Mr. Princeton came to visit us in Ningbo, where he managed to convince me to meet with him in Shanghai so that we could make a short two-day trip to Suzhou. We took a hired car, also known as a “Black Card” illegal cab. It was a long drive from Shanghai to Suzhou, and our cab driver actually got lost when we arrived near the city. He had to chase down another cab to hand us off to them. You will see this often in China—basically, ad hoc subcontracting. We had paid almost a couple of hundred dollars to the original cab driver who then paid the subcontractor cab driver a couple of dollars to finish the trip.
Mr. Princeton and I were on our way to see the grand opening of a soil treatment factory. The company was started by two Canadian engineers, Mr. Chemistry and Mr. Civil. The goal of the project was to create a system to process waste soil back into soil making it once again usable.
They had a launch day in Suzhou on May 19 and we had chance to go. Suzhou is a very beautiful city and there we stayed in a hotel shaped like a giant flying saucer in the middle of nowhere. This was where they had their launch party, and a bunch of government officials came to the launch. At the launch, we met one of the “Party Engineers” from among a small number of highly respected engineers, all of them extremely old, in their 70s and 80s.
The press conference was in the morning. Instead of a ribbon cutting, they had a device that was a beach-ball-sized glass orb. When they all touched the orb at the same time, a giant LED panel notified the audience in glowing letters that the place was officially open.
The Chinese company the Canadian company with which it had partnered took the lead in both the press conference and proceedings. While everyone was speaking Mandarin, Mr. Civil, the VP of the company and its Canadian representative at this event, gave quite a good speech in English, which only a handful of people likely understood.
This example shows that language is extremely important if you wish to swim with Chinese sharks. So much was happening in which Mr. Civil was not able to take part. If you are planning on doing business in China, make sure you know the language, or at least have a very good translator.