It is 368 days since I first stepped off the plane onto Chinese soil and I still have 558 days to establish EASTWEST as a force to be reckoned with before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Add to these numbers two more: I celebrated my 40th birthday on a beach in Boracay, contemplating EASTWEST CHINA, on the 25th of January. Before I left for the Philippines, I became increasingly like the Prisoner of Zenda who is in a room where the walls are encroaching inexorably in on him, mesmerizing murals on the ceiling hypnotizing him while taking away his ability to focus on any objects which would secure his sanity. I had found a good office for a good price (RMB12,000 for 137m2) in Hua Mao, but the landlord first wanted 12 months payment in advance, then 6, before settling for 3. Within 24 hours the agents were calling every 10 minutes to meet, culminating in a call at 4:30 to ask why I wasn’t at their office as the landlord was waiting for me. “I told you that I can’t come today, and that I need to see the contract not meet the landlord again,” I replied. “But the landlord is in our office and you must come because he will be angry with us if you don’t come,” the agent implored. My refusal to move drew her final negotiating ploy, “the landlord is too old to come to your office, so you must come here now.” Too old to travel 5 minutes, but not too old to be able to spend 12 months rent in cash – I didn’t think so. I have come to realize why there is a constant tension around transactions. Everybody wants to be paid cash in advance without trace but the Government uses the banks as instruments to watch over our transactions. We had mistakenly had monies transferred to one of two bank accounts, but as this account was not eligible to receive foreign funds from anyone except EASTWEST in Singapore, it was remitted to the sender without notice to us. Transferring money into China requires either a change in our capital structure or raising invoices which result in taxable income. Meanwhile a client event in Shanghai required cash to suppliers and salaries were due. I flew to Shanghai on the 18th keen to simply complete the press briefing and then head on holiday. Shipments were stuck in customs, guests talked on their mobile phones, one read a newspaper during the presentation, and a few simply left as their fancy took them. Overall it was a great success.
To get to the Pudong airport, I took the Maglev train, which travels at 431 km per hour. Chinese travelers -- fascinated by the warp speed at which their country is changing -- take their photos getting onto the carriage. When I was born in 1967, Mao was on postage stamps seen writing poetry, perhaps used on post cards by some of the 17 million urban youth sent to live in the countryside over the next decade during his Cultural Revolution. In the countryside in the 1980’s, after de-collectivization of farming, household living standards improved with mean per capita incomes rising from 693RMB (US$86.6) in 1987 to 966 RMB in 1999 per year. By comparison in the UK by 1991 the poorest 5% of the population lived on GBP87 (US$174) per week (based on current exchange rates). Interestingly, both countries share the phenomenon of a growing divide between rich and poor from the 1970’s until today. My rural upbringing was significantly different to that of my China classmates. While I was kicking a football around the fields of England, my contemporaries were worried about a completely different set of goals. These people as teenagers would have been hoping to get enough rations for fresh food, queuing as my 34 year old friend Wei did at Chinese New Year for additional coupons for sugar and dairy products. While I was watching the BBC and American TV shows, my Chinese contemporaries were reading newspapers from notice boards in places, watching state-created period dramas and propaganda. Above all, they had the omnipotence of the Communist Party at home, in education and the workplace controlling travel, accommodation and career. Today, the Party is still very much in control and I sense the anxiety of having an omnipresent and omnipotent authority. This I think is one of the key reasons why Chinese are considered to be ‘inscrutable;’ they are used to an unaccountable authority and in such a system anonymity is a safe place to live. My present to myself for my 39th year was adventure and the opportunity to set up a company in China, which in spite of all the whining and complaints about government bureaucracy is about as rewarding a project as a man can give himself. I sometimes wonder what I have done with 12 months, why has getting a 4 person team together taken so long to care for a few clients. Then it occurs to me that every time I have one set of issues solved, another arises. This diary entry, for example, is late because the Norton Antivirus software failed to spot and kill the Panda virus which descended on China last week giving my computer 1712 viruses. While I was away, our new software support company took an initiative to reconfigure our network resulting in total non-connectivity. The great thing about setting up a business in China is that one can never be bored, which means that life doesn’t begin just once, but daily, although at 40, my eyes are starting to look like a Panda.
