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• Interesting talk on Vested Outsourcing – not sure if I care for the new buzz word, but worth a listen
• Fox Premiers Its First Chinese Film

Day 31 – I awoke early and found that our apartment complex had been decorated with live flowers and orange trees for the Lunar New Year.

Flowers for the New Year

We had a productive morning at the Assembly Center, working on streamlining and improving our process documentation.  I have a manufacturing background and enjoy working on such kaizen initiatives.  Where I wear out is the day-to-day scheduling and personnel management.  I can do it, but it quickly becomes tedious, especially HR (which is admittedly less of a problem than in the USA).  For the next year we will have so many opportunities to make improvements, I don’t see myself getting bored anytime soon.  It also helps we have so many new assembly-inspection-packaging projects rolling in, each of which needs process engineering to get it started.  2009 was actually a strong growth year for PassageMaker, with 19 new assembly projects launched.  Selecting tools, writing work instructions, designing jigs and fixtures, laying out the line and setting the Drum-Buffer-Rope targets is the fun stuff.  I really have an awesome job.

The managers and I head to the cafeteria for lunch, which is notable for a couple reasons.  First, they order Coca-Cola.  Now in the USA I might go six months without drinking a soda.  I don’t particularly care for them and I have alternatives I prefer in the States, such as iced tea (unsweetened with lemon, if you please).  Not so in China, where I know that sodas are safe to drink, and no one has iced tea without a pound of sugar in it (and then usually only in rare SE Asian restaurants).  So I drink sodas pretty regularly in China, but I am the one who orders them, not the Chinese.  More important to this anecdote is why my co-workers ordered the Coke.

The cafeteria was out of tea.

Being out of tea in China is like being out of wine in France or out of whiskey in Lynchburg, TN (Pop. 361).  It doesn’t happen.  It’s a sign of the apocalypse or something.  I felt like walking outside to see if the sun was going nova.

They didn’t even have any 开水, kāi shuǐ, boiling hot water, which is also commonly drunk, the concept of sanitary cold (bottled) water being a recent innovation.  This was truly bizarre.  So we drank Coke from tea cups.

How can a Chinese restaurant IN CHINA run out of tea? We drink Coke instead.

Lunch was also memorable for four dishes, one I can’t wait to try in the USA.

Beef with sweet peppers - I don't eat the peppers, but the flavor they impart on the meat is subtle and exceptional.

Spicy pork & wood ears. This was great - keep in mind this is like getting excellent food at your high school cafeteria.

Tomato & Egg soup - actually very good.

Bitter gourd (also called bitter melon, 苦瓜, kǔ guā) omelet - this was absolutely exceptional - one of the best egg dishes I've ever eaten - the gourd tastes a bit like cucumber and matches beautifully with the egg - I can sometimes get 苦瓜 at our local Chinese market and I am going to try this at home. Awesome.

At around 4 PM, things start to wind down and everyone migrates about 10 minutes away to the banquet hall, because tonight is the joint PassageMaker, SafePassage and China Quality Focus annual Chinese New Year party!  These companies have grown rapidly over the last few years, and we had about 160 people in attendance.  I tried to capture the event, but my camera did a relatively poor job.  Apologies in advance.

we had an upstairs room at this banquet hall

downstairs a much larger company was also having their CNY party

their 'stage show' was far more formal than ours

our banquet had 160 people total

each table prepare with drinks and snacks

this is about 1/3rd of the refreshments for the evening

Christina Feng, our Office Manager, did an exceptional job organizing this party. She and Marc Yue, Production Manager of the General Assembly Center, acted as our emcees

Anita Tang-Bellamy, Mike Bellamy and Julien Roger of China Quality Focus. And hand signals.

Anita Tang-Bellamy, Jesse Chang and Aileen Wang - now it's a party! Don't ask me about the hand signals - all Asian women do this.

Candy Cheng & Teresa Chen - our very effective purchasing team. Teresa also serves as Mike's right hand for company-wide operations. Again with the hand signals.

