Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

2009 China and Hong Kong

I’d gone to Hong Kong once before, in 2009, so this was officially my second visit to Asia. You might wonder why it took so long for a Chinese person to return to China. From the time I was young, I’d been quite sickly, spending a lot of time going to the ER over a cough or a runny nose or slight fever. At the first sign of any kind of trouble, my dad would take me or carry me to the nearest hospital and it was happening every week, every month, maybe four or five times a year, and it would happen at the worst time. Every year since I was five, until I was 27, my parents had been trying to get me on a flight to visit China. It was as if there was some curse; there was always something getting in the way. Either they would book a ticket and have to cancel because I was sick or someone else was sick or something was happening, or I was not allowed to go for some other reason. Finally, in 2009, it occurred to me what the problem was. The problem was my parents; they were just so anal about everything, whether it was a slight cough or runny nose or headache or whatever, they would cancel the flight for me and say, “No, you can’t go.” In 2008, after working out at the Y with Rollin, my best friend, we were leaving in Rollin's car and I got a call from Raymond, who said, “Oh my god Danny, tickets to China or to Hong Kong are 900 Canadian.” And I said, “What!? This shit’s insane!” So at that time I was working a full-time job at OANDA and I had money and on the spot I said, “Here’s my credit card. Just book us all the tickets. We’re going, all three of us. I don’t care...I don’t care.” We booked a flight for May 2009 for near the end of December, and I ended up in China.

All along, my parents were just so uptight; it comes back to what my aunt taught me: “if you ever want to accomplish anything in life, Danny, just don’t tell your dad about it.” She was right. I finally landed and got into China in 2009. It was as though a long losing streak was finally broken. The moment my parents found out that I had tickets already booked, they immediately booked their own tickets for China separately, but I told them, “OK, look. You guys can come and I can’t stop you from coming, but you guys have to take care of yourselves, your own accommodations and stuff in Hong Kong and we’ll meet in China because I want to have a good time before you guys arrive.” So they said, “All right, all right. Don’t worry. We’ll be in China and when you’re ready, just come on over.”