The new America Invents Act, signed into law last week by President Obama, will have a substantial impact on the pace of innovation in the country, according to Alan C. Marco, a Washington and Lee University economics professor who specializes in intellectual property rights.

Much of the media coverage of the new law focused on the change in the way the U.S. will award patents to inventors from a first-to-invent basis to a first-to-file basis.

Marco, who spent a recent leave as an expert adviser with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), said that while the shift is important, he believes it is even more significant that the patent office will now be able to set its own fees and manage its own budget.

“Allowing the director of the patent office to set fees will permit them to take those fees and invest them in more patent examiners and better technology that will hopefully improve quality and speed of the process,” said Marco. “The PTO will still be required to be revenue-neutral, in the sense that it must set aggregate fees to recover its long-run costs.”

This part of the new act will, Marco said, help address the growing backlog, which has meant that it takes inventors seeking a patent up to three years to get the first decision and as long as five years to get the patent grant. Since the patent term runs from the date of application, examination delay effectively shortens the period where patent holders can recoup their research costs.”

In addition, Marco said that by now allowing the patent office to set its own fees rather than having to seek permission from Congress, the fees will be set in what he calls a “rational way from an economist’s perspective.”

Said Marco: “It enables the patent office to establish fees that are more in line with consumers’ interests and with innovation.”

Meanwhile, the shift from the first-to-invent standard to a first-to-file brings the U.S. more closely in line with the rest of the world.

“We are not adopting the same system of first-to-file that is the case in the rest of the world,” noted Marco. “Instead, we are adopting the first inventor to file. That’s a significant difference.”

“In the past in the U.S., it had been first-to-invent. So if there was a question about whether or not you were the first to invent, that could be a pretty painstaking and bureaucratic process. Now it is the first inventor who files. If there are multiple inventors, the first one to file is the one who gets the patent. We won’t have people sitting on the sidelines, grabbing an idea and still getting a patent. Furthermore, the new system means that inventors have an incentive to bring their ideas forward in published applications. That information benefits everyone.”

Marco said some people fear that this new system will prove a disadvantage for small inventors as opposed to large companies since the small, individual inventor with the same resources of a big company may have a harder time getting to the office as fast.

The new act provides tactics that small inventors can use, Marco said. There are, for instance, provisional applications that serve as placeholders for 12 months without having to be fully developed patent applications.

“I think the ability of small inventors to use those provisional applications really handles a lot of problems with the first-to-file system,” Marco said.

In addition, there is now a fast track that will allow, at the outset, 10,000 applicants to pay a higher fee but get a guaranteed 12-month response for the first decision.

“For those who are worried about the backlog and delay, this provides an opportunity for them to get quick responses. This could be important for big firms, but this can be vitally important for small entrepreneurial firms that are seeking venture capital funding,” Marco noted. “When venture capitalists are looking at small startups, one of the things that they are interested in as a signal of the quality of their inventions is patents. This can be really important in gaining funding. It is a higher fee but not something that would be prohibitive to a smaller firm.”

Marco also noted that the new act establishes a “micro-entity” status that provides a 75 percent discount on the fees and is targeted at individual inventors.  There is also a new system under which someone can challenge the validity of a patent by going to the patent office rather than having to make that challenge in the courts.

“If someone goes to the patent office in a certain period of time to make a challenge, the opposition will be handled in house,” said Marco. “There will always be an appeal to the federal courts but this new process could allow inventors to challenge an issued patent without having to go to the courts.”

The act is seen as the most significant change to the patent laws since the 1950s. Marco agrees with that assessment.

“It doesn’t mean that you’re going to see flying cars in a matter of years,” he added. “But I do believe it will improve innovation.”

I guess I feel a little better now, but the proof will be in the execution.  Maybe Dan Harris at the China Law Blog will weigh in soon.

This first two weeks has been marked by pollution, stifling heat and humidity, absolutely wretched internet access, a feeling of profound nakedness at being Blackberry-less for the first time in 10+ years and multiple cases of Mao’s Revenge.