It is 368 days since I first stepped off the plane onto Chinese soil and I still have 558 days to establish EASTWEST as a force to be reckoned with before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Add to these numbers two more: I celebrated my 40th birthday on a beach in Boracay, contemplating EASTWEST CHINA, on the 25th of January. Before I left for the Philippines, I became increasingly like the Prisoner of Zenda who is in a room where the walls are encroaching inexorably in on him, mesmerizing murals on the ceiling hypnotizing him while taking away his ability to focus on any objects which would secure his sanity. I had found a good office for a good price (RMB12,000 for 137m2) in Hua Mao, but the landlord first wanted 12 months payment in advance, then 6, before settling for 3. Within 24 hours the agents were calling every 10 minutes to meet, culminating in a call at 4:30 to ask why I wasn’t at their office as the landlord was waiting for me. “I told you that I can’t come today, and that I need to see the contract not meet the landlord again,” I replied. “But the landlord is in our office and you must come because he will be angry with us if you don’t come,” the agent implored. My refusal to move drew her final negotiating ploy, “the landlord is too old to come to your office, so you must come here now.” Too old to travel 5 minutes, but not too old to be able to spend 12 months rent in cash – I didn’t think so. I have come to realize why there is a constant tension around transactions. Everybody wants to be paid cash in advance without trace but the Government uses the banks as instruments to watch over our transactions. We had mistakenly had monies transferred to one of two bank accounts, but as this account was not eligible to receive foreign funds from anyone except EASTWEST in Singapore, it was remitted to the sender without notice to us. Transferring money into China requires either a change in our capital structure or raising invoices which result in taxable income. Meanwhile a client event in Shanghai required cash to suppliers and salaries were due. I flew to Shanghai on the 18th keen to simply complete the press briefing and then head on holiday. Shipments were stuck in customs, guests talked on their mobile phones, one read a newspaper during the presentation, and a few simply left as their fancy took them. Overall it was a great success. 
To get to the Pudong airport, I took the Maglev train, which travels at 431 km per hour. Chinese travelers -- fascinated by the warp speed at which their country is changing -- take their photos getting onto the carriage. When I was born in 1967, Mao was on postage stamps seen writing poetry, perhaps used on post cards by some of the 17 million urban youth sent to live in the countryside over the next decade during his Cultural Revolution. In the countryside in the 1980’s, after de-collectivization of farming, household living standards improved with mean per capita incomes rising from 693RMB (US$86.6) in 1987 to 966 RMB in 1999 per year. By comparison in the UK by 1991 the poorest 5% of the population lived on GBP87 (US$174) per week (based on current exchange rates). Interestingly, both countries share the phenomenon of a growing divide between rich and poor from the 1970’s until today. My rural upbringing was significantly different to that of my China classmates. While I was kicking a football around the fields of England, my contemporaries were worried about a completely different set of goals. These people as teenagers would have been hoping to get enough rations for fresh food, queuing as my 34 year old friend Wei did at Chinese New Year for additional coupons for sugar and dairy products. While I was watching the BBC and American TV shows, my Chinese contemporaries were reading newspapers from notice boards in places, watching state-created period dramas and propaganda. Above all, they had the omnipotence of the Communist Party at home, in education and the workplace controlling travel, accommodation and career. Today, the Party is still very much in control and I sense the anxiety of having an omnipresent and omnipotent authority. This I think is one of the key reasons why Chinese are considered to be ‘inscrutable;’ they are used to an unaccountable authority and in such a system anonymity is a safe place to live. My present to myself for my 39th year was adventure and the opportunity to set up a company in China, which in spite of all the whining and complaints about government bureaucracy is about as rewarding a project as a man can give himself. I sometimes wonder what I have done with 12 months, why has getting a 4 person team together taken so long to care for a few clients. Then it occurs to me that every time I have one set of issues solved, another arises. This diary entry, for example, is late because the Norton Antivirus software failed to spot and kill the Panda virus which descended on China last week giving my computer 1712 viruses. While I was away, our new software support company took an initiative to reconfigure our network resulting in total non-connectivity. The great thing about setting up a business in China is that one can never be bored, which means that life doesn’t begin just once, but daily, although at 40, my eyes are starting to look like a Panda.