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McDonald’s, also known as the “Get-Out-Of-China-Free-Card”

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A friend and classmate of mine had a terrible time with the food in Beijing 11-12 years ago. Food poisoning was a weekly event.

He began hitting McDonald’s almost daily to give his stomach a foundation to get by on. Having had my share of food poisoning in China since then, I agree. When you’ve just spent the last 12 hours on the “China Rapid Weight Loss Program”, you are NOT in the mood for more Chinese food. A Quarter Pounder with Cheese is the most welcome sight on earth.

He started referring to McDonald’s as his “Get-Out-Of-China-Free-Card”. What a perfect name.

It has nothing to do with PassageMaker or China Quality Focus – except that if you come visit us and get sick, we will make sure you are well cared for – but it is a reality of China travel that you will miss food you would never eat when you are home. When I am in the USA, I cook Asian food 3-4 days a week. When I am in China I crave hamburgers and hot dogs. The grass is always greener, I guess.

Anyway, here are three crazy articles from ChinaSMACK about McDonald’s and the impact it has on modern China.

Chinese Netizen’s McDonald’s Happy Meal Rotting Experiment

Chinese Grandfather Eats McDonald’s For The First Time

Pretty Chinese Girls Run Into McDonald’s & Begin Dancing

On the last one, you see this kind of stuff regularly in China. What a place.

Enjoy.

Pain

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Helped some friends move this weekend. I. Hurt. All. Over.

And by this weekend, I mean most all of it, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning. Friday and Saturday were hot and humid, but Sunday was the gauntlet. Day started early, hot and humid and ended in a cold rain at 1:00 AM Monday morning. I had some work to do and did not get to sleep until 2:30 AM, back up at 6:00 AM to help them finish before the deadline of 9:15 AM (which we made by 5 minutes).

Why am I telling you about this, a blog ostensibly about China Business and my impressions thereof? Two reasons:

  1. I am a slightly overweight and out of shape 39 years old. I like to drink more beer than I should and my Room 101 is a gym. I have never been a good athlete, I have a bad back, so bad I had to wear a brace 24/7 for several years as a teenager. And though today I am sore all over, my legs and my back feel far better than I’d expected. I credit my TrekDesk. I’ve mentioned TrekDesk before (here and here) and I walk several miles a day at an aggressive 8 degrees of incline at 2.2 mph, which will get your heart pumping. I had not realized how well it had conditioned my legs and forced me to improve my posture. Walking while you work really does rock. I mention this because as I have blogged before, the TrekDesk is one of the best examples of our complete system of services – engineering by our Endorsed Service Provider, Contract Engineering Services; then Sourcing Feasibility Study, next Vendor Coordination and now Assembly-Inspection-Packaging at our Assembly Center according to the customer approved Product Quality Manual.
  2. The USA’s trade deficit with China is almost universally viewed as a bad thing. But the low-cost goods China provides to the USA consumer is a reminder that any transaction has benefits for both sides. As I moved my friends’ copious amount of stuff, I was struck by how much of the contents of their home (and indeed, any American home) are now Made in China. When I was growing up, I do not remember having that many clothes. That is not to say I went about in rags; quite the opposite, my Father was successful and I had a wonderful childhood. I just don’t remember having anywhere near the sheer volume of clothing my friends’ children had. Today I have five (5) pairs of shoes. I actually make a game of trying to minimize the amount of stuff I drag around with me – Exhibit A being the extended trips to China with one (1) carry-on bag. Looking around my own house, each of my children has at least twice as many pairs of shoes as I do. All are Made in China. The prices paid for those are astoundingly low, even to me who has an idea of what they cost ExW. While I am rightly concerned about foreign competition as an American manufacturer, it would be dishonest and foolish to say that there was no benefit to the American consumer from our trade with China.

All for today, much catch-up to do having lost the weekend. It continues to rain soup, new opportunities daily. Will try to squeeze in more blogging tomorrow.

Blogging is hard work

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In less than a year I have gone from daily blogging to forcing myself to find something to write about once a week if that.

