This is China! blog

Friends in Shanghai last week asked me what I was going to be doing during the May holiday. “Ride the subway!” I answered brightly.

The first line of Suzhou’s subway opened this weekend to much fanfare. Speeches, huge helium balloons tethered to the ground, and fireworks displays all marked the occassion. The event put me in mind of the first train on the transcontinental railroad in America a hundred fifty years ago making stops at frontier towns. Everyone came out then to greet the newfangled contraptions. Suzhou citizens were no different.

The line is the first of five total that will lace the city. Apparently, after all five lines of the subway are completed in Suzhou – sometime in the next five or six years – the underground will connect with Shanghai’s own, creating a mass transit web between the cities by 2020.

My family and I thought that by waiting a day after the official launch the crowds would be thinner than on opening day. They weren’t. Worse, many of the local residents had little experience on subways, so getting through the electronic gates and from the platforms was torturous. Locals had no experience swiping their cards on the kiosks or feeding the machines the passes. Lines were also long at the electronic kiosks where passengers had to buy the subway passes. Two or three clerks at a time had to help people select destinations on the computer displays and inject their cash to retrieve the travel cards.

The couple stations we were at seemed not to have enough ticket machines. The trains themselves took about 60- to 70-percent the capacity of Shanghai underground cars; the platforms were narrower than Shanghai’s, as well. No matter the time of day on the Sunday during which we rode the train downtown and then back again to the Suzhou Industrial Park space in the cars and on the platforms was standing room only. The space constraints will likely make for many a grim rush hour.

The public center of Suzhou – Guan Qian Jie – a mile-long walking street bordered with shops, restaurants and and local retail outlets – was bustling. Restaurants were full and lines were long. From McDonalds to the noodle shop chains like Kang Shifu, consumers were munching their way to relaxation in the spring sunshine.

Nevertheless, there was a palpable sense of excitement in the air in and around the stations. Now, Suzhou had something mostly the largest cities in China had: an underground. As my wife gleefully said while we waited on the subway platform for the next train, “Suzhou isn’t just a little town anymore!”.

I type out this entry with index fingers. A few days ago a couple fingers got caught in a door that was closing too soon under absurd circumstances. Hence, I’ll be hunting and pecking the keyboard for at least another two months, three weeks, until finger nails grow back.

A recent Wall Street Journal article transported me back to the bandage-changing station at the Kowloon Hospital here in Suzhou. The hospital is privately owned by a Hong Kong group.

The nurse who changed my dressing was a battle axe, and managed to use the tweezers with which she was armed to such effect. She was heavy-set, with glasses, nearing the speed barrier of 40-years of age that seems to sour so many faces.

She was so barbaric in her attendance and devoid of empathy that I shouted at her through the pain she was uneccesarily inflicting to pay attention to what she was doing. She tore the bandages from my fingers without waiting for the peroxide to do its work, impatient to get back to text messaging on her mobile phone. One of the fingers began to bleed again.

I took the first new wrapping off myself, for her to redo, she had swaddled it so poorly. Admittedly, the doctor at the same hospital who had changed my dressings just two days before was careful and considerate, a real gentleman. The contrast could not have been greater.

The Wall Street Journal article discusses how China is suffering a dearth of skilled, educated labor able to manage in a service environment. Laurie Burkitt writes in the article: “In 2011, there were roughly 1.4 million more job openings than applicants, up from one million a year earlier, according to data from China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.”

A great deal of the problem has to do with rapid urbanization creating consumer markets for the few that should be staffed by the many who come from the countryside. Rural residents rarely have the opportunity to go to finishing school – anywhere in the world. So, job hopping and poaching are rife, while service levels remain relatively low across industries, including luxury, hospitality, and health care.

I devote an entire chapter of my book “China Inside Out” to the services dilemma in China. In my upcoming book “China Fast Forward” (Wiley, Spring/Summer 2012), I focus on the challenges the leadership has in staffing and training employees for the services outsourcing sector Beijing wants to grow.

And as for my demonic nurse: I hope – as Dante would have had it – she retires to the seventh circle of Hell, where former patients take turns changing dressings on her that reflect their own injuries, and changed in such a manner as she recalls the original incident. Again and again.

That’s how bad it was.

