Thugs and Goons

Posted on April 19, 2008 by WoAi

I need to point out firstly that this blog was never meant to be a political one, but it’s impossible to ignore the madness that has been unfolding in recent weeks.

In cities all across China, citizens are protesting outside French owned Carrefour stores following the violent protests in Paris when the Olympic torch relay passed through the French capital.  All over the country, activists are planning how they can take revenge on Carrefour and calling for Chinese people to boycott the stores.  I’ve even heard (unsubstantiated) rumours that some shoppers have been attacked by protesters outside Carrefour stores.  At the same time, CNN, the American news network is being criticised after one of its presenters, Jack Cafferty, referred to Chinese leaders as “a bunch of goons and thugs”.

I’ve been very supportive of China in recent posts, but I have to say, China, you can’t have it both ways.  Protesting against Carrefour just because it is French owned is as ridiculous as the foreigners protesting about Tibet.  And if you don’t like being called goons and thugs then don’t act like goons and thugs with this insane mob mentality which we last saw 3 years ago when all the Chinese were hot and bothered by the Japanese.

CNN and Jack Cafferty by the way, have since apologised and rightly so.

Posted in Current Affairs | 20 Comments

United We Stand

Posted on April 17, 2008 by WoAi

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So the Tibet issue drags on. To be honest, if anything, the pro-Tibet protests have united Chinese everywhere in ways the government here can only have dreamed about.

A Facebook group: “Tibet WAS, IS, and ALWAYS WILL BE a part of China” now has over 22,000 members signed up.

And rallies are being organised by overseas Chinese in several cities around the world, including Paris, where Jin Jing, a disabled amputee and athlete, defiantly held on to the Olympic torch despite protesters trying to wrestle the torch from her as she held on to it while in her wheel chair. (She’s since returned to China, a national hero.)

I have a small tip for protesters : if you want to gain support for your cause, perhaps avoid attacking helpless one legged women in wheelchairs – the imagery is just all wrong from a PR standpoint!

Posted in Current Affairs | 7 Comments

Hitting Back At The Protesters

Posted on April 16, 2008 by WoAi

Only yesterday I posted about the ridiculous situation regarding the global anti-China protests. So when I opened my MSN this morning, I was quite amused to see what every single Chinese contact (well, okay, except my Tibetan friends) has put as their MSN tagline ….. a well deserved great big “up yours” to the anti-China protesters.

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[Edit] Eleven’s phone number has now been removed.

Posted in Amusing, Current Affairs | 22 Comments

Jumping On The Band Wagon

Posted on April 15, 2008 by WoAi

Suddenly, protesting against China and China bashing seems to be all the rage.  All across the globe, the Olympic torch is being hijacked and ambushed along its route by demonstrators trying to snuff out the flame, apparently outraged by China’s crackdown in Tibet.  London, Paris, Argentina have all seen protests as the torch passed through the cities.

In order to protect the torch, Chinese military personnel have been assigned to guard the torch on part of the route but they have been labeled as “thugs” for dealing with protesters in a heavy handed manner.  I’m going to stick my neck out and go against the flow and say that if you want to protest, then that’s your right – hold up a sign or a banner, sign a petition.  But if you physically try to grab or extinguish the torch, break through barricades and run at the torch with a fire extinguisher, then I am sorry but you deserve to be physically prevented from doing so.

I can understand some exiled Tibetans being angry with the Chinese, but for the rest of them, do they really have nothing better to do?  Are you still going to be campaigning 20 years from now when it may no longer be fashionable to do so?  Do you even know where Tibet is?

I read with some amusement about George Bush’s security adviser Stephen Hadley, who went on TV this week to discuss Tibet but repeatedly confused Tibet with Nepal which I think just about sums it all up nicely!

Can we all just give it a rest!