Since my return from China two weeks ago, I have been working like crazy trying to bag all the new business raining down on PassageMaker and China Quality Focus. The world economy is not out of the woods but we are definitely seeing an explosion of new RFQs, led by Australia. They are booming exporting the raw materials for China’s industry. Let’s all raise our glasses to Australia! More on that later…

I have been picking away at the travel log in my minimal spare time, but here are some interesting articles (some a bit old, but nonetheless).

  • Nixon wasn’t so bad after all – USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969 – and Tricky Dick stopped World War III. This is the kind of stuff you do as President that you can’t talk about, you have to hope historians get it right.
  • From Instapundit, a link to great blog about Japan, Ampontan. Today’s post is called Lame and Shameless, about ridiculous Western reporting on Japan. I am reminded of Andrea Martins, our representative in Brazil, who was actually born and raised in Beijing, the first and only Caucasian I’ve met who truly speaks native-level Mandarin. She told me once that if you visit China for a week, you can write a book. Stay for a month, you can write an article. Live there for 25 years, you have nothing to say.
  • Every once in a while you need to remind yourself how utterly insignificant you really are – Jupiter loses one of its stripes and scientists are stumped as to why.
  • Every once in a while you need to remind yourself how great your life really is – N.Korean women up for sale in China: activist. Tragic and terrible. I hope China steps up.
  • Interesting article from Mother Jones. Yes, really. The Last Taboo.
  • The New York Times finally realizes that many jobs aren’t ever coming back – The New Poor: In Job Market Shift, Some Workers Are Left Behind.
  • Speaking of vomiting…U.S. posts 19th straight monthly budget deficit. (hat tip to Dave Learn)
  • Dear God, let’s hope so – N.J. gov. sets tone for US – I have heard Christie speak, and it is QUITE refreshing. He sounds like a no-nonsense CEO sent in to save a company on the ropes. Math doesn’t lie. There is no money tree. You have to cut spending. However, if you could just raise taxes on The Real Housewives of New Jersey and leave the rest of the state alone, I think you could sell that. My God, what tacky people. The rise of China should be seen as largely a good thing, and maybe the Chinese economy will grow larger than the USA’s, but that was never a foregone conclusion. Our current political leadership across the board seems hellbent on making sure it happens ASAP though. As someone who has business interests in both USA and PRC, I just wish the USA would quit shooting itself in the foot. We businessmen would be just fine if we knew from one day to the next what was coming out of Washington.
  • Globish – I love it. What a great word. And the author nails it; I have had similar experiences many, many times in the Chinese-speaking world.
  • And finally, I can’t resist – Dog on the menu for Chinese astronauts. Actually, dog is pretty tasty, though I’ve only had it prepared in Korean restaurants in China, so I haven’t tried the Chinese version. Have to put that on the to-do list.
Back soon, hopefully with some travel blogging.

Random dreck

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For crying out loud, it has been an insane week. I landed in Chicago from Hong Kong last Sunday 1.5 hours ahead of schedule due to a swift tailwind and was able to arrange a better connection to Roanoke. Result was home 6 hours ahead of schedule and the opportunity to take my wife and kids out for our 12th anniversary. Thai food, of course. It is Roanoke, VA after all. Aren’t we known for Thai food? Red Jasmine is really worth the time if you are ever in the area.

Woke the next morning at 7 AM get the munchkins breakfast and start my day. No jet lag, I’ve been doing this too long for such silliness. At 2 PM I meet one of the academic stars of our local university, Virginia Tech, to be the capstone speaker to his class of 165 students who’ve spent a semester studying international business. It was very flattering to be invited and it was great fun. David Denny was in attendance and he sat in the back. He said he even saw students close FaceBook and shut the laptops to listen to what I had to say. Wow. I didn’t know I was that good.

Actually, yes I did know. I am that good. Just ask me.

I will do a retroactive travel log of this just completed month long trip, I swear, but it takes so long to catalog hundreds of photos and videos, I have just not had time. Swamped with all the fine folks from around the world pounding on our doors trying to give us business. Oh, the horror.

I have a poster that says, “Maybe if we the ignore the customers they’ll quit bugging us”. Bloody customers.

Of course I am kidding. This is the most fun I’ve ever had. The PassageMaker message resonates. The China Quality Focus message resonates. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Like selling beer at a NASCAR race. Ahhh, beer…

Now for some articles:

More on the trip and more topical stuff on actual China business later. Stay tuned.

