Chugging Wine

I went to KTV last night. Awesome times.

Chinese people (or maybe Asian people if you include short Japanese businessmen) love to sing. They just love it.

Without getting into all of the absurdity funny and interesting parts of Chinese KTV, I wanted to briefly talk about what we drank.

As some of you know by now, the wine industry in China has grown at a 30% rate for the past 2 years. That's incredible. The normal observer would guess that the reason behind this growth has been from the new middle class, eager to get their hands (and lips) on clique western lifestyle-esque things.

The argument usually goes something like this:

As more and more people in China are making more money, this new middle class craves more luxuries. One needs to look no further than the auto industry or Louis handbags (real ones) to see that this is most definitely true. If the wine industry is talked about with this framework, it would be: Chinese middle class consumers, who are trying to become more and more western are driving this expanding market. This growth, of the wine industry shows that they are drinking wine to adopt a higher-class lifestyle.

Last night at KTV, I finally realized that wine is very different from this classic model.

We had a total of 5 bottles of wine between the 8 of us. At 180 yuan a piece (buy 4, get 1 free), we enjoyed our Cabernet…with ice, sprite and orange slices.

Yea. If you have never seen this, it is most definitely a sight to see. Just as Chinese people love mixing good whiskey with green tea, they enjoy mixing ice, sprite and red wine.

This was actually the first time I’ve seen it myself, and I realized a few things:

• After my initial hesitation, the combo was actually pretty good. It tasted sweet and yummy. Imagine the Chinese version of Sangria
• Wine wasn't drunk to be savored. It was drunk to be chugged. At no point in the night did anyone buy me try to savor and taste of the red wine itself. Everyone else just played dice with it.
• As my friend Jason has said: Chinese people love the sweet drinks. Adding sprite, ice and orange slices to a bitter wine definitely achieves that objective. Now let’s see how successful coffee-flavored coke becomes.
• Chinese people love transforming foreign things and make it their own. Look at McDonald’s, TVs at restaurants and traffic laws.

The Chinese “enjoyment” of wine is currently non-existent. There is only a very small population of people in China that know anything about wine and how to drink it. The movie Sideways was definitely not a hit here.

Everyone else has moved wine from the high-cultured place it holds in US culture to a basic mix beside beers and whiskey-green tea. Now, instead of people drinking beer or whiskey at the local bar/club/ktv, some of them are ordering wine. This is where the massive growth of wine comes from (combined with the fact that it wasn’t really in China before).

China: creation by destruction.

American Hospitality

I just got back from a week-long business trip in the United States. It was a fun, eventful, yet tiring 6 days traveling from Hong Kong to New York City to Boston and all the way back again.

After arriving on the Amtrak Acela train at the Rt. 128 station just south west of Boston, something interesting happened. I lugged my luggage with me into the elevator and pressed the wrong level of the parking structure to get off (for the taxis). After the elevator door opened at floor 2 (the wrong floor), I leaned my head out to look for taxis. Realizing my mistake, i quickly came back in to wait for the next stop. When I came in, I was greeted by 4 complete strangers asking me if they could help me find my way. These people, who were getting back home from a long day, made the effort to aid me in my search for the taxis. They exerted diligent efforts to help me figure out where I wanted to go, asked if they could help carry my luggage for me, and even asked if I needed to use their cell phone. In a 2 minute conversation, I felt that they cared.

In my perspective, however, instead of sincerely thanking these people for their efforts, I gave them a cold shoulder. Even though I acknowledged their aid, I didn't move to be engaging or even that considerate. Instead, I had this unrelenting annoyance towards these people for not minding their own business. Why were they bothering me with help? Thanks but no thanks. I don't need your help.

In retrospect, I know exactly where this annoyance came from. Although people in the US are independent, they are often nice and helpful to strangers. Although there are a few bad apples, most people are very accommodating. This is entirely different compared to my experience in Shenzhen.

When I first moved to the Dongmen area of Shenzhen, the vibrant pedestrian only shopping district, I tried to ask people a lot about where I wanted to go. I would walk up to a group of 3 girls. They were about my age and were having a fun conversation with a lot of fun and laughing. When I walked up to them, saying “excuse me, can you help point me towards [insert location],” they looked at me in a strange contempt. Most people would not answer and would quickly walk away. Others would roll their eyes and speak in a quick and detached way to get rid of me. Sometimes there seemed disgusted and showed it with cold, hateful stares.

Maybe it was me, but I was usually dressed well and didn't look like a creepy guy from the country side who could’ve been a thief. Maybe it was my Chinese, but my mandarin (putonghua) is very standard without any dialect. Although I have had good experiences of people being helpful in Shenzhen, a majority of people have developed a similar sensibility as I displayed in the elevator. Just leave me alone and I’ll do it. I don't need or want to depend on any of you.

I am kind of annoyed with my attitude and hope to change it. I also hope this change sticks and it will ultimately bring a little bit of “American Hospitality” over to China.

However, after talking to a fellow expat in Shenzhen last night, I realized I not only needed to focus on cross-cultural differences (ie cultural shock), but also cultural assimilation/adaptation. Each and everyone of us are becoming a little more Chinese everyday we are here.

International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day.

