Broke In China
The trendy restaurant at the Grand Hyatt Beijing is called Made In China and looks just like what I imagined China to be like. It is one huge and shining lacquered box of red and black, every wall a backdrop from a Hong Kong filmset. A glass window separates us from the brightly lit kitchen, where smiling faces of chefs and sous-chefs emerge from clouds of steam, as they roll their dumplings and dissect crispy ducks with happy abandon.
My first night in China is a gourmet feast that costs no more than lunch at a Geneva pizzeria. I am wearing a silk QiPao dress from Shanghai Tang and relishing every sound and detail as if I myself have finally stepped into a Wong Kar Wai movie. The lovely waitresses are smiling at me…. laughing at me, in fact, for I am clearly clueless. No stylish Chinese girl would wear a traditional dress, unless she is peddling souvenirs on Silk street.
The next morning I am part of a monstrous honking traffic jam, squeezed for almost an hour in a yellow cab, wondering what happened to my “Crouching Tiger” China. The New Year’s decorations are still red and gold, but they disappear quickly behind the real Beijing – all glass and steel and imposing concrete, rising proudly and ready for business. Traffic jams start early in the morning, and if you don’t plan all of your meetings in the same area, you will end up cancelling half of them. Traffic jams are part of what this city is about – everyone rushing to do business, focused and profit-driven, with a sly smile that never fades away even as the drivers swear at passing cars.
Another day in Beijing and I feel hopelessly broke. Broke despite the cheap five-star meals and 10 dollar jade presents I pick up on the market. Broke despite the luxury that surrounds my every step, the tropical pool at my hotel, and the talk of 80 million mobile subscribers. Broke because a client the other day showed me 64 TV channels she produces and broadcasts from a building which in Europe would not even host one. Broke because as I write these words, a young Chinese man at the next table is yelling at someone over his phone: “ I can sell him this plane for 3 million, 5 or 10 – which one would you like me to do? You are my friend, but you need to be clear.” Broke as my head spins from the roaring potential of this place, making our business back home seem like a child’s play . Broke because I realize that the China I dream of is still here, built over the millennia by the same industrious and driven spirit that today is turning it into the world’s first economic power. Yet to get inside this China I will need a currency which has nothing to do with Swiss Franks in my bank account.
Talk to foreign businessmen trying to make money here, and more often than not you will hear frustration in their voice. They come to China hoping to turn a quick profit, but leave empty-handed or resign to the fact that just being present here with their business is good enough. They get bitter, and would probably not turn to Confucius for advice. The old sage had one thing to say about business: “The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.” It’s easy to wince at this as some new age twaddle, but perhaps the key is in understanding what right means. Without such understanding we are, indeed, very poor in China, for we cannot build the key capital of business here – friendship. This is the first of many lessons I hope to learn here… and maybe one day I will truly understand the other Confucius maxim: “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