Great trip is almost complete

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I apologize for my recent absence from blogging. I am wrapping up a month long trip to Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and it has been insanely busy and VERY successful. New clients signed (including one WHALE), several huge trade shows, a new Assembly Center, customer visits, many new foods eaten, legendary hangovers and a whopping case of food poisoning.

I have hundreds of photos and much to write about, but I also have about 600 trade show leads to follow-up, and money comes before blogging.

I will be back in the USA next week and will begin posting the travel log Tuesday or Wednesday.

Thanks for your patience.

Kelly’s 1st & 2nd Laws of China Sourcing

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Years ago, when Murphy’s Law calendars were all the rage (and yes, I am that old), my Father submitted and had published two such laws, Kelly’s 1st & 2nd Laws of Aerial Navigation (remember this is from the 1970’s, so paper maps were the standard – no GPS).

  1. Your destination will always be on the other side of the map.
  2. All pertinent information will be in the crease of the map, which will be torn.

Recent events put me in mind to postulate laws of my own, Kelly’s 1st & 2nd Laws of China Sourcing.

  1. Every project will suffer delays.
  2. The primary source of project delays is the customer.

Now, before the hate mail floods in from all sources, let me clarify. China is inexpensive, but it is NOT fast. There will always be delays in any project. Virtually every decision cycle takes at least 24 hours, often much longer. When a client comes to us, I always try to set expectations. Often we encourage or even aid a customer to establish or maintain a domestic supply chain while setting up the China connection. The long term health of the client is the goal for all of us, and we recognize that doing business in a foreign country is never easy or quick. I have had this experience in the Czech Republic and Taiwan before entering Mainland China, so this is not a slam at the Chinese. It is just indicative of doing business across vast distances with a language barrier thrown in for fun, and is one of the great arguments for domestic production.

Nor is it necessarily a slam at the customer, just a recognition of reality. Now, for some customers reading this, they will probably want to throttle me, because in their particular cases, the Chinese suppliers ARE the source of delays. To you who fall into this category, you know who you are and I am NOT referring to you. Don’t take this post the wrong way. Our team is hard at work steering the suppliers back on schedule and we will succeed.

I said the “primary” source, as defined by Merriam-Webster as, ” first in order of time or development“, not the only source. And for the majority of projects, this is true.

This in no way means the customers are wrong per se. There are often very good reasons for delay. But we have a number of projects in our history that arrived in the market months and sometimes years “past schedule” because of some very common reasons. I list them here as a teaching exercise, so that if you are thinking about launching a project with PassageMaker, I encourage you to learn from those that came before you.

  1. Incomplete Design Databases – this is the A-#1, super-duper granddaddy of all causes of delays. As I mentioned in previous blog posts (here and here), you really, really, REALLY need to have all the elements of the design finalized before going to production. Leaving even the smallest element of the design open to interpretation will lead to the supplier interpreting it in the way exactly opposite from what you wanted. Remember Murphy’s Law, “if it can go wrong it will”. PassageMaker works very hard to try and search for these errors and omissions, but we are not the project designer. While some of our team are engineers, and many of us have years of manufacturing experience, we are not getting paid to do the design work. For that we have a very competent group of Endorsed Service Providers, should the client choose to utilize them. One of the reasons we began building our ESP network was not so much the clients who showed up with “lipstick on a cocktail napkin” drawings, but those who came with “databases” they’d spent thousands of dollars on that…weren’t. Oh, they were a bunch of drawings, but it is amazing how many folks promote themselves as product designers who don’t even know how to do a proper mechanical drawing. 3D CAD packages with no 2D drawings and vice versa are common. I’ve seen drawings with no material specs, no finish specs, no tolerances, no scale. In one case after signing an NDA, the client gave us a drawing of a circle with no scale or dimensions at all. I asked if it was a drawing of the moon to illustrate the point. I advised that they get a refund from the “engineer” they paid to produce that useless document.
  2. Payment – As I’ve written before, China is pretty close to a cash economy unless you are a buyer for a Fortune 500 company. All POs will require a deposit, in most cases because the manufacturer is going to use that money to pay cash for the raw materials. Tooling is typically 30% At Time of Order (ATO), 40% at 1st article and 30% at final approval, before delivery. Production is most often 50% ATO and 50% At Time of Shipment (ATS), which means in practice, 100% is due before the product leaves the factory. All these terms are clearly communicated early in the project, but at least 80% of the time, there are delays from clients not paying in a timely fashion. We advise the client to transfer the entire PO amount to an escrow account at the beginning so funds are immediately available to disburse when milestones are met. This rarely happens.
  3. The uncommunicative client – it is not uncommon for projects to get caught in the doldrums and go nowhere for days, weeks, even months because the client is AWOL. It is very, very common to have clients play “hurry up and wait”. I’ve had panicked project managers contact me frantic because they haven’t gotten a client response to a critical question for over a week, only to find out that the client went on vacation without telling anyone. The delays of course are somehow our fault.
  4. The client who’s in a hurry – while this might seem to be the right kind of client to have, the client who is in a hurry often places speed over accuracy. They want to cut corners, skip prototypes, skip writing a Product Quality Manual with us, not bothering to proof-read the PQM, etc. Sometimes this works out, but not often. More commonly when you deviate from the normal project flow, you end up causing more delays.