Posted in Arrrrggghhh!, Current Affairs | 10 Comments

WoAi’s Getting Published

Posted on April 9, 2008 by WoAi

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No, my blog isn’t being turned into a bestselling book unlike the very talented Waiter Rant, but a while back I was contacted by Delius Producing Berlin, an “editorial and concept development service” who asked if they could use one of my photos to illustrate a book to be published this spring by National Geographic called “China – A Visual Adventure”.

It’s always been a dream of mine to one day become a photographer and although I’m not nearly talented enough to realise that dream, I’m quite excited about having one of my photographs published in a book.

I retain the copyright which means I’m free to publish the image here which will appear in the book, so here it is, and I’ll be getting a free copy in the post hopefully any day now.

Oh and there’s a nice story to this picture. I took it in November 2005 while on a trip to Beijing and never expected to see the man again, but a year later I bumped in to him again by chance and found out where he lived. 2 weeks later I was in Beijing again for business and this time I brought a framed copy of the print and went looking for him during my lunch break. Here’s a picture of him admiring the print which I gave to him and the expression on his face reminded me of why I love taking portraits.

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Posted in Photography | 36 Comments

Tipping Point

Posted on April 9, 2008 by WoAi

I have to say, a week in sunny Thailand was really a nice break from Shanghai – hot sunny weather, blue skies and sitting by the sea soaking up the sun.

Some things did take getting used to though.  It was for instance, much harder to spot where people were from because everyone was at least two shades darker than their usual skin colour.  I remember passing one guy at the airport, wondering what part of India he might be from just as he started speaking in his native Italian, oops!

Then there’s the tipping culture which always causes me problems when travelling.  In China, tipping hasn’t really caught on yet.  In the US of course, it’s expected and 20% is pretty common on top of the cost of any meal.  In Hong Kong, it’s customary to take all but the smallest of loose change (service is usually included already) and in Thailand, I have absolutely no clue.  But I did notice “tips boxes” everywhere, even at the book store at Bangkok airport which struck me as quite odd.  It’s not like I’d think “Sawasdee krub – and wow, I really love the way you took that 500 baht note and gave me back my 100 baht change, here, have a 20 for your troubles”!

Posted in Amusing, Travel | 10 Comments

Poo-ket

Posted on April 3, 2008 by WoAi

I’m away this week for our annual Asia regional conference which is held every year (that’s why they call it the annual conference, duh!) in a luxury south east Asian beach resort.  It involves some presentations from senior management, training for the junior staff as well as providing an opportunity for people from different countries to “network”.  And of course, it’s also a nice reward for the staff, including many of my own staff who have never left China before.

I’m staying at the Sheraton Grande Laguna on the Thai island of Phuket (pronounced Poo-ket, so be careful how you say it!). Laguna is a secluded area that also includes several other premium hotels and resorts. It’s the sort of place you would love to come to for a romantic get away, rather than a conference and training venue, but we manage, in between meetings, to have a dip in the pool and also the sea, enjoying the waves.

It reminds me a bit of the last time we were in Phuket for our 2004 conference. Some of you may remember, that was the year of the Tsunami that killed thousands. We were here in early December, just 2 weeks before disaster struck, so whenever I think back to that event, I am reminded of how it could so easily have been us.

Here’s a photo taken by one of my colleagues in December 2004 of the Starbucks in Patong, one of the towns on the island. I’ve also shown a photo I found online after the Tsunami, at exactly the same spot.

Before …..

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After …..

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Three and a half years on, I’m happy to report, things are very much back to normal and the hotels are all packed with mostly European, Russian and a few Asian tourists.  Interestingly I haven’t yet come across any yanks here.

Posted in Travel | 8 Comments

T5 vs T2

Posted on March 31, 2008 by WoAi

I’m from London and live in Shanghai, so it was interesting to see both cities open a new airport terminal last week, but with very different results.

Shanghai’s brand new terminal two opened on 26th March and apart from a few people being confused and arriving at the old terminal, things went without a hitch. I know this from first hand experience – my parents had the honour of flying out of the new terminal on Saturday, as Shanghai Airlines is one of the airlines that has already moved across from terminal 1 since their arrival from the old terminal on Monday.

