Business

All this stuff and nonsense I have been writing over the last 2 weeks has been just that - stuff and nonsense, personal impressions and reflections on being here. However, I am acutely aware that this might give the impression to my legions of readers that this is some kind of extended jolly - a Ferienlager - as my friends in Switzerland and Germany might say...

It is time to redress the balance and risk a deadly fall from atop my high-horse by making pronouncements and sharing insights on "Doing Business in China". Academics and consultants have spent years researching and writing learned papers and books on this subject. Therefore after a whole 2-and-a-half-weeks of being here, I think the time is right to put them all straight on a few things and offer some fresh thinking on the subject.

Short-Term Thinking
In a country that has had more 5 year plans than there are tall buildings here (quite a lot), it seems ironic that every project seems to be viewed from a short-term perspective. It seems as though projects stop / start and sometimes linger like a bad smell without ever getting finalised. This is apparent in many ways - from random building works and street planning regulations, to the fact that the carpet in the corridor on the 11th floor in my hotel was up for 4 days whilst the blokes who were supposed to be fixing it apparently got distracted by something more important.

Guanxi
More than anywhere else I have been to, your network of connections or guanxi is incredibly important. It's not what you know, but who you know. Certain jobs (in media for example) are not worth applying for unless you know someone on the inside, or you went to the right University and you know someone on the inside. It seems to be difficult to get appointments and meetings by just picking up the phone and asking. It seems that you have to know someone who knows someone who can pick up the phone and do that for you. OK, that's the same everywhere to a greater or lesser degree but it feels very important here.

Respect for rank and authority
Again, the same but different. Or the same but deferent (do you see what I did there?). Make sure you greet and give your business card to the senior woman or man in the room first. Incidentally, as I understand it (not very well, in other words), the Chinese language does not differentiate between men and women in many contexts - many words for jobs have no male/female versions.

Do it, don't just talk about it.
During my time here, I have met people who have set up companies, are pioneers in new industries, have set up JVs with major European organisations, who are investing in start-ups and who have invented clever new business models. All before breakfast. Nothing seems to be impossible here. Nothing seems to be too ambitious. And these people that I have met don't just talk about it, they do it. I think it might be because there is no word that means "No" here.

The most important thing I have learned is that I know nothing. It is humbling and very good for me to be out of my comfort zone. I don't know the rules, I can't speak the language and I get things wrong. I am thinking on my feet and learning by doing something that I haven't done before.

Max

Maxi started walking today! Apparently he took 4 steps, stood there looking very pleased with himself clapping his hands (he's very advanced, you know) and then fell flat on his arse. Good boy Max. I can't wait to see you walking to me at the airport you clever boy. Love from Daddy xxx

Cultured

I spent a fascinating afternoon at the Shanghai museum. The museum is ultra-modern and thanks to it's excellent air conditioning system, was probably the best place to be in Shanghai today. The museum features really comprehensive displays of bronze articles (knives, daggers, wine vessels and cooking utensils), jade, art and calligraphy, clothing from the many different ethnic groups in China and coins and money.

It is the absolute height of conceit to think you have even scratched the surface of China in 2 weeks but perhaps you can say that the museum helps you put some things about modern China in context. That does not mean to say that everyone sits around all day scratching their heads, looking at mountains, writing down poems with deep hidden subtext with a brush made out of a badger's arse whilst wearing jade beads. Confusingly, modern Shanghai couldn't be more different from the tranquility and cool calm of the museum. Maybe what you can say is that it helps you to understand something about why it's important to keep traditions alive and questions about national identity which are both issues facing China.

Afterwards Frank and I spent some time wandering round thoroughly modern Shanghai - Xin Le Lu is where some of the most achingly hip fashion boutiques and cafes-that-don't-have-signs to-tell-you-they-are-cafes are located. Cue a few cliches about the contrast between ancient and modern China.

Guess what, tonight's dinner was excellent! However I may have been a little rash with my hard-man comments about stinky tofu. It turns out that the deep fried stinky tofu I sampled on Friday night is at the very moderately stinky end of the scale. Tonight's dish was a much more hardcore version. It made my eyes water. If I was being kind, I would say that it's taste was similar to how I imagine the most rotten of eggs would taste. If you are lucky enough to visit China and priveleged to be offered "chou doufu" my advice is to explain that you are severely allergic to it and might die if you get within 3 metres of a bowl of it. Actually, no it was delicious - go on have a try.