Chinese vendors screw up all the time, otherwise we would have a lot less work to do, but it is not all the vendors’ fault. In short, the customer is NOT always right.

Is China the next bubble?

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In my post the other day,”Eduscam?“, I pointed to the entirely anecdotal experiences I had recently with our college educated youth who haven’t a moment’s work experience between them when they leave school. I had one thought that I decided to save for today.

Many young souls seem to want to be bankers or lawyers, as though these are highly lucrative careers that guarantee a sweet life in the Hamptons. Certainly they can, but most bankers and lawyers slog along without ever making the big bucks. Moreover, they are careers without a real product that you can point to and say “I made this”. I tried explaining there are no safe corporate career paths anymore, and believe me when the cost cutting starts, they start in middle management.

I remember reading an article written by a British MP maybe 20 years ago that has formed part of my philosophy ever since. At the time he was writing about the challenge posed by Japan to the British manufacturing base, what was left of it anyway. I am going from memory and as the article predated the internet, I have had no luck finding it. But the quote went something like this,

British Leyland did not go out of business because of the Japanese. It failed because it made dreadful cars. Our economy today is almost entirely based on people in London trading bits of paper.

Real economies make things.

Did this make anyone substitute “Chrysler”, “Chinese” and “Lehman Brothers” in their heads?

The issue has been much debated of late about whether China’s economy is a bubble, perhaps the greatest bubble of all (see here, here, here, here and here). Certainly the yuan is undervalued. Certainly much of what you see in the Chinese cities is pastiche – empty buildings abound in any major city. There is vast overcapacity in many industries, driven by cheap loans from government banks to drive development and keep unemployment manageable, similar to the government role in the Japanese and Korean economies during their early growth periods.

But my mind and my gut keep coming back to that quote from the Brit – “real economies make things“. There is real manufacturing know-how in China and it grows stronger daily as they gain more experience. The infrastructure and man-power are real. These are not paper assets that vanish in the blink of the eye like the billions lost in the last two years in the USA.

Does the Chinese economy need to make adjustments. Yes, indeed it does. So does the USA. And as with all things, we will all be forced to one way or the other. But the knowledge gained in this Chinese industrial revolution will persist and remain a real asset even if the bubble does burst. Japan is still the #2 economy despite 20 years of stagnation. They have not fallen back to the misery of late 1940’s. I am confident China will survive as well, even with their monumental challenges. They have come so far in 30 years, I just don’t see them giving up, and when the world economy does recovery, they will still be the largest source of low-cost manufacturing capability on the planet.

And future bankers of America need to remember it is a whole lot easier to move a financial center than the infrastructure required for manufacturing.

PS – If you have never watched Top Gear, I highly recommend it. The 30 minute episode on British Leyland is well worth your time, if only to remind yourself of how awful cars used to be.

Stand Up While You Read This! More validation that the TrekDesk is the right product at the right time.

