Doing business in China

I've had the opportunity to visit several areas in China, including Shanghai, Guangxi, and Hong Kong.

The stories you hear about doing business in China are often true. Each transaction, even with long-term partners/suppliers, can be a hassle. When testing out potential new suppliers, their translation of your brief often leaves room for improvement. People are cautious but friendly. I guess we are cautious but friendly as well.

What I have learned is that what initially appeared as ‘poker’ faces are now much easier to read. One long-term partner once mentioned that Chinese faces are like open books, and Japanese faces are impossible to read. That opened my eyes.

I have been fortunate enough to have had some very good experiences with business partners and really great people to work with. The lesser experiences, often coming from unsatisfactory testing, were never catastrophic. We often came back later to the same address to see if we were shown a ghost factory. Fortunately, that was never the case.

Funny moments were there as well, like arriving in a smaller town without good preparation and finding that nobody understands English at the taxi stand or in the train station. What do you do in the proverbial middle of nowhere if you can’t communicate with the world around you? Or what do you do when you are recognised as some famous British or American actor? You smile and laugh and accept the attention. All Westerns look alike, just like all Chinese look alike, right?