In reverse order, to those tens of you actually reading this, my gastrointestinal distress seems to stem from three likely sources, so if you are thinking of traveling, they are:

1. Uncooked green vegetables – I don’t know what I was thinking when I partook of that salad bar, but it just looked so enticing…
2. Under-cooked meat – late night shao kao is among the greatest pleasures in life, just make sure you trust your cook and tell them to leave it on the flames a bit longer…
3. China – you’ve been warned.  Plan accordingly.

I am a Verizon customer in the USA, which is mostly a great thing.  Never had a dropped call or lacked for coverage.  They beat AT&T hands down.  But painful experience and $1400 phone bills has taught me to ALWAYS check on your voice and data plans before traveling out of the country.  Good thing I did, as Verizon cancelled all it’s China data plans since my last trip.  $20 per MB for roaming data is ridiculous, so no Blackberry for me.  Using it as a phone was always out of the question, as they charge $2 per minute to send or receive a call.  So when my neighbor down the street who missed the memo that I’d be out of town for a while calls at 3:00 AM to borrow the tractor, that’s a $2 call even if you just hang up on him.  So data roaming turned off, Blackberry powered down and in the bottom of the bag for the duration.

The added downside is that’s also my camera.  So maybe this weekend I’ll head down to the electronics market and buy a camera.  I’ve already missed too many opportunities for classic “China experience” photos.  The chicken vendor was a classic.  It would take me an hour to describe it, so I won’t waste your time trying.

Being without the Blackberry has been even more irritating as internet access in Shenzhen has just plain sucked.  Dyson-vacuum-cleaner levels of sucking.  I left one hotel that I’ve stayed at for weeks at a time over the years because they could not get their internet working at all after five (5) days of trying (or as this is China, probably not trying at all).  That and the new nightclub downstairs that has the bass turned up so loud that it shakes the bed until 3 AM every night.

Now that I write that, I am quite depressed that I am old enough that I even noticed the internet was down with a dance club available every night until 3 AM.

*sigh*

As to the heat, humidity and intermittent days of bright blue skies and nightmarish smog – well it is south China.  I don’t know why it even rates a mention, but it always gets me.

I’m over here working on a number of new and interesting projects, which of course are all covered by strict NDAs, as intellectual property protection is what we do, so I can’t tell you about any of them.  But they are really, really interesting.  And cool.  Very cool stuff.  Trust me.

Since you can’t read about the cool stuff, that leaves my microbial driven bowel movements, which frankly is a pretty good summary of this blog in general.

I’m sure you’ll stay tuned for further updates.

The importance of contracts and compartmentalizing your supply chain cannot be overstated.  You have invested too much to build the business.  Don’t give it away because you are too lazy or too cheap to do the work to protect that investment.

Money ‘graph:

The other day, a really savvy client of ours stopped by the office. This company has been doing business in China for a long long time and it has non-disclosure/non compete/non circumvention agreements with all of its Chinese suppliers and US Buyers I mentioned the above conversation (no names or other identifiers, of course) and we talked about the benefits of the contracts his company has both in China and in the U.S. He then reminded me that this was also one of the reasons his company had set up its own trading companies in China. This company gets its product from about a dozen different Chinese factories, but the records in both China and the United States all point to the U.S. company’s own trading company as the exporter. This company has never had a problem with its customers going around it.

PassageMaker can help you secure your China supply chain.  Our “Black Box” Assembly Center is a far less expensive option than setting up your own trading company.  If you still want your own presence in China, we can help you with our Factory Formation service.  Give us a call, and when you need a lawyer in China, you could do far worse than Mr. Harris.

I’ll step up and admit I didn’t.

What’s worse, now that Import Genius is out there, finding your competition’s suppliers is as easy as using a search engine.  Anything imported into the USA is a matter of public record, including the exporter (i.e., your supplier), the type of goods and your receiving address.

Import Genius is an amazing program and I will be using it for sure, but it also highlights another advantage PassageMaker‘s “Black Box” offers our clients.  When you hire us to perform our Assembly-Inspection-Packaging service, that is really a catch-all term for any sort of contract assembly, product inspection, contract packaging, kitting, order fulfillment, pull-pack-ship, freight consolidation, private labeling or branding, etc.  We do everything from kit mobile phone accessories to assemble vacuum cleaners.