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Here’s a great article from the NYT by Olivia Judson about the health benefits of staying active while working. I am a huge believer in this concept, and I built my own treadmill desk some years ago with the help of my brother-in-law. I was thinking about taking the idea to market when PassageMaker was approached for a Sourcing Feasibility Study by the inventor who beat me to the patent office, Steve Bordley of TrekDesk. Over the course of the coming months, he worked with our Endorsed Service Provider, Dwight Smith of Contract Engineering Services, on the design and then with our team for Vendor Coordination / Product Development, led by Dave Learn. The VC/PD team handle the research that goes into the Sourcing Feasibility Study and should our client decide to proceed with the project, Dave’s team is then introduced, fully up to speed and ready to roll.

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!

Child labor

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I read with interest the recent articles (couple of them here and here) about Apple’s announcement that some of their suppliers had used child labor in the past.

What I found most interesting was the “child” part – when I was 15 I would have slugged anyone who called me a child. During the summer of my 15th year, I was working in our metal stamping plant where the highest temperature reached 103 F (40 C). I had my first factory job when I was 14 turning wheels on a lathe. My Father never read child-labor laws, and thank God for that. It was an invaluable experience that I am sad to say I won’t be able to give to my son.

I can remember in 1998 visiting a factory for a major automotive supplier in Taiwan. There were 14 year old boys working on the lines making seat belt assemblies. I asked about it and found that they were students at the local technical school. They worked half a shift on the line and spent the rest of the day in class studying engineering. Today, 12 years later, they would be around 26 with degrees in mechanical engineering and over a decade of hands-on experience. I imagine some of them are running plants in China now.

I’ve written about The Wiffle Ball Life before, a term coined by P.J. O’Rourke to denote the rather pathetic American obsession with safety, self-esteem, and never doing anything the slightest bit risky – especially if it might also be fun.

I understand that Apple is worried about its image, and I acknowledge that those eleven 15 year olds may not have wanted to be there. But there is a big difference between a 15 year old farm kid fibbing about his age to get a good factory job to help support his family and using 6 year old slave labor in an illegal fireworks factory in Sichuan. It would be nice if the amazingly flexible English language had a concise way of stating the difference. I think “under-aged labor” is more reflective of the reality of the situation.

Should you need to verify that your suppliers are not using “under-aged labor”, our friends at China Quality Focus can perform a Corporate Social Audit for €376 + travel expenses, a small price to pay to avoid the kind of (undeserved) bad publicity Apple is experiencing.PassageMaker can also help our clients, under the auspices of a Vendor Coordination contract, draft supplier agreements to reflect the social norms of their home country or industry.

A better solution would be to have PassageMaker perform the Assembly-Inspection-Packaging functions in our 100% US-owned and -operated Assembly Center. We will warrant that we meet the necessary social compliance metrics.

Give us a call before you write the press release or talk to the New York Times.

Day 37 – Home

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Day 37 huanggang border crossing

My Blackberry Storm 2 from Verizon Wireless has been progressively crapping out on this trip. It is not a good device, and the longer I have it, the less impressed I am. In addition to the outrageous charges to receive calls – I practically had to hang up on a few clients to get them to shut up so I could call them back on my China Mobile (Verizon US$2.00+ to receive; China Mobile US$0.05 to make = VERIZON SUCKS) – this Blackberry has been regularly crashing, repeatedly uninstalling the browser which now doesn’t work at all, losing its data connection (everyone around me has full data and my China Mobile has 5 bars) forcing me to remove the battery to restart it and see if it can reacquire the data signal.

So I guess I should have known that it was not reliable as an alarm clock. Suffice it to say I am an experienced enough traveler that I don’t cut things close, so I had planned to arrive 2 hours earlier than needed. Despite the fact that the alarm failed, the sun woke me and I showered, shaved and “packed” in about 25 minutes. I say “packed” because I made the decision some days back to leave most of the clothes behind as I will be back in about 6 weeks and didn’t see the point. Because the driver is waiting and I want to get through the Huanggang border crossing before the Chinese New Year rush hour starts, everything I wanted to take got unceremoniously shoved in the bag – couple small gifts for the kids, some movies and books and medicine and out the door.

