Hornblowers
April 19, 2010 by Chinatex
China must have the loudest horns in the world. Now, I don’t know much about noise levels and decibals and other technical things like that, but, I do know what i hear – when I can hear. I’ve been thinking about a topic for my next blawg post for quite awhile and while I have had a couple of great ideas, I just couldn’t figure it out. You know that Old Chinatex likes to write about the law in China and other interesting stuff like that, but, if you read my blawg you also know that I like to write about China and the customs and habits which can help us all understand or tolerate the way things work over here. If you want to go to a blog site everyday and read about changes to the law in China and other intellectual stuff, I recommend you check out the award winning China Law Blog at http://www.chinalawblog.com/ which is written by Dan Harris and his associates. If you want to read interesting stories and anecdotes that should be useful and might be funny, check out my blawg at http://chntxlaw.com/blog/
So, I was thinking about horns in China and for those of you who have been here, you know that horns are not used in the same way as they are in the West. In fact, if someone beeped their horn in the same angry, prolonged, and aggressive way as they do here in China, in Los Angles, they would most certainly be shot. They don’t just give you a friendly toot to remind you that the light is now green, they lay on the mother like their life depended upon it which then starts a chain reaction of angry beepers all laying on the loudest horns on the planet.
I’m sure that when they design and build cars in China for sale on the Domestic market, whether it’s Ford, or Mercedes, or BMW, or Geely, they have a meeting to discuss horns and there is a typical Chinese automotive engineer type with the short sleeve white shirt, black pants with white socks and overly shiny black shoes that says: ”we gotta make these horns extra loud so that they Chinese will hear them.” The response inevitably is “how much louder” and the engineer says “what about 100% louder, because we are China and the Middle Kingdom and the biggest and best country in the world and we should have the loudest horns.” The decision makers obviously not wanting to lose their jobs by allowing wimpy horns or lose face to the rest of the automotive industry all agree and the horn blowing torture on Old Chinatex begins.
So I was thinking, as they create their own traffic jams by all trying to jump ahead of each other on the roads, why the Chinese don’t just wait for the light to change, or the person rudely stopped in the middle of the road talking on their cell phone to move on, or the taxi letting off it’s passengers to complete their transaction (which usually only takes about 10 seconds), or any of the million other reasons why they beep their horns, “why do they really lay on the horn”. It doesn’t seem that it works or the person whom is the brunt of the horn blowing cares, it only annoys the hell out of me. I am sitting in my office on the 12th floor of a premier office building in the Shenzhen CBD and I hear a cacophony of the loudest horns ever invented and the same goes for my apartment on the 32nd floor. Mosquitoes don’t even make it up to the 32nd floor, how the hell can the horns sound so loud and reach my ears while I am trying to sleep. I guess the simple answer is they just don’t give a hoot about anything else other than what is impacting their little world at that time and I wholeheartedly believe that this mentality is prevalent in everything they do. Now I am not talking about everyone, of course there are considerate and inconsiderate people all over the world, it just seems like with one and a half billion people that there are plenty here that just don’t give a hoot.
So just remember, when you are dealing with a factory owner or looking to invest in or acquire an existing business or conducting any other transaction and you believe that the person(s) you are dealing with “likes you” and “I can trust them” (Old Chinatex has heard it all) the way they lay on that horn.
As always, Yeeha!! Chinatex
Lunch
November 15, 2009 by Chinatex
I know this is supposed to be a legal blog and you might come to this site looking for intelligent legal dissertation, up to date changes in the dynamic Chinese legal system or some free advice, and while i do that when it’s real important, this is more fun. So, I decided to begin posting stories about my experiences (and my clients) which are often unbelievable but always contain bits of wisdom, like those mystery meat dumplings sold on the street corners in China. They will be posted under the heading Jungle Lessons and i hope you enjoy them as much as i do writing them. This is the first one.
The Chinese have a traditional way of greeting each other. They say “chi fan le mei you?” This means, “have you eaten?” They also say hello and how are you and long time no see and stuff like that, but, the traditional way to greet someone is by asking if they have eaten yet. This is unusual to say the least and often misunderstood by foreigners in China. There are many theories of where the greeting began and i won’t go into those – the most important thing is to understand how important eating is in the Chinese culture and psyche.
Many years ago, when i had been here for about a year and thought i knew a lot about China, i was driving through a district of Shenzhen (a city with 12 million + people) and it came to me why eating was everything in China. It was about noon and we were weaving our way through the throngs of people leaving their offices/factories, and the cars, taxi’s, buses, three wheeled gasoline powered tricycle things, and every other contraption known to mankind. Now, i wasn’t driving but i was in the passenger seat and my driver was in 5th gear going 30km per hour and the car was shaking and i kept wanting to reach over and down shift for him but i refrained and gritted my teeth until they started to disintegrate. It didn’t help that i hadn’t had anything to eat since that awful cup of Chinese hotel coffee and greasy fried bread stick that i had earlier that morning. So, i tried to get into that Zen state that has gotten me through some of the most uncomfortable situations and i looked out the window at the chaos that was unfolding around me.
