national sentiment.
The rest of the box’s cover features text in English that describes the product as “A delicious cookie manufactured by traditional European method”. According to a recent New York Times article, creation of the first chocolate chip cookie is ascribed to a Mrs. Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn in Wakefield, Massachusetts and has no European antecedents.
So why the fictitious reference to “European methods” and the use of English ?
Chinese companies are becoming more refined and subtle marketers who realize that they can enhance the cachet of their product by cashing in on a growing penchant of Chinese consumers for European goods and a long-standing obsession with English, a “porte d’entree” for those who have designs on joining the swelling ranks of China’s middle class
The icing on the cake, or rather the cookie, is a band of Chinese characters featured prominently at the top of box that reads “Qu Qi”, a word that at first blush has absolutely no meaning in the Chinese language. But when you sound the characters out you realize that they are not being used for their semantic content, but rather for their phonetic value. They are quite literally a transcription or a rough approximation of the English word “cookie”
The number of English words that have been transcribed into Chinese is growing by leaps and bounds. “Hei Ke” (hacker), “Mo Te (fashion model), and the ubiquitous “Tuo Ke Xiu” (talk show) have become staples of common parlance and represent the pinnacle of Chinese literary fashion
“Qu Qi” or cookie then is clearly an exponent of this trend, but more than just a mere example that makes the point it sends a signal to customers that the company has caught the spirit of the time and perhaps more subtly enables those customers who can’t read English to appreciate the “foreign” cachet.
Sunday 6 July 2008
Too Polite
The 3rd Annual Corporate Communications and Media Relations Summit in Shanghai didn’t attract more than 40 people. The numbers were purposely kept low to encourage discussion and make the participants feel as though they were integral to the event.
The design of the agenda was entirely contradictory. Although there were many more Chinese than foreigners only the foreigners presented. This could have been partially excused if the presentations delivered a lot of value and were well prepared, but in fact they were mediocre at best. Even more concerning was that from the questions they asked it was clear that the members of the audience were just as knowledgeable as the presenters if not more so.
I am sure that such a scenario would have been unacceptable if it took place anywhere else in the world: An audience of natives listening to foreigners doing a poor job of explaining their own market conditions to them.
A much better approach, I thought was that taken by the mobile Monday program where the foreigners presented in English and the Chinese presented in Chinese. The audience it was assumed could make do in either language and if they couldn’t then they shouldn’t be there.
Following one of the presentations a member of the audience noted how amazing it was for a foreigner to have such comprehensive knowledge of Chinese government policies. It seemed like such a ridiculous statement given that the presenter had been living in China for quite a number of years and his job depended on acquiring this kind of knowledge. Thinking about it later though I wondered whether or not this was more an issue of politeness, of making the foreign person feel as though he had accomplished something rather than a serious expression of amazement at the foreigner’s ability.
Seen in this context it is possible that the whole incongruous arrangement of foreign presenters and Chinese audience could be understood as a sign of politeness or respect from the Chinese audience who were trying to make the foreigners feel as if they were experts and possessed great insights. If so, then their efforts were entirely misplaced.
The design of the agenda was entirely contradictory. Although there were many more Chinese than foreigners only the foreigners presented. This could have been partially excused if the presentations delivered a lot of value and were well prepared, but in fact they were mediocre at best. Even more concerning was that from the questions they asked it was clear that the members of the audience were just as knowledgeable as the presenters if not more so.
I am sure that such a scenario would have been unacceptable if it took place anywhere else in the world: An audience of natives listening to foreigners doing a poor job of explaining their own market conditions to them.
A much better approach, I thought was that taken by the mobile Monday program where the foreigners presented in English and the Chinese presented in Chinese. The audience it was assumed could make do in either language and if they couldn’t then they shouldn’t be there.
Following one of the presentations a member of the audience noted how amazing it was for a foreigner to have such comprehensive knowledge of Chinese government policies. It seemed like such a ridiculous statement given that the presenter had been living in China for quite a number of years and his job depended on acquiring this kind of knowledge. Thinking about it later though I wondered whether or not this was more an issue of politeness, of making the foreign person feel as though he had accomplished something rather than a serious expression of amazement at the foreigner’s ability.
Seen in this context it is possible that the whole incongruous arrangement of foreign presenters and Chinese audience could be understood as a sign of politeness or respect from the Chinese audience who were trying to make the foreigners feel as if they were experts and possessed great insights. If so, then their efforts were entirely misplaced.
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