Hebe Wang, Honey Wu & Teresa Chen - I worked with this team (and others) on streamlining the format of our Product Quality Manual. I've got to find out about the hand signals.

Jesse Chang, Accountant and Master Drinker; Pramod KC from Nepal, head of Project Management for those projects that have moved into regular production ("Vendor Coordination-Export & Logistics" in our parlance); and Adam Supernant, Project Manager from Michigan. And more hand signals. WTF.

Most of the management from our General Assembly Center (the precision Medical Assembly Center has a separate team). My lao pengyou, Sabrina Liao is on the far right. I caught them by surprise, so no time for hand signals.

L-R - Dave Learn, head of Project Management for those projects still in development ("Vendor Coordination-Product Development"; once they go to production, they transition to Pramod's team). Our distinguished guests - Mike Lopez of Campus Emporium, Tyson Daniel of LimbGear, Collin Peel of Camrett Logistics, and Brian Garvin, Director of New Project Development, my sales counterpart based in Shenzhen.

Brian's wife, Ada, who also does hand signals. A wonderful lady.

Buji staff enjoying an evening away from the Assembly Center - they typically work 6 days a week, well into the night to prepare for CNY. All of them would be back at work by 9 AM the next day, a Saturday. Whenever I hear Americans bitch about "all the Chinese holidays", I kind of want to tell them to shove it. This is one of the hardest working groups of people I've ever met. In the foreground is Josephine Ji, Manager of the Assembly Center and a very competent woman. Sadly, this is clearest photo of her I got all night.

Hunan cuisine - many of our employees are from Hunan, the province to the north

hand knotted noodles in duck soup - very elegant

Mike and Teresa give the annual state of the company address and announce the new profit sharing program to raucous applause. Most of our employees are farm kids from the provinces. The idea that they were going to be able to earn a piece of the action blew them away. The party really got rolling after that announcement.

Can I get a witness? Mike had the crowd going.

Mike presenting a 红包, hóng bāo, literally "red bag", a small red envelope containing money. Typically these are token sums, perhaps as little as $0.05, meant to foster luck and prosperity in the new year. Ours had real money and each one that was awarded had more than the last. The final hong bao had over US$100. Everyone also got a bonus hong bao for the New Year.

Julien Roger of China Quality Focus was a big hit with his French-accented Mandarin.

One of the top prizes was a LimbGear t-shirt and a very generous hong bao from our guests.

Jesse Chang toasting an honored guest, Tyson Daniel of LimbGear.

All the lao wai's were asked to speak, draw names, hand out hong bao's & drink...

...everyone drinks...

...and drinks...

...and drinks...

...and drinks some more.

all are rapt with attention as the grand prize is announced

Later things got a little crazy, with dancing, card playing, and for some bizarre reason, arm wrestling.  I was reminded of the Festivus Feats of Strength.

Jesse Chang referees the arm wrestling

All in all, it was a wonderful evening.  Our guests were impressed by the camaraderie and team spirit and by shear amount of fun everyone was having.  Having seen the USA go through the politically correct wringer in the last 15 years, during which all forms of corporate sanctioned fun were done away with and replaced by silly and useless “team building” exercises, aka “manufactured fun”, it is nice to be someplace where “corporate bonding” means cutting loose and eating and drinking and dancing and, you know, having fun.  I left the automotive industry because the lawyers and the accountants and the buyers had drained every ounce of enjoyment and excitement out of it until it became a soul-draining slog.  Life is to be lived and thank God the Chinese understand that.

I recently re-connected with an old friend from B-school living in Switzerland and he is much better networked with our class than I am.  He tells me nearly all of our classmates have taken dull domestic jobs.  What was the point of getting a degree in international business, he quite rightly asked?  I know I did it to get out and see the world, to live a life less ordinary.

Some reading this will think our company frivolous.  If you get that impression, I’m sorry you missed the point.  PassageMaker, China Quality Focus and SafePassage all provide professional, affordable and reliable services in a timely fashion.  Our Endorsed Service Providers do the same.  A big part of the reason we are able to do our job so well is we still have the joie de vivre that keeps us excited about our work of helping our clients succeed.  So have a drink and Happy Chinese New Year!