Aside from the advantages we provide to help you control your costs, ensure your quality and protect your intellectual property, we also act as a “firewall” to protect your real supply chain.  When a competitor searches for you on Import Genius now, they’ll get the name of your Chinese supplier.  Think about that for a moment.  You invested thousands upon thousands of dollars to establish that relationship, to tool your product and get the production going.  If you are like a typical “mature” PassageMaker client, before you hired us, you were paying for at least a half-dozen trips to China a year.  With business class seats, rooms at the Shangri-La, private cars, etc., that’s $20k per trip.

How confident are you that your supplier wouldn’t sell a knock-off of your product to a competitor?

If they search when you are working with PassageMaker, all they will see is our address as the exporter.  So in addition to saving you on travel expenses, we protect the investment you made in your suppliers.  Our motto is “Trust & Transparency”, and you can trust us to protect that supply chain.  We wouldn’t stay in business 5 minutes if that weren’t true.  In the PassageMaker system, you will always know who your suppliers are, who has your tooling, who has your designs, who has your money and who has your products.  The transparency part only applies to you!

I take full responsibility, as I am the only one who proofreads my blog posts.  I have dyslexia, so I always try and proofread everything 2-3 times before I send it or publish it.  After all, I get enough hounding from the clan in China, to say nothing of the Zen Dragon from down under, that I don’t need to make it any easier for them.

That said, my error sets me up for a good blog post today.  This experience underscores what I was saying in the original post – your business documents are far, far more important in China than in your home market.

Make a mistake or an error of omission on a purchase order, and you may very well be hosed.  Do the same on a Product Quality Manual (PQM), and I can guarantee trouble.

Some time ago, such an error of omission rose up and bit one of our customers rather badly.  We had followed the PQM as approved, but we had not been checking a particular dimension.  It had never been in the PQM, whether we didn’t include it when we drafted the document or whether the customer left it off the original drawing was lost in the mists of time, but the error had persisted undetected by all for nearly 4 years.  It was never a problem as long as the vendor providing that component did their job right, but we are all human and that finally didn’t happen.

Our team inspected the product to the PQM.  The error was so subtle, you would never notice it with the naked eye.  The client assumed all was well and shipped the product, which immediately were rejected in the field.  Long story short, everyone was unhappy and we all lost, but there was no warranty claim to be made against PassageMaker.  We’d followed the approved PQM.

Our policy is we will do what you tell us in the PQM, no more, no less.  It has to be this way, as the biggest problems in China are the admirable Chinese tendency to want to help too much or worse, to improvise when a problem arises.

I had a friend who was buying pillow cases in China.  All the samples came in exactly 1″ too big on every dimension.  Panicked, he called the factory and they told him they so appreciated the order (for several hundred thousand units), that they wanted to reward him by providing extra material at no cost!  After he got his heart pumping again, he contacted our friends at China Quality Focus who went on-site and got things back on track quickly.

Doing business in China is Murphy’s Law on steroids, acid and a truckload of uncut Colombian all at once.  Muse’s 1st Law is “Never Assume Anything“.  Make sure if you want it to happen (or not to) that you put it in writing.

I meant it when I wrote that we LOVE getting 17 pages of corrections back from the client.  It is far better than a cursory review and signature.

We have four (4) internal layers of proofreading for a PQM before it is sent to the client for approval.

1. The PQM is drafted by a Quality Technician, with input from the entire team, including the client.
2. It is then reviewed by the Production Engineer.
3. It is then reviewed by the Project Manager.
4. It is then reviewed by a member of senior management (most often by me).

Only then is it sent to the customer.

This is a time consuming process.  But the alternative is terrible to contemplate.  Anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time.

So make sure you proofread before you sign on the line that is dotted.

This put me in mind of the importance of making sure all your business documents say what you intend them to, ESPECIALLY when doing business in a foreign language.  One of the services PassageMaker offers our clients is help drafting the language on their purchase orders.  Many of our clients come to us after having a bad experience or two in China, and it is amazing how vague some of their purchase orders are.

The Chinese legal system is rapidly improving and a properly written purchase order is a binding contract that can be the difference between getting raked over the coals and being the one doing the raking.