It’s a glorious morning, blue skies and lots of fast moving clouds. It is warming up fast and very humid. We head to the main Luohu border crossing, Huanggang, which I am fearing will be a mob scene. Although the official Chinese New Year doesn’t start until Saturday, many factories and offices are already closed. Around 450 million people travel inside China during the 2-3 weeks that cover the Lunar New Year season. That’s 1.5 times the entire population of the USA. And we bitch about travel around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Last year the blizzards in China had over 250,000 people stranded at the Guangzhou railroad station for days. I’ve been there on a normal business day, and it is no wonder they had to bring in the police to maintain order.

So I am not surprised that Huanggang is in fact a mob scene. The company driver drops me off at the stand where they sell tickets for the mini vans that run you across for 150 RMB. I usually get a limo for 700-800 RMB, but decide to try this less expensive method. In the future, I will be using the limo again, more on that in a minute.

Photos inside are strictly forbidden, and I did not feel like taking the risk 4 hours before my flight, so you will have to visualize the chaos of maybe 3,000 people with their luggage squeezed into a room designed to hold perhaps 500. There were 30+ lines for Chinese and only one for Foreigners, so getting through took a long time. They were really being critical this morning, usually passport control for a white guy takes 30 seconds, but today he looked through every page of the passport and spent several minutes looking things up on his computer.

If I had hired a limo, I would have been able to go through passport control in my own lane, never getting out of the car. 700 RMB (cost of the limo) – 150 RMB (cost of the van) = 550 RMB = US$80. That savings is looking less important all the time.

Outside I find our van and it appears I am the last man. I expected as much, due to the 3rd degree from the border patrol. Except the driver insists I am not the last, he says we are missing one. When we buy our tickets, we are given stickers with the van’s number on it so the driver can keep track. The van seats 7 passengers – 3 in back, 3 in the middle and one riding shotgun. I did not look in the back when I boarded, but I take it on faith that he is correct – they would never run these things across a passenger light, certainly not on a day like today. In the van with me are a Singaporean man, four Taiwanese men and one Taiwanese woman. The Singaporean is mighty worried about missing his flight, and after 30 minutes waiting for the missing passenger in the 80 F warmth and bright sunshine, he is starting to get hot, as in pissed. The driver placidly insists he can’t leave the 7th (which none of us can exactly remember) because he paid too, we have his luggage, and if we leave he will be stranded, as there is no way to hire a car on this side. The driver is quite right…in theory.

The Chinese was fast and very heated, but it seems the Singaporean insists there is no 7th, something none of us can confirm. The Taiwanese woman who was also in the back seat, says nothing and refuses to answer when asked. Very strange. He then opens to back and starts counting luggage. He points to different bags and the various passengers chime in to claim ownership. When he points to mine, I say “我的”, “mine” which makes him actually do a dramatic double take that the laowai can speak Chinese. It appears the mysterious 7th has no bags, so we double count, and indeed all the bags on board are accounted for by the six of us. The driver sees that the luggage is no longer an issue, but still insists on waiting. The Singaporean in now in a rage and calls over another driver from the same company who just pulled in. He loudly explains the situation and the other driver agrees to find the missing 7th, who may not even exist, and tells our driver to roll out.

Back in the car, for the the first 2-3 minutes the Singaporean loudly berates the driver, who must be a Taoist, as he is completely at peace and does not get the slightest bit ruffled under this assault. Finally the Singaporean realizes the futility and quiets down. I find the whole episode educational and an example of what fascinates me about Asia. Singapore is wealthy and sophisticated city state (I lived there in 1994 and loved every minute), and this guy acted like he was a typical rich snob from good side of town. The driver must have a special permit in order to cross the border so regularly, but my guess is he is from the Mainland. People on the Mainland, especially the older generation, have been raised to just take it. I’ve seen Singaporeans, Taiwanese and Hong Kongers pull this stunt on Mainlanders, berating them publicly, because they know they can get away with it. One of my rules for life is to show as much respect as you can to the people who wash your clothes, cook your food and drive you around, etc., because they are the ones who make your life easy. They deserve more respect than this guy got.