Chiang Kai Shek: the Early Years
Saturday, March 17, 5pm – 7pm

Come celebrate the first anniversary of the Suzhou chapter of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) with a talk by Jonathan Fenby on the early life of Chiang Kai Shek, followed by a reception hosted by the RAS. Mr. Fenby will trace the rise of Chiang from 1911 to 1937, against the backdrop of a country torn apart by feuding warlords, ruthless gangsters, greedy colonials and pugnacious political parties.

Mr Fenby is the author of the newly released “Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How it Got There and Where It Is Heading”. He is also author of a biography of Chiang Kai Shek and of “The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850-2009”. You can read what the Wall Street Journal had to say a couple days ago about his books on China here.

He has served as the Editor of the Observer, the South Morning Post and Deputy Editor of the Guardian. He was named a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000 and a Chevalier of the French Order of Merit in 1991.

Saturday, March 17, 5pm – 7pm. The Suzhou Bookworm, Gunxiu Fang 77, Shi Quan Jie. Purchase of Literary Festival ticket required for entry (50rmb); includes a glass of beer or wine.

RAS membership applications available at the reception, so be sure to collect your pennies to join!

Technorati Tags: china, expat life

Frank Langfitt, the Shanghai correspondent for the America’s National Public Radio, assured me a couple days ago the weekly radio program “This American Life” had expanded its profiles from – as called it – old white guys with gravelly voices (usually doing some sort of manual labor or intensive craft, I might add) to a younger set, Americans in their twenties and thirties. Apparently, the demographic of the listening audience (1.7 million, at last count) had shifted dramatically, predominantly to a younger age range with university educations and relatively liberal views. Good, I told him, pointing at myself: I hardly fit the OWGGV image (nor am I in my twenties or thirties … keep counting). Nevertheless, the two-hour long interview in a Shanghai bistro was great fun.

We ranged over topics that involved the shift in China’s industrial policy for foreign investors over the last ten years, with peppered with personal stories; the change in attitudes in Chinese society toward expats; innovation with Chinese characteristics; whether the ascendance of China means the descent of America; as well as my own plans for my future in China.

I’m not sure if and when the program will air to the million-seven that apparently listen to the weekly profiles on American radio; however, it was indeed an honor to have been asked to interview nonetheless.

Technorati Tags: china, expat life

I recently had a conversation with a young(er) American expat who has been living in China nearly ten years. I had told him about the talk – The Warlord and the Engineer – the Royal Asiatic Society (Suzhou branch) had hosted a few weeks before. The remarkable thing about the talk was how the Danish Engineer Robert Christensen and adviser to the warlord Zhang Zuolin had meticulously recorded his life in journals while he lived in China during the 1920s, had cataloged hundreds of photos and had captured the times on film, as well. The expat and I agreed those of us living in China were experiencing a special period in its history – call it “The Goldilocks Time”, when wealth seemed to flood Chinese streets. One day, the rapid-development period will all be a distant memory. Who amongst us will be the chroniclers of this time?

The expat admitted he had desperately few photos of himself and his time here in China, despite a decade’s worth of experiences. I personally have a bunch of photos, the blog, the books I’ve written. And now that I have a son, recording the ordinariness of our lives here has become more important to me.

I told the expat that for me, while watching the photos and film footage of 1920s Mukden (Manchuria), what interested me most was not the foreigners frolicking in the foreground, but the locals toiling in the background against backdrops that are gone forever.

It’s tough to gauge just how precious one’s everyday existence may be to future generations.

Technorati Tags: china, expat life

I was recently privileged to be invited to give the keynote speech to the graduating class of 2011 at the Suzhou-Singapore International School. Two charming and pleasant young ladies, 11th graders, showed me around the school before the graduation ceremony last week Friday afternoon. I’d never been to the new, much larger school before, and was surprised how huge, populated and busy the School was. I was also surprised how largely Asian the School was, as well. I’ve had and have Western friends who send their children to the School, and simply presumed the school population was more heterogenous. That said, my tour guides before the graduation program were from Australia and Malaysia. Of course, the school has a large South Korean population – nearly 40%, I’ve heard said. Of course, there were a lot of Singaporeans, as well as a smattering of Japanese. Westerners seemed about 20% of the make-up of the school, split between Americans and Europeans.