I see similar issues with design databases.  Drawings are often given to us with no material specifications, no finish specs, etc.  I had a drawing once from an client that specified “aluminum”.  When I asked his engineer what type, he responded that he didn’t think it mattered.  This for a part to be subjected to high heat and load stress – you’re darned tootin’ it matters.

We have also received drawings specifying titanium fasteners.  After wasting time looking for these very hard to find fasteners, the project engineer in the USA tells us that he just cut and pasted the fastener drawing and forgot to change the material spec.  Two seconds of his time would have saved two days of our team’s time.

This kind of BS is why we have Endorsed Service Providers.  Choosing with the cheapest guy is very rarely the best deal.

Another area where we frankly NEED our clients to proofread is our Product Quality Manual (PQM), the core of our Assembly-Inspection-Packaging service.  As Mike Bellamy says, “we are generalists; we depend on the client to be the expert”.  We take the lead on drafting the PQM, and submit it to the client for approval, but once they sign off on it, that is what we are going to do, no more, no less.  It becomes our warranty and if the client forgets to tell us something, once they approve the document, that is now the official record.  We’ll happily amend the PQM for the next order, but if it wasn’t written down, not my fault.

Our system incorporates four (4) levels of approval before it is sent to the client for final approval.  From the speed at which some clients approve the document, I know they barely looked at it.  I would rather have a 17 page response as we got from one client than a signature 20 minutes later.

Doing things right takes time, but nowhere near as much time as doing things over.  If your project is valuable enough to bring to market, you have time for some proof reading.

PS – I have dyslexia, and have proof-read this damn post five times looking for typos.  I bet you all find at least one in spite of that effort.

Mike Bellamy interviewed by Fiducia Management Consultants.

This project has now transitioned to Pramod KC‘s team for production.  Pramod’s team manages the vendors (we call it Vendor Coordination / Export & Logistics) and coordinates to make sure our Assembly Center gets all components and performs Assembly-Inspection-Packaging to the customer approved Product Quality Manual.  When all is complete, our Logistics Department arranges the shipment, often shipping directly to the client’s distributors and retailers, often in customer-specific packaging, including point of sale displays and barcoding.  In short, this is not only a great product, but it is a great example of how the PassageMaker system works start to finish.

But enough about us, back to the article.  Key paragraphs:

You may think you have no choice about how much you sit. But this isn’t true. Suppose you sleep for eight hours each day, and exercise for one. That still leaves 15 hours of activities. Even if you exercise, most of the energy you burn will be burnt during these 15 hours, so weight gain is often the cumulative effect of a series of small decisions: Do you take the stairs or the elevator? Do you e-mail your colleague down the hall, or get up and go and see her? When you get home, do you potter about in the garden or sit in front of the television? Do you walk to the corner store, or drive?

Just to underscore the point that you do have a choice: a study of junior doctors doing the same job, the same week, on identical wards found that some individuals walked four times farther than others at work each day. (No one in the study was overweight; but the “long-distance” doctors were thinner than the “short-distance” doctors.)

…

But it looks as though there’s a more sinister aspect to sitting, too. Several strands of evidence suggest that there’s a “physiology of inactivity”: that when you spend long periods sitting, your body actually does things that are bad for you.

As an example, consider lipoprotein lipase. This is a molecule that plays a central role in how the body processes fats; it’s produced by many tissues, including muscles. Low levels of lipoprotein lipase are associated with a variety of health problems, including heart disease. Studies in rats show that leg muscles only produce this molecule when they are actively being flexed (for example, when the animal is standing up and ambling about). The implication is that when you sit, a crucial part of your metabolism slows down.

Nor is lipoprotein lipase the only molecule affected by muscular inactivity. Actively contracting muscles produce a whole suite of substances that have a beneficial effect on how the body uses and stores sugars and fats.

Which might explain the following result. Men who normally walk a lot (about 10,000 steps per day, as measured by a pedometer) were asked to cut back (to about 1,350 steps per day) for two weeks, by using elevators instead of stairs, driving to work instead of walking and so on. By the end of the two weeks, all of them had became worse at metabolizing sugars and fats. Their distribution of body fat had also altered — they had become fatter around the middle. Such changes are among the first steps on the road to diabetes.