I also tried drunken shrimps. The little fellas are still wriggling when they arrive at the table. Then, as the potent booze in which they are swimming takes effect, they start slurring their words and telling you that they are your best mate, before passing out. You then bite off their heads and suck their insides out of the shell. Honestly, they don't feel a thing.

fatman

By the way, because of all this excellent food, I am actually LOSING weight. I have lost about 3 kilos, I reckon. I have eaten nothing but Chinese food for 2 weeks. Alright, I had Haagen-Dazs twice, but apart from that...

By going easy on the rice and noodles, I have effectively been doing a super tasty Atkins diet for 2 weeks. But with lots of beer.

Many of my acquaintances are familiar with/bored of hearing about my Elizabeth Tayloresque rollercoaster ride of weight loss and weight gain. Chinese Atkins is the way to go - remember, you heard about it here first.

It's just a passing shower

It's pissing it down and I am in my hotel room at 9.30pm on a Saturday night being a dullard. This is on account of the fact that I did a full-on Friday night with Tony and Frank from the office.

It all began with wait for it, an excellent meal at the Rui Fu Yuan restaurant on South Maoming Road. Shanghainese cuisine this time - said to be sweet and oily but to my uneducated and unsubtle palate just another example of great cooking of the freshest ingredients imaginable. Amongst many other dishes, I tried a local delicacy - the charmingly named stinky tofu. Apparently it's made by marinating tofu for ages in cabbage water. I know, you're salivating at the thought of it. Let me tell you that deep fried and with a dollop of chili sauce on top, it tastes like a kind of vegetabley smoked cheese. An acquired taste but delicious.

From there straight to Muse, the club where people go to see and be seen apparently. Great music, but as I mentioned before, no one really goes to dance. I got sucked into playing dice with Tony's entourage. It's basically spoof with dice and the penalty for losing a hand is taking a drink. Somewhere around the middle of the second communal bottle of Absolut, I realised that I wasn't very good at this game in comparison with anyone else round the table. As anyone who's ever looked at my bank statement will tell you, I'm not very good with numbers. Fortunately I am quite good at drinking.

We played out til very late so consequently a late start to Saturday. Isabella from the office took me to the snappily named Shanghai Shiliu Pu Hongqixiang Cloth Market on Dongmen Lu. Endless choices of fabric of every description and dozens of tailors who tend to specialise in shirts, or suits, or Chinese clothes. I picked one that had some really very sharp looking suits hanging on the mannequins and some natty looking shirts as well. This place is heaven for a fat fop like myself. You can specify every little detail you like, any style you want and nothing seems impossible although my chosen tailor did mutter the putonghua equivalent of "I'm a tailor, not a magician" when I told him I wanted a suit that will make me look thin.

I chose a very dark blue cashmere/wool superlightweight cloth for the suit. The suit, with a second pair of trousers, plus five pure cotton shirts will cost me 1200 RMB (expertly bargained down from 1500 through Isabella's fierce sounding negotiations). That's £80 in total. Who is being exploited? The people making these clothes for me for next to nothing (from my perspective) or me when I go into a shop in the UK and pay £50 for a shirt? Or is the person making the shirts the same person and he or she is being exploited in both cases? I don't know.

Assuming that the suit and the shirts - which will be ready in one week - look even vaguely like the ones on display, I shall look like I've borrowed one of Sean Connery's numbers from the early 60's. If it turns out that I've been duped by immaculately dressed dummies (the mannequins that is, not the tailors who all dressed like shit actually, come to think of it...) I will look like I've borrowed one from his less well-know brother, Vince Connery who had a hunchback and one leg shorter than the other.

Reader(s)!?

Frustratingly for me, I can see that I have 2 comments in response to my post regarding the weekend, but I can't see what they are because my blog (and probably all the other blogs hosted by blogger) is blocked. I wasn't kidding about that in my earlier post.