The ceremony was charming and inspiring. I haven’t been to a graduation in years, and found the speakers – faculty and students – thoughtful and funny. Of course, I didn’t get some of the inside jokes, as I don’t know the schooling system and the international certifications for which they have to work so hard to acquire.

After the ceremony, during the mixer, an American who seemed new to the scene echoed a thought I had while reading the program for the day. Inserted into the simple bi-fold was a list of ALL the universities to which the graduating seniors had been accepted. As students accepted their diplomas from the headmaster and received a shake from the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the school the master of ceremonies called out the name of the college or university the student would be attending. Easily 95% of the students were going on to University. The American with whom I’d chatted after the ceremony noted that in the States the usual number of people going on to 4-year school is about 30% – less in some parts of the country.

Nevertheless, all the students whom I met and with whom I chatted were shy, self-effacing and gracious – even if they were going on to Cambridge the following academic year.

You’ll find a transcript of the keynote speech I delivered at the ceremony, which seemed to have gone over well with students, faculty and parents alike.

Many of you are probably wondering who I am and why I am speaking today. Someone jokingly told me the School had originally invited President Barak Obama. However, he was unable to attend. Disappointed, one of the School staff saw me walking down a Suzhou street a few weeks back and figured, “He’ll do!”; though, they did admit later, they would have preferred a stand-in for the president who had a full head of hair.

I need to ask you all an important question: what are you going to do TODAY about the 150 million people within a day’s drive north of here who do not have enough water to drink, cook with or farm with? The largest drought in more than 50 years in Shandong province will turn China into a net importer of grain for the first time ever in its history. In Zhoushan, near Ningbo, just a two hour drive from here, people only have access to water five hours each day. The first and second largest lakes in China are becoming grasslands and mud flats, putting millions of Chinese fishermen out of work. Water levels were so low in Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces last year that 90% of hydroelectric dams in the region were shut down.

You all, the graduating class of 2011, are what I call the Tipping Point class. The Tipping Point is the threshold beyond which great events come together to define people and societies. You are at the threshold of an adult world fraught with some of the greatest challenges ever faced by humankind. It will be up to your generation to meet the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities the future will present us all.

In my book, China Inside out: 10 Irreversible Trends Reshaping China and its Relationship with the World, I talk about how China is at the LEADING EDGE OF HISTORY. Now, what does that mean, LEADING EDGE OF HISTORY? It means that though China may be amongst the first to experience these environmental and resource pressures, MOST OF THE REST OF THE WORLD IS FOLLOWING IN ITS PATH.

The CFO of microchip maker Intel recently asked me over dinner in Chengdu what I thought the most critical trends are right now at work molding China and affecting all our societies. I told him and the executives at the table there were FOUR trends in particular:

• the rapid development of China’s middle class;
• increased pollution of the land, water and air;
• ballooning resource consumption rates;
• and a rapidly aging population.

The rapid rise of China’s middle class approach to consumption and the society’s massive use of natural resources is based in a model 250 years old, called the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution model assumes that the earth has an infinite amount of natural resources to take out of the ground to be made into products; another Industrial Revolution axiom is that we have an infinite amount of air into which to blow our carbon dioxide when burning coal for electricity; the world view assumes we have an infinite amount of water with which to irrigate our farms, manufacture our products and drive our power plants, amongst other presumptions of about the wealth of the earth.

Five days ago in Shanghai, I explained to a group of top executives from TOTAL, a French energy group that whereas about 600 million people in the West have been happily consuming and polluting the last sixty years; now – if we include India – another 3 billion people are rushing into the party. It is THE SPEED OF THE RUSH AND THE SIZE OF THE CROWD coming assuming modernity that have created this Tipping Point in human history. The rapid modernization of China has compressed into 30 years major environmental and social issues that took the West 250 YEARS to arrive at. China though – because it has so many people on a relatively small amount of land with few natural resources of its own remaining – has rushed past the West into the future. And make no mistake: other countries are following behind.

America, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and others are beginning to grapple with the issues I’ve described. I hope this generation graduating today will consider the challenges posed to the members of their society – and to their families – and consider the opportunities that are opening up that intend to build a better world.