By contrast, London Heathrow’s brand new terminal 5 opened the following day with chaos ensuing. Around 15,000 bags have been separated from their owners as many flights took off without the luggage loaded in the hold. Arriving passengers had to wait up to four hours for their bags to arrive. 67 flights were cancelled yesterday, around 37 today and the disruption is expected to continue into next week. According to this article, a total of 244 flights have now been cancelled from the new building from Thursday till Sunday. Check-in luggage is currently suspended, which means you can only fly with hand luggage or choose not to fly at all.

Among some of the reasons given are “computer glitches”, “unfamiliarity with the new building” and “difficulties getting staff into the building”. Very lame excuses not unlike the time last year I waited 45 minutes for baggage at Heathrow and the reason given was the “earlier than expected arrival of the flight” I kid you not that’s what they said!

I can understand teething problems on the first day, but surely that’s why you run tests prior to “going live”. The extent of the problems has completely floored me. I think I will be complaining less about China …. for the next couple of days at least. Well, ok, until tomorrow!

Posted in Britain, Current Affairs, Travel | 13 Comments

Too Many Teddies

Posted on March 30, 2008 by WoAi

Some of you may know my parents visited me this week.  Being a very important director with a very important role, I still had to work during the day to order my large team of executives and managers to do important tasks like buy me  coffee from Starbucks and go to the bank to pay my mobile phone bill.  So my parents had to stop by my office and wait for me to finish ordering people around before we could go for a very expensive meal (charged to the company of course).

During dinner, my father had only one question to ask about my office:

WoAi Senior: Son, why are there so many teddy bears in the office.  It’s an office, not a bedroom!

WoAi: [Sigh] Dad, you may have been born in Asia, but you’ve been away too long …

Posted in Amusing, This is how we do it | 12 Comments

Origami Banking

Posted on March 29, 2008 by WoAi

Things in China are improving every day.  It wasn’t long ago it was impossible for a foreigner to walk into a bank with RMB and come out with US dollars.  You’d see the exchange rate on the board, you’d go up to the teller, ask for US dollars and they’d just shake their heads and say no, or laugh their heads off and look at you as though you had just escaped from the asylum.

These days, any foreigner with a passport can walk into a bank and change up to 500 US dollars worth of RMB each and every day.  It’s such a relief because the Chinese currency is not officially traded and so, for example, when I fly home to London, I can’t just bring a wad of RMB to HSBC and convert it to pounds.

As I am going to Thailand next week for some very important and necessary meetings, I decided to go change 500 dollars this lunch time.

Even though there were only about 3 people in the entire bank waiting to be served, and about 20 staff standing around, it took about 20 minutes before it was my turn to be served.

I was presented with a form in Chinese to fill out.  The only thing I knew how to fill out was my name.  The teller pointed to another two sections and said I had to write something, once in “big” and once in “small”.  I thought he was saying it was for my name, so I started to write my name, first in BIG letters and then was preparing to write my name in small letters.  I’d obviously messed up the form (I later realised BIG meant the amount of US dollars in words, and small meant the amount in arabic numerals – oops!

The teller at that point gave up all hope of getting me to fill out the form and kindly filled in everything for me and then asked me to sign (he’d have saved a lot of time, and one wasted form if he’d done that in the first place!).

In addition to the  form I signed, he seemed to have a few other forms and stamped each form with not one, not two, but THREE different kinds of red stamps – a round one, a very narrow one and a more rectangular one.  Why on earth the forms needed 3 different stamps I’ll never know.

Then came the most bizarre part.  He took my form and folded it.  Not just in half, but also diagonally and in all directions.  At one point I was certain he was going to make the form into a paper airplane and fly it over to his supervisor sitting at a far away desk for inspection!  It is no exaggeration to say my form at this stage looked a lot like this!

Anyway, I got my American dollars with relative ease and the whole process only took about 50 minutes or so.  Phuket, here I come!

Posted in Arrrrggghhh!, Business | 14 Comments