Having my mother and sister in Beijing is proving to be a wonderful experience, I believe for all of us, as we celebrated my 100 day anniversary in China with good friends and a sense that I am managing to balance the stresses of starting a business with my need for companionship. Wednesday May 11th was my 100 day anniversary in China. Within 100 days of office in 1933 Franklin Delanor Roosevelt had ‘saved both capitalism and democracy’ and created the ‘New Deal’ which was to galvanize America and lead it out of the Depression and into readiness for World War II. My first 100 days have not been as illustrious, or perhaps as industrious as the Polio stricken President, but in my own small way I have been laying the foundations for a stronger EASTWEST. After 3 months I realize that I must be patient, as the scale and challenges of starting a business in China are really nothing like those that I faced a decade ago in Singapore. The first roadblock to registration was thrown in our path when Jessie told me that the name Yi Tong was rejected, and that must find another. The question is whether to choose a name with a phonetic likeness to EASTWEST or a description of what we do. Having opted for the former, as Mandarin has many words with the same sound and entirely different meaning, I was faced with a number of combinations of the sound Yi Si and We si. Ting, my movie companion, translates company names as a business and I turned to her for guidance. However, it seemed impossible to find a name that Jessie, Nicole and Ting could all agree on as each person translated the combination of characters with a different meaning. To make matters worse, Grace in Singapore saw all the meanings entirely differently to the ladies in Beijing. In the end I elected for Yi Si Wen Si – which I am in the hope means ‘easy to get noticed’ – a double play on the sound of the English EASTWEST and what we do. As with my name Jin Bao, I have no doubt that some will be amused by my choice. Another choice that I took was not to hire a person at this stage, and to instead find a local agency at a stage in their development that would fit our needs. The candidates that I met, and the test that I gave Benjamin of translating the website, left me with the knowledge that I would need to spend a lot of time building their skills, and at this time my focus must be on revenue generation. To this end I met with Clara Wang who set up Kai Communications in 2004. Her four person team is comprised of ex-multinational account managers, and Clara exudes a quiet determination and commitment to quality that I liked immediately. Hoping to conclude the deal with the Mongolian property company on the Friday, Clara and I met to discuss pricing and use of the EASTWEST brand for work that we subcontract to Kai. We’ll take less margins but this feels like a sensible short term solution to our need for me to spending time on marketing and sales and less on people development. 
As part of my decision to get out into the market more I went to the 4N Print show, to experience what business was going on around me. The Chinese market for printing inks has grown steadily over the past few years and in 2003 the market grew by 10%, with domestic demand for ink exceeding 300,000 tonnes, more than double that which it produces, making China the world’s No. 4 market. (source:Chinese Market for Printing Inks. IAL Consultants. Nov 2004. Mindbranch.com). At the show a plethora of suppliers showed new printing devices, engravers, signage and apparently low-toxic inks, although within 10 minutes I was quite high on the smell, and was too slow to avoid an earnest young man who wanted to discuss why his customers didn’t understand him when asked them “if they have touched down yet” at the airport. “Wasn’t he right, could he say ‘touch down’ or should it be ‘landed?’ Could I also help explain about the use of the ‘:’, ‘;’ and ‘,’ as he whipped out his notebook. I eyed 3 westerners at a table earnestly attempting to understand their Chinese counterpart, and was a little comforted that for all of us, doing work in China has these surreal moments that take patience and sometimes a suspension of disbelief. My Mum, Jill, and sister, Shelley, couldn’t quite believe their luck at getting a taxi outside of the summer palace, confidently passing the driver a piece of crumpled paper that held the secret of their location, in Mandarin code. Along the route Shelley, an artist with a Distinction in her MA in Art, observed to Mum the absence of the shape ‘O’ in the architecture, the paintings and the characters in Beijing. She pointed out the mathematical dimensions of the Forbidden City and the stylized sweeping roof sections that gave the illusion that these great structures were somehow suspended in mid air above these great halls. As the accommodating driver smiled at bringing them to the destination on the note while avoiding the traffic, it dawned on them that they had unwittingly passed him a note with ‘Beijing Art Museum’ written on it. While a very nice place, it was not the Metropolitan apartment block that was home. Amusing, tiring, and the beginning of another journey, their ‘lost in translation’ experience reminded me of just the number of challenges one faces if one attempts to live in Beijing, rather than to exist in the mono cultural world created for expatriates. These expatriates will arrive in droves in 817 days for the Olympics, and perhaps the awareness of this sporting event has me heading for the gym, and taking the step to sign up with Filix for personal training. Filix speaks a sprawling kind of Mandarin that often leaves me not sure how many repetitions he wants me to do, as he encourages me to ‘Ye Men’ which is slang for ‘be a man’ apparently. I had a hard time doing this when I was sure he said that my arms were like that of a chicken, ‘ji rou.’ In between disgruntled puffs I enquired, at which he laughed and explained; the word for “muscle” and “chicken” are both “ji rou” and have precisely the same tone. On Friday I had a party at Jian Wai SOHO with Mum, Shelley and the good friends that I have made in Beijing. Mum sweetly organized a cake and we all drank champagne to celebrate my first 100 days – I only hope that this becomes a sign of the times.
