The word “Bridge” was stenciled in neat black letters at the entrance to a luxury residence community on the outskirts of Shanghai. The guard at the gate, who snapped his hand up smartly to his kepi when addressed, was hard pressed to say why it was called “Bridge”. It certainly didn’t connect anything to anything else and the newly tarred road that ran outside the entrance to the complex came to an abrupt end in at the edge of a dark and impenetrable thicket.
“Bridge” had been carved out of the wilderness only a few months before and then made habitable for wealthy foreigners. The residences were built in a faux-Moorish style with tiled roofs and turreted casements. By contrast, the doors - light oval shapes and disproportionately small - looked like something a hobbit architect had designed.
Life inside the complex followed a civilized rhythm of evening strolls with dogs well-heeled on leashes. It was an oasis of calm and tranquility interrupted only by the pulsing soubasse of bullfrogs that emerged at dusk from the rushes along the canals that traced the edges of the property
The frogs were all that remained of the wilderness that had been there before. It was possible that they were there because they had been overlooked but it was more likely that they had been carefully accounted for in the design and kept on as a momento mori of the countryside.
Every month the residents organized dinner parties that they took to calling “walking dinners”. They called them “walking dinners” because each family would volunteer to prepare a meal and then walk from one house to the next during the course of an evening tasting the food their neighbors had prepared. Through this pleasant diversion they got to know each other and came to appreciate each other’s cultures. A family of Danes who expected to find no more than salad when they entered the house of their neighbors, strict vegetarians from Bombay, were pleasantly surprised to find heaping trays of lightly browned Pakoras and Samosas.
This cross-cultural exchange was strictly confined to the complex though and did not extend to the world outside. Occasionally a small group of residents would take up wine glasses at the end of a “walking dinner” and make their way down to the entrance of the complex. With the gate just ajar they would watch as men in blue coveralls at the end of a shift made their way in twos and threes down the dusty road that led back to their dormitories.
They were workers coming from construction sites where they were putting up the walls and towers that would destroy their past while building a bridge to their future.
Monday, 11 August 2008
Friday, 18 July 2008
The Shanghai Think Tank
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"
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"
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.
Monday, 30 June 2008
Fueling Despair
The taxi driver who took me to Pudong airport last week was a talker. He made a pretense at inviting a response at the every one of his pronouncements, but this was just a platitude and it was clear he preferred to hear himself talk. Unfortunately, he talked a lot faster than he drove and I was worried I might not make the plane.
Although he rambled a lot, the driver kept coming back to the gas situation and dwelling on the problems of getting fuel. According to him, gas had increased by 8 jiao (about 10 cents) over the last two months. . However, cab fares seem to have stayed the same, so this is undoubtedly squeezing profits and making it even tougher for drivers to eke out what is already a tenuous existence. Beyond this price increase was a shortage that was having increasingly serious consequences. Drivers have begun lining up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning to make sure they could get enough fuel. There have also been a number of cases where a number of gas stations had been shut down because they were found to have been mixing water with the gas and then selling it at gas prices
Although he rambled a lot, the driver kept coming back to the gas situation and dwelling on the problems of getting fuel. According to him, gas had increased by 8 jiao (about 10 cents) over the last two months. . However, cab fares seem to have stayed the same, so this is undoubtedly squeezing profits and making it even tougher for drivers to eke out what is already a tenuous existence. Beyond this price increase was a shortage that was having increasingly serious consequences. Drivers have begun lining up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning to make sure they could get enough fuel. There have also been a number of cases where a number of gas stations had been shut down because they were found to have been mixing water with the gas and then selling it at gas prices
Thursday, 19 June 2008
No Satisfaction
I knew the 60% off the plane ticket to Wuhan was too good to be true. It was cheaper than the train. The problems started when I got to the airport for the early morning flight. The agent at the passport control station waved my ticket in front of her colleague and snickered “look. This guy’s used a Chinese name”. “What’s so funny about that,” I retorted. The agent looked abashed and explained that the problem was not with my Chinese name, but that the name used in my passport was in English and technically a different name than the name that appeared on the ticket. They couldn’t let me on the flight. Only the travel agency where I bought the ticket could change the name in the reservation system. In desperation I called the agency’s hotline. Naturally, it didn’t work. I called all the numbers listed, there was no answer. No one came to the office until 9:00. My flight was at 8:30. I had to take a later flight and pay full fare.