Day 37 huanggang border crossing

Day 37 huanggang so many chinese drivers have these awful perfume dispensers in their cars note the tiger for the year of the tiger

Day 37 huanggang when you are using a porsche cayenne for your border crossing van thats just showing off1

Day 37 huanggang shenzhen skyline

Day 37 huanggang to hong kong

Hong Kong is one of the coolest places on earth. The drive to the airport is always amazing but is especially so this morning with dramatic and fast moving clouds with occasional bursts of sunlight. The natural setting is glorious and dramatic, hundreds of mountainous islands covered in verdant green rising out of the harbor. The cities and towns are built to work with the land, unlike the wholesale flattening of the hills that takes place in Shenzhen. The bridges that connect to Lantau island and Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) are brilliant – one each of suspension and cable-stayed – and the whole setting reminds me of a scale model too perfect to be believed. My camera stinks, so this is the best I could do.

Day 37 views of hong kong

Day 37 container ship

We arrive at HKG with less than two hours before my flight, far less than I normally allow. I know before I even get to the airport that there is no chance of getting better seats, not so late and not on the Thursday before CNY. Nevertheless, even though I checked in online last night, I head over to the United counter and chat up the very attractive lady at the counter (in Asia it is still OK to hire public relations personnel who are good looking – it is often part of the job description) and she tries every trick in the book to get me a better seat. Nothing doing, flight is booked solid. Oh well, I appreciated her efforts and gave her a business card (she didn’t believe that I’d been in Asia for 5 weeks with no luggage so I told her to check the blog), so if she’s reading this, thank you very much for your help!

Day 37 hkg entry hall

Day 37 hkg entry hall 2

I head through passport control and security, and get accosted by the eager young folks who are always there taking a survey of foreigners to find out how much time and money you spent in Hong Kong on this trip. I am in a hurry, but I take a minute anyway to talk to them. Yes, I absolutely love Hong Kong. I would move here tomorrow if my wife would come with me. I’ve been here many, many times and will be back again soon. It’s awesome and now I have to go.

Five minutes for a quick bowl of noodles and to buy some candy bars (paid for in 1 second with my Octopus card – love it). Then up and down the seemingly endless series of escalators with the train ride to the other terminal in the middle and on to the gate. It is very humid and pretty warm and HKG, like Shanghai Pudong, is built to be big and impressive which means by the time I get to the gate, it is now officially sticky uncomfortable. It is February, so I don’t think they have the AC on, but this not how you want to board a plane. The security is far tighter than the USA, with every bag searched.

I am in a aisle seat in Economy, which means the next 14 hours will only be mildly tortuous. My seat mates speak not a word and neither do I. Both sleep through the entire flight. Just as well as I’m not in the mood. United is sticking with the 4 movie format, but at least they are good – The Invention of Lying, Where The Wild Things Are, My One And Only, and The Informant! The food sucks and is even sparser than last time. Thank God for candy bars.

Land in Chicago exactly on time, and after a pretty thorough grilling by passport control, out into the airport. For some bloody reason you have to go back through security again, which in O’Hare is less than fun. Security in HKG is MUCH tighter than in the States, but nothing for it, so shoes off and laptops out. My flight to ROA is out of one of the commuter terminals, to one with no good restaurants. Lunch at McD’s. blech.

I sit down to read the Wall Street Journal Asian edition they gave me on the plane and wait the two hours for my flight. There is a great article on Chinese Intellectual Property law that I would love to be able to concentrate on, but instead I spend this time listening to an astoundingly annoying woman tell the lady across the aisle from her nearly every detail of her life and recent travel history, including how her underwire bra sets off the metal detectors EVERY TIME (I feel so much safer now knowing they actually work). I know this because despite the fact that she was about 100 feet away, her voice was SO LOUD everyone in the terminal heard her. At least when people in China are loud and obnoxious, they are all loud and obnoxious at the same time, so the result is sort a loud silence. They all just drown each other out into white noise. Oh, how I wish I were back in China.

Bumpy flight to ROA with the annoying lady talking only intermittently during the flight. I think she was airsick. Thank God for turbulence.

Finally, almost exactly 24 hours after I woke up, we land at Roanoke Regional Airport. Out into the cold and snow covered mountains. 24 hours ago I was in 80 F weather, now below freezing. Yipee.

Day 37 roanoke regional airport

Day 37 clear and cold at roa

It’s been a great 5 weeks, but when I see the family again, I know where I belong.

Happy to be home.