Probably it was someone saying "Stop this drivel fatman, you're not funny, and you bang-on about food all the time" or possibly it was my boss Simon saying "Either do some work out there fatman, or come back to the office in the UK and make yourself useful with the kettle".

Frustratingly for you, my loyal reader(s), whoever you are, I can still post this nonsense!

I have tried desperately hard to avoid writing hilarious comments about how those crazy foreigners sometimes spell English words wrongly. That's what Private Eye is for.

I have also tried to avoid those "We don't do that where I come from" type comments. Indulge me, just this once;

This evening, I decided to go to the gym. Partly because I need to save money and mostly because I brought my running shoes several thousand miles so I feel obliged to use them once. The gym is small and I was by myself. After I had been on the lone treadmill about 5 minutes, two blokes came into the gym, sat down on chairs and got the cigarettes out, lit one each, and proceeded to have a really animated chat. I don't know about what, but it looked important.

I thought about complaining but hey, we don't do that where I come from. After they had finished their discussion and resolved whatever life or death issue they had been debating, they got up and left. As I left the gym (i'd be lying if I said it was more than 22 minutes later), I recognised the bloke on the gym reception desk and he gave me a cheery wave as he lit up another smoke. Brilliant.

Max's Birthday

My little boy, Max, is one year old today. Happy Birthday baby boy. I wish I was with you. I miss you very much.

Feeling like a bad dad, I agreed to the purchase of a massive (and hugely expensive) climbing frame / double-swing / slide thing for the garden, for his birthday present. It will fill the lawn entirely. I am praying that my father decided not to help put it together - my nascent career as a potter was cruelly and prematurely ended when the shelves he erected in my bedroom collapsed in 1982, destroying my collection of avante-garde sculptures. My Swan with One-and-a-half Wings made the judges weep at the Witton Park handicraft competition of the Summer of 1981.

I return to Shanghai tomorow night with Tony so for our last night in Beijing, we immersed ourselves in Chinese entertainment culture by going to Karaoke with a group from the office and of course some of Tony's network. Amongst other things, I (badly) sang Happy Birthday to Max. This also caused much weeping. Not by me, but by the people who had to listen to it. Karaoke in China (and also in Japan) is a much more civilised affair than a UK pub full of drunkards singing I will Survive. You have your own private, air-conditioned, waitress-serviced room and everyone tries hard to sing properly.

Max, I hope you have a lovely birthday. I will make it up to you next time, I promise. Love from Daddy.

Father's Day

It's Father's Day in the UK today. I miss Abigail and Max and Lilli very much. Max and Lilli put a card for Daddy in my suitcase. Being soft, I am blubbing a little bit now. I love you all so much xxx I will see you all soon xxx

Even bigger weekend

Beijing is as (or perhaps even more) barking mad than Shanghai. The traffic is even more awe-inspiringly insane - it took 1 hour 20 to get to the office on Friday morning - and the disrespect for traffic regulations and other drivers is something to behold.

Interestingly, this desperate need to get to where you are going before anyone else does, is not confined to land-based transport - a group of 10 or so of us (people from the office and drawn from Tony's enormous global circle of friends) went drinking beer on a boat on the lake last night. The 12 boat pile-up at the bridge was incredible. The boat trip was wonderful - beautiful warm breeze on the lake, 18 bottles of Tsing Tao and a classical Chinese musician performing songs on a kind of guitar / mandolin thing (that's the official name for it). All for less than £35. To my mind this beat the experience of a noisy Houhai bar full of braying expats hands down.

Take a step back to Friday night. Everything starts with food. Yet another excellent meal - this time Taiwanese style. The restaurant was trying to be very hip which I couldn't care less about, but the food was uniformly great. If I tried to describe the variety, or to really describe the differences between all the various different types of Chinese food that I have sampled, I couldn't do them justice. It's enough to say that there is a fantastic variety of different styles available and if you are lucky enough to have an expert showing you around, you can experience them all in Beijing.