I stopped by the travel agency a few days later to explain the situation and get a refund for the ticket. The young man at the counter understood the situation, but explained that ultimately the fault was mine and so there was no obligation to reimburse the ticket. It didn’t matter that the young lady who asked me to fill out the standard agency form with my name, contact details, etc. didn’t point out that the name I used on the information form would be used on my ticket and, more importantly, that this could lead to a problem if the name in my passport were different. They are just travel agents who generate tickets and provide schedules. I should have known better since after all this wasn’t the first time I have taken a flight, was it ?? [Actually, I fly very rarely within China] It was my fault for not bringing my passport with me in the first place when I purchased the ticket. I should have compared the ticket with my passport and realized there was a difference. It was my fault for not checking.
I asked to speak to the owner, but he couldn’t be reached because he was “wai di” – living outside of Shanghai (in essence an absentee owner) and the rules were that his contact information was not be given out to customers. God forbid he should have to deal with a customer problem. His job, according to the young man at the counter, was to manage the company, a function that apparently did not include speaking to customers. The young man explained that customer service and resolving customer issues was his responsibility and that he was representing the company’s official position so there was no need for further discussion. The case was clear. I demanded to speak to the office manager. “I am the office manager,” answered the young man smugly and without another word gathered up all my tickets, receipts, and forms, replaced them neatly in the envelope the agency had provided, and handed them back to me. Another case successfully closed
I stopped by the travel agency a few days later to explain the situation and get a refund for the ticket. The young man at the counter understood the situation, but explained that ultimately the fault was mine and so there was no obligation to reimburse the ticket. It didn’t matter that the young lady who asked me to fill out the standard agency form with my name, contact details, etc. didn’t point out that the name I used on the information form would be used on my ticket and, more importantly, that this could lead to a problem if the name in my passport were different. They are just travel agents who generate tickets and provide schedules. I should have known better since after all this wasn’t the first time I have taken a flight, was it ?? [Actually, I fly very rarely within China] It was my fault for not bringing my passport with me in the first place when I purchased the ticket. I should have compared the ticket with my passport and realized there was a difference. It was my fault for not checking.
I asked to speak to the owner, but he couldn’t be reached because he was “wai di” – living outside of Shanghai (in essence an absentee owner) and the rules were that his contact information was not be given out to customers. God forbid he should have to deal with a customer problem. His job, according to the young man at the counter, was to manage the company, a function that apparently did not include speaking to customers. The young man explained that customer service and resolving customer issues was his responsibility and that he was representing the company’s official position so there was no need for further discussion. The case was clear. I demanded to speak to the office manager. “I am the office manager,” answered the young man smugly and without another word gathered up all my tickets, receipts, and forms, replaced them neatly in the envelope the agency had provided, and handed them back to me. Another case successfully closed
Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Presidential Decison
Liu Dao Yu was President of Wuhan University in the 1980’s. I really didn’t know him well, but he was the one who made the unheard of decision to let me move from the Foreign Experts Building to a student dormitory on campus. After all this time I still wanted to know why, so I tracked him down and invited him for lunch.
We met in the lobby of a hotel on the East Lake. In the twenty years that had passed he had devoted more and more of his time to educational issues and moved further and further away from Chemistry, his original area of expertise. He was also dismissed from the university at the end of the 80’s apparently for initiating programs and reforms that were just too progressive making me realize that his decision let me move into a dormitory was just the tip of the iceberg and was actually perfectly consistent with his worldview.
We exchanged gifts. I gave him a pen. He gave me a copy of his autobiography “Memoir of a University Dean” and he got into a taxi to go home. In the end, I never did learn why he decided to let me move.
We met in the lobby of a hotel on the East Lake. In the twenty years that had passed he had devoted more and more of his time to educational issues and moved further and further away from Chemistry, his original area of expertise. He was also dismissed from the university at the end of the 80’s apparently for initiating programs and reforms that were just too progressive making me realize that his decision let me move into a dormitory was just the tip of the iceberg and was actually perfectly consistent with his worldview.
We exchanged gifts. I gave him a pen. He gave me a copy of his autobiography “Memoir of a University Dean” and he got into a taxi to go home. In the end, I never did learn why he decided to let me move.
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