This means women all over China are currently home playing mahjong, shopping or hopefully doing various other activities they enjoy. Work wise, women usually get either a half day or a whole day off (for us, it’s half day). At SOE jobs, they are usually given different gifts and prizes for just being them. Women. At home, they are pampered by the men in their lives. No cooking, cleaning, changing diapers. How great! Think the world’s version of the US’s Mother’s Day, but with more benefits.

From a work standpoint, 世界妇女节 means that I have nothing to do after lunch. Of the 2000+ employees and 300+ staff in my company, more than 90% of them are women. Before they got their half day break, I asked the women who work under me what I was going to do without them.

“我需要你们. 没有女人这么办?” I asked. (What are we going to do without women? We need you).

Everyone laughed. No response.

It’s true though in many different areas.

• In modern society, men really need women to function. Whether you look at the stats that say men live longer when they are married or issues of sexual fulfillment or procreation or even knowing where I left my keys last night, women are very important.
• In a practical matter, how am I supposed to do my job without women? With 90% of the workforce in our factory gone for the afternoon, what do the other 10% hope to accomplish? I can’t even fill out an expense sheet without my secretary!
• Talk about Chinese work efficiency!
• Why am I even at work pretending to work!? If I can’t do anything without them, why am I sitting at work right now writing this blog?

I suggest that for the next International Women’s Day, both men and women should take the day off while celebrating women. That way, instead of pretending to work in the office where women are even more vital then men… we, as men, could make it our sole duty to pamper them for the entire day. That would be a thought.

Wait, on second thought, this almost seems too good to be true. This is like a guy’s night out (golf outing, what have you) in the afternoon. I bet there are at least a million men in Shenzhen alone, sitting around the work place playing cards right now.

三八妇女节快乐 Mom!

Exotic. Erotic.

I’m lucky.

This is my 3rd week-long business trip in the 5 months working at company. Not only do I get to travel from China to the US, I also get to see my family, some friends, hang out and also, eat some good chicken parm. Professionally, the best part of the gig is actually going to these meetings. For the week, I am essentially in a board room with the owner, president, VP of Sales and Marketing, and other Directors. With the total of 9 people in the room (me being one of them), the 8 others have a combined 168 years of experience in the toy industry. That’s no joke.

In the span of 2 week-long strategy sessions went over different things from the goals of the company to the new products that will be going through R&D, from M&A possibilities for the companies to sales and marketing goals and objectives for the following year. How cool is it to be in that room, especially with my young age. Awesome.

In the week of meetings interesting things happen. There are cool perks of the job, nice business dinners, disagreements between colleagues, cool ideas for the future and times when I just wanted to shoot myself in the head. All in all, it was a exciting, tiring and useful experience.

One of the most interesting parts of it relates to the theme of my previous post, an American’s view of China.

All of my colleagues in the US office have a lot of interaction with China. Hong Kong is a hotbed for International toy companies. It is one of its biggest industries. My colleagues have all traveled back and forth, to and from HK and China. However, even though their travels give them glimpses into the Chinese way of life, it is very hard for them to see things outside of labor and the factory.

I was often asked how I enjoyed living in China. (Again, I was born in China and have lived in the US since I was 6, only visiting China occasionally during the summers.) When I tried to explain how it felt almost the same (subject of a previous as well as future post) as living in NYC, my colleagues were very surprised.

For all they knew, China was just the few experiences that they had themselves; stories that are told over and over:

• Going for cheap messages given by young girls from the countryside
• Buying bootleg DVDs/ fake Polo’s/ fake (insert brand name)
• Enjoying their commutes where no cars are following traffic lawsSeeing many poor and disabled begging on the street
• General mayhem

My mom would call it the west’s erotic, exotic and narrow vision of China (sorry if I got that wrong, Mom). I would argue that it is just being overwhelmed in a strange place.

All of my colleagues are good, smart and interesting people. As much as they have experienced China, in reality, they are only scratching the surface. I recently read a story about the members of congress who wanted to pass a huge tariff on Chinese goods going into the US. After they finally visited China, they were overwhelmed. It was sensory overload. They had no idea what was going on in China, whether it is the growing middle class or the unrest in the countryside, whether it is the mixing of Confucian culture and capitalism or the modernization of thinking. They only saw the surface (stuff that is shown on CNN and ABC News). Now after seeing a little bit more, they returned home and quickly tabled their bill.

With all of their resources, if people in the US government are that clueless on China, it is easy to imagine how my colleagues (who go to China for a week to work at a factory) could get their views.

China is exciting, mesmerizing, and a splendid place. It can also be frustrating, hurtful and haunting. That’s what makes China, China. That is why I am here… to experience it first hand.

It makes me understand why I’m writing this blog…to not only help my colleagues with their titanium driver purchases, but to hopefully help make China just a little bit easier to understand.

Colbert Report

Before leaving the US, I got a chance to watch the comedy central duo, the daily show and the Colbert report. I was fortunate enough to catch an interesting rerun of the Chinese New Year edition of the Colbert Report. Danwei posted one of the segments previously, here, but the episode was so funny, interesting and accurate on different American feelings of China, that I just had to post the entire thing. The main theme of the episode was defining China as a "frenemy," someone who is both a friend and an enemy.

First Segment: The Pulse


2nd segment: The Word


3rd segment: Interview



I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I do. Good times.