Great opportunities are opening in energy production industries like wind power, solar power, coal gasification, biofuels and even nuclear power: materials engineers, civil engineers, safety inspectors, environmental lawyers, biochemists and geneticists will increasingly be in demand. Energy efficiency policies in China and throughout Asia will create new industries in the building construction sector: in materials development, sustainable living architecture, and in heating and ventilation self-sufficiency, in gray water treatment and more. China in particular will develop institutions that for the first time in its long history will care for the elderly, the disabled, and those made redundant after all the cities are built and the roads laid, to help them many of them feel – if not actually become – useful and valued citizens of their societies.

I will finish with the story of a young Chinese woman, someone I am proud to call a friend of mine. She is a professional, born and raised in Shanghai, who works in a British professional services firm. When she turned 25 years old two years ago, she threw a special birthday party for her friends. She invited more than two hundred young Chinese professionals – and myself – to the party, which she hosted in a renovated warehouse on Suzhou Creek. She told the guests in her invitation that she did not want us to give her gifts for her birthday. Instead, she wanted us to donate at least 100rmb each to her favorite charity: the ONE EGG A DAY foundation, which would take the money to buy eggs to provide children in the poorest villages in China the only protein many of them would have each day.

She also invited eight other Chinese charities to the event and gave them space and time to display the services and products they offered, all of which helped the Chinese people who were not as fortunate as she, and to help the society at large to help those the government was not able to support. By the end of the evening, she had raised more than 32,000 rmb.

THIS YOUNG LADY WAS ONLY A FEW YEARS OLDER THAN THOSE OF YOU GRADUATING TODAY. I challenge any of you to contribute as much or more to society during your entire lifetimes as this young lady did in one evening of enlightenment.

I challenge you, Class of 2011, to do more than consider narrow career options for your future, to look outward from the protective cocoons of adolescence you are leaving to consider the issues our world, our societies and our families are increasingly confronted with. I challenge the Tipping Point graduates to make this a better, cleaner, safer world than the one into which you had been born.

Personally, I cannot think of a generation better equipped than the group sitting before me: international in outlook and experience; technologically savvy; related to each other and to a foreign environment through a sophisticated network of adaptation. You all, like my Shanghai friend, have it within each of you to become leaders in your own societies or even in foreign lands.

And if there is anything the future will require of us all, it is leadership of a different kind, in a world we can scarcely imagine.

Thank you.

Technorati Tags: expat life

Where else but at the next gathering of the Royal Asiatic Society in Suzhou can you step into the hidden world of China’s imperial palace in its last days a hundred years ago to hear about the rampant corruption, grand conspiracies and uninhibited sexuality that closed the chapter on China’s last dynasty? Published now for the first time, the controversial memoir of Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse, Décadence Mandchoue, paints an alternately shocking and lyrical portrait of an empire in its final days. Derek Sandhaus, chief editor of Earnshaw Books, and author of Tales of Old Peking and Tales of Old Hong Kong, discusses his resuscitation of the original manuscripts of the book, which, if true, provide an account of the Empress Dowager and her inner circle that can only be described as intimate.

Sunday, April 24, 2011, 4pm. The Suzhou Bookworm, Gunxiu Fang 77, Shi Quan Jie. 50 rmb for members; 70 rmb for non-members. Includes one glass of wine or beer.

The Suzhou Bookworm will take participants behind the bamboo curtain that separates North Korea from the rest of the world this weekend Sunday, April 10, at 2pm. In his talk, Journey to the North, Simon Cockrell will discuss the hidden lives of one of the few countries untouched by western culture. An exhibition on The North Korean people is being displayed all week. Tickets on sale now, prints also available to purchase at the Bookworm. The Suzhou Bookworm, Gunxiu Fang 77, Shi Quan Jie.

image credit: suzhou bookworm

Great fun was had by all forty-plus attendees of the inauguration of the Royal Asiatic Society in Suzhou Sunday evening, 6 March 2011. Peter Hibbard, President of the Shanghai branch, and Robert Nield, President of the Hong Kong branch, ushered in the new chapter in Suzhou after a charming talk by local legend Tess Johnson, who read from her autobiography about the China she lived through 30 years ago.

You can read about the entire gathering at Chelsea Girl’s blog, on the Telegraph’s site. (Actually, most of the fun, it should be said, was had after most people had left and the half dozen of us remaining polished off more of the house red. The remnants of the Shanghai contingent still managed to stow a bottle for the long ride home.) ;-’)

Excellent time. Excellent group. Looking forward to realizing the possibilities.