Afterwards the group moved on to a club called Suzie Wong's. I mentioned Tony's circle of friends and this includes the 6ft 8 inch ex-Basketball star Ma Jian who paved the way for sportsmen and women to leave China and go to the US. He's a hugely impressive, interesting educated and entertaining man to talk to. He also makes it very easy to get a great table at a packed club... The top floor is a roof terrace with chilled music and big sofas which is where we spent the evening demolishing bottles of Absolut.

Another club - Vic's - to finish the night very late. The main rooms at both clubs were rammed and unbelievably noisy. But because they both had (at least) two rooms as far as I can remember, you could always get away from the aforementioned ex-pats and avoid the cheesy music they favour. The reason they are so rammed, is that most of the floor space is given over to tables where affluent Chinese spend the evening partying - buying bottles of whisky, playing dice and spending lots of money. This is why you don't pay to get in but also why the dancefloor is the size of a postage stamp.

A late start to Saturday. We hire a taxi driver for 500RMB (£30) for the day to take us to and from the Great Wall at Mutianyu. This takes about 2 hours (maybe a little less) from central Beijing. Effectively, you travel 2 hours and you are still in Beijing - or at least an outlying district of it called Huarou. Visiting the wall at Mutianyu means that you can stop for (yes, you guessed it) yet another excellent lunch on the way. The roadside restaurant is not glamorous but the freshly caught fish - you can catch them yourself if you like, from the big tank next to the tables - is fabulous. There is sashimi of something fish, barbecued other something fish with chilli and cumin, other fish in brown sauce, beef with green beans and a lamb hot pot style dish with flat breads sort of like parathas. Excellent.

The Wall is indeed Great. Fatmaninshanghai + 32 degree heat = go up in the chairlift although you can walk up if you like. I don't know who it was that classified and decided what qualifies your acceptance into the Seven Wonder's of the World Club, but they got it bang-on with the Great Wall. Maurice is much more intelligent than I am and brought his camera with him to China. Pictures would be good here, wouldn't they? They say that "A picture speaks a thousand words" and I am guessing that the last thing my devoted army of one reader (myself) needs is another thousand words of my drivel right now. Go and buy a Great Wall picture book. Or probably Alan Whicker has been here - rent the DVD. Or get on a plane and come and visit it yourself. It is as impressive as you have been led to believe. It takes your breath away. How did they build it? Did it keep the Mongolians out? Yes, for a while I guess it did.

Humans have a strange urge to leave their mark on the world long after they have left it. Building a Great Wall is one way of doing that. Scrawling your name on the Great Wall is another. I am ashamed to say that Frank Morgan (hopefully no relation) had chosen this option along with thousands of others. Frank, you are an asshole.

Business Travel

I visited and worked from our Beijing office yesterday; holding and setting up meetings for the project. After many years of working together over the phone and via e mail I was finally able to meet my colleague Summer, who has been such an enormous help to us in the UK office, managing and running our UK campaigns in China and negotiating the minefield of Chinese media. Travelling an enormous distance by plane for any reason is of course an environmental nightmare - don't do it kids. But there is still no substitute for the goodwill of meeting face to face and saying thank you.

Speaking of environmental nightmares, flying in over Beijing gives you the opportunity to see the odd river or lake that looks a litle unhealthy, and even the censored press here covers pollution stories and exposes officials who have been punished for turning a blind eye to companies taking a corporate dump in the water. The hotels have those little cards that say "think about our laundry bills" .... no wait a minute, that's not right, what I meant to say is "think about the environment". But there are other things which make you worry. For example, when it rained in Shanghai, every store and every restaurant made a big show of giving you a plastic bag to put your slightly damp umbrella in. In both Shanghai and Beijing, the hotels provide you with disposable plastic toothbrushes. There are a lot of people in Shanghai (again, see how this blog creatively combines information and first-class entertainment) and most of them seemed to be in the shops that I was in with neatly wrapped umbrellas. And they all seemed to have clean teeth. Be afraid.

Beijing

The authorities in Shanghai have taken exception to my poor quality jokes and my blog has been blocked for the last two days. Or maybe it was just the rubbish internet connection in the hotel there? I prefer to think that someone, somehwere, is reading this nonsense, even if they then decide it needs to be censored for crimes against state-approved humour (or because they were fed up of me writing about food).