…

Some people have advanced radical solutions to the sitting syndrome: replace your sit-down desk with a stand-up desk, and equip this with a slow treadmill so that you walk while you work. (Talk about pacing the office.)

Why yes, yes we have.  It feels to good to be a radical sometimes!

I have found that walking at 2.2 mph at 6 degrees of incline is just right to really get your heart rate going and still be able to type, write and talk on the phone.  So go order a TrekDesk, and if you need help bringing your product to market, give PassageMaker a call!

Dongmen shopping district

view from the pedestrian bridge - note the construction for the subway

view from the pedestrian bridge

Dongmen shopping district

a micro McD's that only sells ice cream in Dongmen

Chinese New Year decorations in Dongmen - featuring Disney knock-offs

Dongmen - Kobe, skyscrapers (that's Di Wang Da Sha from the front), faux temples and a plaster giraffe

Chinese breakdancers - only 20 years late to the party - as the proprietor of www.theshenzhenrules.com said, "the Chinese will never be able to beat Americans at cool".

yes, that's a Dunkin' Donuts in Dongmen - and no, I did not have one

the incomplete building across from Di Wang Da Sha - it has been this way for years, caught up in another corruption scandal

That evening we head out to meet [name redacted at the request of her employer on 7 April 2011], aka Banana (adopted from China and raised in Germany and Hong Kong – yellow on the outside, white inside – her term), and one of our Endorsed Service Providers, Ms. Li Yan of the JunZeJun Law Firm.  Li Yan and I have been referring people to each other for a while now and she’s done an exceptional job with our clients, 8-0 on IP cases.  It was nice to finally meet her face-to-face.  We dine at the Da Yu (Big Fish) the crazy teppanyaki place with the all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink special for 150 RMB.  The place is packed to the gills for CNY celebrations.  Ultimately we are seated and have a spectacular meal.

Lamb, sushi, grilled fish, beef cooked several ways, raw kobe beef sashimi, and copious amounts of beer, sake and fruit smoothies to keep it healthy

Since we were one of the last tables to eat, the chef used our grill to make a massive batch of egg fried rice for the staff’s dinner.

that's a dozen eggs at least

you should have seen the slab of butter he threw in this thing - a pound at least - say it with me now, egg fried rice is NOT diet food

whole process took only about 90 seconds

The group breaks up after dinner, though some of us go for a few more drinks – Erdinger at McCawley’s (my favorite German beer).  Banana is with us and says I’m pouring it wrong.  That may be so, but I’m pouring it the way I like it.  Besides, my way is more fun for entertaining the wait staff.  No way to describe it, just have to show you the next time I see you.  Starts raining which sort of kills the fun sitting outside.  Head for home.

Day 33 – rained hard all day, forcing us to cancel our trip to Hong Kong and Macau.  We did nothing except sit inside all day working and watching movies.  When the rain finally started to abate, headed out to get some KFC.  Yes, I know, but sometimes you feel lazy.  We pay for it later with wicked acid indigestion.  KFC is much spicier and greasier than in the US.  Later in the evening we head out to Shekou to get rooms at the cruise ship so we can watch the Superbowl live in the morning at the sports bar downstairs.  We take our clients to dinner at Tasca, the Spanish tapas bar and have a grand time.  Early to bed.

ship hotel room at Seaworld - that's a port hole in the upper right of the "window"

Day 34 – Up early to watch the Superbowl.  I don’t care about either team, but fun nonetheless.  Our clients head out early via hydrofoil ferry to HKG, which is much quicker than crossing by land (the “business” excuse for our trip to Shekou – have to take care of those customers).  This is the first time I’ve been to Seaworld in the daylight in years, and after the rain it is a gloriously clear morning.

Seaworld in Shekou on Superbowl morning

This is the boat where Deng Xiao Ping signed the paperwork for the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone

It now houses a hotel, a Western sports bar, the New Orleans nightclub and a German brewpub where we ate breakfast. Communist...right.