I used this copious research to sell the idea of a brewpub to two entrepreneurs opening a new restaurant in a location I had long had my eye on.  It was tremendously exciting being even obliquely involved with the start up and I enjoyed working there as an assistant brewer.  As great learning experience all the way around, and should either of those entrepreneurs read this, thank you sincerely for the opportunity.

And what I ultimately learned from that experience was I did NOT want to be a brewer anymore.  Beer from the store is just fine thanks.

Now, onto the tortured analogy section.  Many of our clients are new to doing business in China.  Many have done awesome amounts of research, days spent on sourcing websites like Global Sources, and they are totally jazzed about this new experience, much as I was 20 years ago.  They want to travel, try new things, etc.  Then they realize that the China trade is work, and the fun wears off quickly.

There are brewers who get up every day excited to go to work and make beer.  I admire them and wish them well at their chosen craft.  Thanks to them, I get to have a drink without all the scalding water, acids, caustic sodas, foul-smelling slime and general hard-work-nastiness that goes into making beer.

The PassageMaker Team and our friends at China Quality Focus are a collection of such dedicated “brewmasters”.  I know I wake up every morning happy and enthusiastic about my chosen field.  Our Sourcing Feasibility Study, Vendor Coordination and Assembly-Inspection-Packaging service offerings are all designed to help our clients have a successful experience in China.  Most importantly, we want to take care of things on the ground in China so our clients can stay at home with their families, instead of spending $10k every other month traveling back and forth to visit vendors.  When you do choose to come to China, we want you to come for a relaxing guanxi tour, not to fight fires.  We’ll even help you with your travel arrangements and buy you a drink!

From my personal experiences over the last 15 years in Asia, as a round-eye you build relationships by eating anything put in front of you and drinking too much.  And bringing Purchase Orders.

Thankfully, I like nearly everything I’ve eaten in China.  I’d traveled extensively in the USA, Mexico, Europe and Africa before I ever set foot in Asia, but my first night in Singapore in 1994 changed my whole life.  And the food was what really hooked me.  Prawn mee soup, jumbo prawns cooked in a banana leaf and Tiger beer at 2 AM in Newton Circus.  I’d never seen any of this food before, didn’t know it existed, never seen a Chinese spoon, never used chopsticks, yet it was all like mother’s milk.  I learned to use chopsticks in about 30 seconds, and to this day I eat noodle soup for lunch at least 3-4 days a week.  Tiger is still my favorite beer.

From this experience, I’ve become a more adventurous eater (and drinker) than you’d expect for someone raised in Salem, VA.  That adventurousness has served me well in China.  When you visit a supplier, it is de rigeur that you be hosted for a lunch or dinner banquet.  Chinese street food is generally light and nutritious (oh, how I miss the vegetable dishes at the little restaurant around the corner from our office), but the banquet dishes are lavish, heavy and designed to show off and feel you out.  Oh, and get you blind drunk in the middle of the day.  The Chinese eat darned near anything, especially the Cantonese, so get ready for offal, strange ingredients and powerful flavors and scary textures.

If you hold up under this onslaught of unfamiliar cuisine and frankly toxic baijiu, you pass the test and provide your hosts with some entertainment.  If you wind up in the hospital from food or alcohol poisoning, it is even more entertaining for them.  But if you flat refuse to partake for anything other than religious reasons, you establish yourself as a wet blanket not to be taken seriously.

So what to do if you just cannot summon the courage to drink snake wine or eat pig brain soup?  Option 1 – stay home and let the PassageMaker team deal with the vendors.  Option 2 – come to China but let us arrange your trip and we’ll make sure you are not exposed to the scarier fringes of Chinese cuisine.

PassageMaker wants to make sure you enjoy your experience dealing with China, even if you never visit.  And I frankly want to keep my record for days on an IV and days hungover after a banquet (4 and 5 respectively) intact.

Jeez, Ma...pig brain soup again?!

P.S. – It’s really delicious.  One of my favorite dishes.  I’m serious.