Me and Tony flew to Beijing this morning and escaped two days of rainy, drizzly, humid weather in Shanghai. Tony's theory is that I brought it with me from Manchester. We are here until Tuesday for meetings connected with the project - the added bonus being a weekend in Beijing and an opportunity therefore to go to see the Great Wall.

If I had even a third of a brain I would have remembered my camera. If I had half a brain, I would be able to figure out how to upload the photos I have taken so far using my BlackBerry.

By the way, Beijing is big. Very, very, very big. Even bigger than Shanghai. See, I promised you more fascinating insights into China. Never let it be said that I don't deliver!

Work

Work. Yes Work. The project I will be working on will be challenging and interesting. I will have to rely heavily on Tony and others - not least because my Mandarin, although improving in leaps and bounds, is still never going to fool anyone into thinking I'm a local. Also because there are business cultural hurdles to overcome and the fact that everything, but everything is regulated by the Government. In other words your entrepreneurial, go-getting businessman can have the rug pulled from underneath his top-flight money making initiative at any time by the Government departmental official who is invariably looking over his shoulder.

Actually, progress with learning Mandarin words is painfully slow - 2 steps forward, then 3 back. It's so difficult to remember and there are so many different subtle variations to get to grips with. The word "ma" has 5 different meanings, depending on how you pronounce it. The fact that two of those meanings include "mother" and "horse" could have terrible consequences - in a business or social context.

I gave my hosts a break tonight - a break from me, my sloppy chopstick technique, my terrible jokes and my record breaking displays of dumpling eating. This meant that I was free to roam around Shanghai on my own tonight. I went window shopping around the very posh Plaza 66 area. Shanghai has really got to grips with consumerism.

Wandering around on my own revealed to me just how bloody dangerous the traffic is for an idiot / novice like me - DON'T WALK ROUND READING YOUR BLACKBERRY OR YOUR TEXT MESSAGES is my advice. In an earlier post, I flippantly mentioned the redundancy of the flashing green man on the traffic lights due to a ferocious Shanghainese interpretation of the US style "turn right on red" rule. Henceforth, he shall be know as "The Little Green Man of Near Death"...

Another thing about walking round on your own- imagine this; a handful of lovely young ladies actually asked me if I wanted a massage! I was shocked and astounded! How could they have know that my feet were in need of a darn good rub?

Food, glorious food

By writing about yet more glorious food, I am at severe risk of having damage done to me when I get back home to the UK. My darling Abigail is at home looking after our two delightful yet often.... shall we say "energetic" children.



Meanwhile I am here filling my face on yet more sensational food. Today's delights included lunch in a homestyle Cantonese place close to the office. Fish in "brown sauce" (no idea what's in the sauce but trust me it wasn't HP) - again the fish was merrily flapping around until minutes before it hit my digestive system. Lions' Heads (that's minced pork meat balls to you and me) in a rich soy sauce with crunchy fresh pak choi.



Dinner - a feast at the Guyi Hunan restaurant. Hunan is my new favourite cuisine. Spicy amazing new flavours and textures - frogs legs with coriander and hot red chilis, spare ribs with tons of cumin and garlic, thick chilli noodles and an enormous fish head which had more meat on it than you would ever guess and fresh green chilli all over the place. Did I mention that they use chilis in Hunan cooking? No I didn't eat all this by myself. Tony, Michael and Jessica from the office were lookng after me tonight. They are the perfect hosts and great fun to be with. I am sure I will enjoy working here in Shanghai with them.

When I speak to my beautiful, understanding, caring, compassionate and generally delightful wife tonight, I will justify this gourmet living in the name of market research for when she comes to Shanghai with me in August.

Work tomorrow. Bed now.

First big weekend

I had noble intentions to illustrate various culturally significant insights and the differences between oriental and western culture in this blog, with witty stories.

However, I think that instead I will write about food - the most wonderful, glorious, delicious Shanghai food.