The water is to give the illusion it is still afloat

Little Foreigners Town

The opposite of China Town

Starbucks, KFC, McDs, 7-11

It's far from perfect though. This was all filled in (it used to be a harbor) and this area is below sea level. All the water has to be pumped out.

Merry Christmas in Shekou - in February

Because it’s Monday (China is 13 hours ahead of the east coast of the USA, so Sunday night is Monday morning), after the game we head to work.  We have to stop by B&Q again.

I was thrilled to see this in the parking lot at B&Q - tool trucks that deliver make plant life in the USA much easier and it is a good thing this in now available in PRC.

On the way home from the plant, we see a VW Santana with a big involved graphic across the back of the trunk lid.  It says “SOCCER” and has a picture of some famous footballer.  Only one problem – it’s backwards, a mirror image of what it’s supposed to be.  You see this kind of stuff all over the place here – English words on t-shirts, handbags, advertisements, etc. that are misspelled or upside down or backwards or just thrown together at random.  My wife has a t-shirt from our time in Taiwan that says “I’m Fine Muck”.  Yes you are, sweetie.

We are interviewing a Filipino process engineer to work with me at the Assembly Center.  He looks like he’ll be a good fit.  He’s got loads of plant level experience working for major global companies and has lived in Shenzhen before.  He has family in Dongguan up the road.  He tells us a harrowing story about his last time in China when he was kidnapped and robbed at knife point in broad day light.  I have heard these stories about SE Asians in China, but never about a Westerner.  I guess the gangsters assume the police will care less about the SE Asians.  Sadly, they are probably right.

Day 35 – Last day at the Assembly Center.  We hired the process engineer, Harold Roman, this morning and he’ll spend today and tomorrow with me reviewing our kaizen agenda for the next couple months.  I intend to return for the month of April, but don’t want things to go cold after CNY.

The last lunch is celebratory, the first lunch with beer since I’ve been here.  Had I been doing the factory visit two-step, every vendor would want to treat me to an alcohol-soaked luncheon.  I was not here for that, but in this case, a couple cold beers in the afternoon is an appropriate reward.  Only problem, no cold beer.  No problem, we’ve got ice.  Iced beer.  That was honestly a first for me.

The chicken was exceptional - Teresa asked me to pick a dish (I chose the little fish), but of course when they accidentally bring the mushroom dish in the foreground, my choice is the one that gets canceled. Lao wai's don't know how to order anyway.

sizzling black pepper steak - this was great - eat it off the bone with chopsticks - easier than it sounds

the chicken feet were not eaten by the ladies because they were 'too small'

It was a beautiful day, bright sunshine, 75 F, low humidity, so we walk to and from lunch, about 10 minutes each way. Landscaping on a street in an industrial part of town. The new China takes civic beauty increasingly seriously

typical traffic on a Chinese SIDEWALK

When we get back the postman is delivering the mail on his green China Post motorcycle with saddlebags.  Very cool.  We get back to work until Julien Roger of China Quality Focus calls and asks me to join him for a business dinner.  The schedule requires me to wrap things up early and head back to Liantang.  We have our closing meeting and say our goodbyes.  I’ll be back in April, but will miss these folks in the meantime.  A good team all around.

Chinese postman - note he just drives right into the building - walking is for sissies.

Our team at Buji. Wonderful folks. L-R: Mr. Tang, Teresa Chen, Josephine Ji, me (man, am I not photogenic), Candy Cheng, Marc Yue, Honey Wu, Hebe Wang, Bruce Li (yes, really) and Nancy Lan.

On the way home I finally get a not-completely-blurry photo of the “staircase street” we pass every day.  They are not good, but this is a very cool little oddity of Shenzhen.

I tried everyday to take a photo of this 'staircase street' which we passed on the way back from the Assembly Center - these are the best two - very cool

Can you imagine living on this street?

When I get back to Liantang, the driver drops me at the end of the street.  Our street is private, meaning that you have to pass through a gate and take a ticket to get in.  If you stay on the street for more than a few minutes, you have to pay to get back out.  We have a parking spot outside the wire, so this is typical.  Nearly every shop is already shut down for the Chinese New Year, a bit of a ghost town.  I come across one scene outside of a restaurant that is very cute and hugely disturbing at the same time.