As part of my decision to get out into the market more I went to the 4N Print show, to experience what business was going on around me. The Chinese market for printing inks has grown steadily over the past few years and in 2003 the market grew by 10%, with domestic demand for ink exceeding 300,000 tonnes, more than double that which it produces, making China the world’s No. 4 market. (source:Chinese Market for Printing Inks. IAL Consultants. Nov 2004. Mindbranch.com). At the show a plethora of suppliers showed new printing devices, engravers, signage and apparently low-toxic inks, although within 10 minutes I was quite high on the smell, and was too slow to avoid an earnest young man who wanted to discuss why his customers didn’t understand him when asked them “if they have touched down yet” at the airport. “Wasn’t he right, could he say ‘touch down’ or should it be ‘landed?’ Could I also help explain about the use of the ‘:’, ‘;’ and ‘,’ as he whipped out his notebook. I eyed 3 westerners at a table earnestly attempting to understand their Chinese counterpart, and was a little comforted that for all of us, doing work in China has these surreal moments that take patience and sometimes a suspension of disbelief. My Mum, Jill, and sister, Shelley, couldn’t quite believe their luck at getting a taxi outside of the summer palace, confidently passing the driver a piece of crumpled paper that held the secret of their location, in Mandarin code. Along the route Shelley, an artist with a Distinction in her MA in Art, observed to Mum the absence of the shape ‘O’ in the architecture, the paintings and the characters in Beijing. She pointed out the mathematical dimensions of the Forbidden City and the stylized sweeping roof sections that gave the illusion that these great structures were somehow suspended in mid air above these great halls. As the accommodating driver smiled at bringing them to the destination on the note while avoiding the traffic, it dawned on them that they had unwittingly passed him a note with ‘Beijing Art Museum’ written on it. While a very nice place, it was not the Metropolitan apartment block that was home. Amusing, tiring, and the beginning of another journey, their ‘lost in translation’ experience reminded me of just the number of challenges one faces if one attempts to live in Beijing, rather than to exist in the mono cultural world created for expatriates. These expatriates will arrive in droves in 817 days for the Olympics, and perhaps the awareness of this sporting event has me heading for the gym, and taking the step to sign up with Filix for personal training. Filix speaks a sprawling kind of Mandarin that often leaves me not sure how many repetitions he wants me to do, as he encourages me to ‘Ye Men’ which is slang for ‘be a man’ apparently. I had a hard time doing this when I was sure he said that my arms were like that of a chicken, ‘ji rou.’ In between disgruntled puffs I enquired, at which he laughed and explained; the word for “muscle” and “chicken” are both “ji rou” and have precisely the same tone. On Friday I had a party at Jian Wai SOHO with Mum, Shelley and the good friends that I have made in Beijing. Mum sweetly organized a cake and we all drank champagne to celebrate my first 100 days – I only hope that this becomes a sign of the times.