Last night I dined with Isabella (my fellow PubliMaster student) who took me to a Cantonese restaurant. She decided that this would be the best way to break-in my feeble western palate and accustom it to Shanghai dining. Little did she know that having eaten more than my own body weight in chili sauce from The Godfather kebab house in Blackburn, I can take on just about anything that comes out of any kitchen, anywhere in the world. Tofu with crab meat, roast pigeon, pak choi in a delicately flavoured sauce and a fish that was brought flapping around in a plastic bag for us to inspect before we decided to have it cooked for us. Delicious.

Tony Qi, who I will be working closely with during my time here, has very kindly taken me out and shown me various excellent bits of Shanghai today. Various bits of Shanghai where you can eat like a king, that is.

Lunch - exquisite and justifiably very famous steamed crab meat and pork dumplings, sticky rice parcels, prawn and crab balls. All served in the historic Nanxiang steamed dumpling restaurant in old Shanghai. Prepare to queue for an hour if you go at lunchtime on Saturday. Well worth the wait. The prices get higher and the queue gets shorter the higher up the restaurant you go (3 floors). So much for communism, eh?

Dinner - jelly fish (a new one for me), Taiwanese 3 cup chicken (marinated in 3 cups of stuff - no idea of what, but delicious), roast pork in sticky lovely sauce, and more delicious dumplings. All washed down with lashings of Tsing Tao beer. The restaurant was called the Seagull restaurant - part of the Seagull Hotel. Outdoor tables overlooking The Bund on the bend in the Huangpu river which divides the city East and West. Amazing views as the sun goes down and all the lights on the many skyscrapers come on one-by-one.

Tony is a connoisseur of good food. He also knows his bars and clubs and Shanghai is well stocked with both. Wine is eye-wateringly expensive in the cool bars. But in the club we went to (called Muse) there was no entrance fee and 2 Heinekens, an Evian and a cheeky large Absolut whilst I was ordering came in at a little over a tenner. Not bad. Strange place in a way - the music was pretty good downstairs but rubbish R&B upstairs. There were 2 Ferraris and a Lamborghini parked outside but some ex-pat idiots glassed one another outside the club whilst we were there. An unusual mix...

How many people does it take to...

It's very easy to fall into the trap of using cliches and stereotypes. I would be as sick as a parrot if anyone ever accused me of doing so.

Breakfast in the hotel- a fascinating topic, no? There were maybe 20 people eating breakfast in the hotel. There were at least 12 staff that I counted hanging around including a dedicated egg-frying-man and his egg-frying-supervisor, 3 people on reception desk, plus a further 2 sat behind another kind of reception desk thing inside the restaurant doing precisely nothing at all. There was also a bloke wearing a uniform who's job it appeared to be, to smoke menacingly.

In a country of 1.3 billion people, I guess there is no shortage of labour.

To be fair, the fried egg was good.

Quite large, actually.

Shanghai is big. Very big. In fact it's very very very big. So is China. Apparently there are 1.3 billion people here. It's these deep insights and understanding that will keep you coming back to this blog time after time, and make it one of the all-time best blogs of all time.

The journey here was long and uneventful. I had a row to myself from Manchester to Dubai which was nice but Dubai to Shanghai - when I actually wanted to go to sleep - was like a cattle truck.

A lengthy cab ride into the city (maybe 45 minutes) helped me to understand:

1) the size of the place (see above)
2) the rules of the road (none apparently but it's still nowhere near as frightening as the journey from Delhi/Mumbai airport)
3) where all the worlds scarce concrete resources have ended up
4) why it's so difficult to get your hands on a really big crane these days
5) did I mention that Shanghai seems to be quite big?
6) the little green man on the traffic lights doesn't get any respect round these parts.

I paid a quick visit to my hosts at Publicitas Shanghai who were very hospitable indeed and showed me round MY VERY OWN OFFICE(!!!). When I get back to the UK, I shall be having a few words...

How many hours?

19 hours on a plane (count 'em). Fortunately I'm flying with Emirates via Dubai. Unfortunately I'm not flying in the pointy bit of the plane at the front. I have dressed to look like a first class passenger who accidentally booked an economy ticket - David Dickinson tan, gold bracelet, pink shirt, Gucci loafers etc. - to try and get an upgrade. This never happens to me. No doubt fatmaninshanghai will end up sat next to fat-man-on-his-way-to-Dubai...