This is a lot less cute when you realize that the bunny is dinner.

Julien and I head out to meet up with Renaud Anjoran of the Quality Inspection Blog at a northeastern style restaurant.  I love this style, and was wickedly disappointed by the last place I tried, so I went in hoping for a good experience.  Julien said this was his favorite place and I see why.  It was excellent across the board.

This is the best salad in the world - warm onion and cilantro with peppers.

This is by far the best fish I ate on the trip - boneless, deep fried, sweet & sour with pine nuts - what's not to like?

A light meal for 3 people - sweet potato noodles, pai huang gua (bashed cucumbers), sweet & sour fish, lamb & vegetable dumplings, some meat dish with chilies, cilantro salad, potato 'noodles' with 9 beers for a total of 178 RMB or US$26! I love this place!

After dinner, I go for my last massage of the trip.  I have a bad back, had to wear a back brace when I was a teenager and am used to regular pain and discomfort.  On this trip, I have definitely been spoiled by the affordable and effective massages.  My back feels better than it has in years.  The woman tonight is in her 40′s and her experience shows – she is an expert and despite the momentary thrashing when I wake up in the morning I feel like a million bucks.  Total cost around $25.  Love.  This.  Place.

Day 36 – Last day at the office.  Beautiful morning.  We battle the usual chaos before the CNY, mainly problems with customer payments clearing in time to release goods to get a berth on a freighter.  Customers often can’t envision the traffic at the ports during this time of year, and think that if they get the check out on the last day that that will translate to goods on the water.  To clarify, no it won’t.  If you are one of these customers reading this blog, it is nothing personal and trust me you are not the only one, but in the future, send the money early.  The earlier the better.  The Chinese have been celebrating CNY for 5,000 years.  It’s not like you weren’t warned, and trust me, there is NOTHING I can do about it.

last morning - beautiful

Our favorite local restaurant is still open and so we have our final lunch there.  All the favorites plus this that I’d not had before.

last lunch - very good sizzling beef dish - the dish was so hot it was still boiling 4-5 minutes arrived it arrived at table

We have a very productive day and then select Mao’s House for the final dinner.  How I love those chili shrimp skewers.  We have at least 4 plates between us – Mike Bellamy, Brian Garvin, Adam Supernant, and Harold Roman of PassageMaker and Julien Roger and Ludovic Larry of China Quality Focus.  Much later we head out to meet up with Dave Learn at Viva, running into Banana and other friends on the way.  How bizarre it is to have such a dual life.  And how exciting as well.  I am looking forward to being home and seeing my family, but I will miss this place when I am gone.

Home at a reasonable hour and to bed.  Early day tomorrow.

Articles, articles, articles…

• Chinese diplomat:  Ties with US deteriorated recently – no, really?
• More from Reuters
• This is just wrong – Chinese girl, 9, becomes one of world’s youngest mothers after giving birth to a baby boy
• India forms new Climate Change body
• Uh oh – Fears of sexual frustration among workers in China
• Proof there is a God
• China’s Debt Bomb – as good a reason as any for Washington to quit spending so much money
• Dazzled by Asia – a different perspective, far less rosy about China’s future, and hard to argue with
• Five Things the U.S. Can Learn from China – a rather silly article in Time magazine, which again reminds me why I no longer read Time magazine.  As Dave Learn put it, “it sounds like an article written by someone who read a book about China”.
• And this also popped up on the Google search (from the Business Insider) – TIME Magazine’s Ridiculous Five Things America Needs To Learn From China
• China PLA officers urge economic punch against U.S.
• Stay rates for foreign Ph.D.s rebound after decline

A little random tidbit from Dave, who is going on another Asian adventure for the Chinese New Year.  Airlines are just no damn fun anymore (from the terms and conditions on his plane ticket):

- Guests can no longer carry guns and/or ammunition on flights to or from Indonesia

Killjoys.