Right when i was concentrating on my breathing, i looked down the road and thought i saw what looked like a buck naked cave man eating a coconut. ”I have taken this Zen thing to a completely new level” i thought to myself and looked away. ”Can’t be a naked cave man, surely someone would have taken him away or thrown a shawl around him or given him a fig leaf.” I looked back in the same direction just to see if i might have not imagined this and there he was, a completely naked cave man eating a coconut. He looked exactly like Tom Hanks in that movie where he is stranded on the island with the volleyball – not the fat Tom Hanks but the one after he had been there for a few years. As we approached, he was on the area that in most countries would be a sidewalk, but in China is actually a labyrinth of open manholes, electric scooters carrying propane, rickshaws loaded down with styrofoam, dangling high tension wires and an assortment of other wonders and dangers. He was indeed naked and brown, obviously from not wearing any clothes, and his hair was matted and dreadlocked, obviously from not having a haircut, and he was eating what looked like a coconut or some other thing with a hemplike exterior. Now in Borneo or Sumatra i wouldn’t have been surprised to see this phenomenon, but in Shenzhen China at noon on a busy work day – i was shocked.
The cave man walked through the crowd and no one even paid any attention to him. He just leisurely strolled along and the Chinese purposefully moved on their way to somewhere without noticing him. I wondered what they were thinking: “naked man – hmm”", “naked man – gotta get back to work”, “naked mand – time to eat”, ”that coconut looks good – i’m hungry”, “what’s a cave man?”. I asked the driver about the man and he said, “what naked man?” I said, “that one right there in front of the car” and he said oh, and i’ll never forget what he said next and you shouldn’t either because it’s the moral of this story, he said “where do you want to eat?” Well, i was hungry and i have been to many of the big cities in the world, but i have never seen a naked cave man walking down the street eating a coconut and i just couldn’t think about food right now. I said, “that man is naked, don’t the police or someone come to take him away?” He responded, “maybe he is crazy, now do you want Chinese food or McDonalds?”
I couldn’t let it go that quickly so i called a Chinese friend and told him what i had just seen, he said “he’s probably crazy, do you want to eat hotpot tonight?” Unbelievable is all i could think and i said i would think about it and call him later. We had passed the cave man and were rolling along in 5th gear when it hit me. They are obsessed with eating. Now i don’t know where it came from and don’t really concern myself with the roots of their hunger obsession, but i just then realized that eating consumes their mind and probably gets in the way of otherwise productive thought.
Having been in China for 7 years, it’s no longer a surprise to me when someone asks “have you eaten?” I now respond with a yes or no and ask them if they have eaten. I like to eat, especially big old Texas hamburgers and a good pizza and even some Chinese food, but it doesn’t consume most of my waking thoughts. So i started to think about other things like productivity and creativity and rationality and how they apply in China and i keep coming back to the cave man and the people around him that were singly focused on something other than his being naked walking down the city street. It has to be food. They are always thinking about food.
I haven’t done any research with focus groups or control groups or any groups for that matter, but i have looked around and observed and i have reached the non scientific conclusion that the Chinese are more concerned about eating than anything else. Even their obsession with money and saving face and smoking is far outweighed by eating. For those of us China veterans we know that trying to accomplish anything from 11:00 a.m. until 2 is next to impossible. I have even suggested that if anyone thinks about attacking China, they ought to do it during lunch because the Chinese will probably think, “look at that we are being attacked and overrun by aliens, where do you want to eat?” Note to aliens, I have given you this pearl of wisdom without sending you a bill, please wait until i am out of the country.
So, if you are thinking about doing business in this huge and burgeoning market or have done business here for years, you should understand the customs and psyche of the people who are and control this market. While they can do good work and are industrious and hard working and entrepreneurial and lots of other things that i won’t mention here, they are often distracted by some genetically coded obsession with eating. Plan your meetings accordingly, schedule factory/supplier/partner meetings first thing in the morning or mid afternoon (after they have eaten and slept). Bring candy and pass it out if you see their blood sugar meters dropping into the “your head looks like a bowl of noodles” zone. Don’t get frustrated, instead try and understand the things that make them tick and adapt to their ways, which you will never change in 5,000 years and i believe you will be more successful in doing business in China.
You won’t believe this part, but several weeks later we were driving through a completely different district in Shenzhen and i had reached another conclusion that the other gears didn’t actually work and that’s why we were in 5th all the time and who did we see – yes, the caveman. Naked as a newborn (with brown skin and pubic hair and dreadlocks) and this time he was eating a banana! A banana!! Even Hollywood couldn’t script this. Scene 2. Naked cave man walking down the street in Borneo, no let’s make it Shenzhen and he’s eating dumplings or noodles, no a banana this way it looks like he pulled it right off the tree. You’d think i wouldn’t be shocked but i was and i got excited and said to the driver, “look at that naked man he is the same one we saw two weeks ago isn’t he?” He said, “what naked man, we never saw a naked man………… are you hungry, where do you want to eat?”
As always, yee ha!! Chinatex