Day 27 – A client from the USA arrived today, one of a group of three we were expecting.  The other two were delayed by fun winter weather in the USA, so they will arrive tomorrow.  After a long day at work, I met the client for drinks at our preferred corporate hotel, the 999 Royal Suites.  Nice rooms for a very reasonable price.  The bar caters to foreign businessmen and they have the standard Filipino cover lounge singers.  Some have been there for years and it was catching up with old friends.  The Filipina hotel day manager, Queenie, looks great and I am glad to see her rising in her career with the 999.  I once spent 5 weeks living at the older 999 hotel across the courtyard, so I got to know the staff pretty well.

Day 28 – We have visitors today from [company name redacted 7 April 2011], a German 3PL based in Shanghai with offices in Shenzhen [and no sense of humor apparently].  The head of the Shenzhen office is a self-described “banana”, yellow on the outside and white on the inside.  She was adopted from China as a baby by a German family and raised in Germany and Hong Kong.  Very interesting young lady.  We have a great lunch and then they head off to tour our facilities.  Here they are with Mike heading into our medical assembly center with clean room and sterile packaging capabilities.

L-R – Mike Bellamy, founder of PM, and anonymous employees of an anonymous German logistics company that no longer wishes to be named in this blog [as of 7 April 2011], prepare to enter our Clean Room Assembly Center.  Too funny.

Later the rest of the clients arrive and off we go to the traditional first-night-in-China Xinjiang dinner.  Great time.  The highlight was the staff practicing their traditional dances out in front of the restaurant late at night.  I’ve seen them do this before, and really don’t understand it, because none are from Xinjiang and they don’t work in local costume and don’t perform at the restaurant.  But this is one of my favorite scenes from China.  I’ve tried before to take photos and this is the first time they were any good.

Dance Practice

I have no idea if the dance has any significance.

Kind of like a square dance.

They finally realize they have an attentive audience and fall out laughing.

Day 29 – Very productive day of meetings with our clients from LimbGear and our Endorsed Service Provider, Camrett Logistics.  They have a great new family of products and I expect we will see great things from them in 2010.  At night we head out for a Northeastern style dinner, normally one of my favorite styles, at a restaurant called 东北人, dōngběirén, literally “northeastern person” or “northeasterner”.  We were told it would be awesome.  It wasn’t.  The food was a warm cup of OK, but the service was bloody atrocious.  After waiting more than 10 minutes I actually had to get up to go find a waitress and mildly berate her for leaving us sitting so long with no tea.  She was embarrassed enough to come immediately and take our drinks order, but the service stunk throughout the meal.  This is extremely rare in China, where most of the time you have almost too much service.  If you are in Shenzhen, Dong Bei Ren near King Glory Plaza (GuoMao station on the subway) is one to skip.

It's not MONS beer.

Day 30 – Another day at the Assembly Center.  I am starting to feel the end of the trip and have so much to do I eat lunch at my desk.  When I lived in Taiwan, I loved the lunch boxes (bien dang in the local dialect).  Today’s take out was not the same (bien dang are more complete rounded meals) but it reminded me a bit.  A good light and healthy lunch all the same.  Now if I can just get my TrekDesk (one of our clients!) set up in China, maybe I could actually LOSE weight on these trips.

lunch at my desk - better than 95% of American Chinese food

On the way to dinner, we saw one of the more memorable sights of this trip.  We are fast approaching the Chinese New Year, and families stock up on fresh produce to last through the long holiday (1-2 weeks).  And when I say fresh, I mean live.

This is 3 chickens and 2 geese caged on top of an SUV, with cardboard rigged up to block the wind. These birds will be kept on the guy's balcony or in his yard until required at meal time during the CNY. Sorry, but this is the best photo I could get in the moving traffic and low light.

Dinner was one of the best of the trip, which is really saying something.

personal hotpots - chicken broth seasoned with garlic, ginger, thousand year old eggs - you add green onions, cilantro, miso paste and chiles to a soy dipping sauce to taste - cook the raw ingredients yourself in the broth and dip in the sauce - lamb, beef, tofu, wood ears, golden needle mushrooms, lettuce - wonderful

RAW BEEF SASHIMI with soy + wasabi dipping sauce - this is the best thing in the world - ZOMBIELAND be damned

Everyone’s tired and a little lubricated, so early night.  More adventures tomorrow!