2010-03-17 Guan xi and roast duck (Rick post 11)

We began the day our day bright and early at 6:30 a.m. to video conference with members of SXU's Business Student Association due to the 12 hour time difference between Chicago and Beijing. I hope those guys appreciated it because I needed more sleep!

After our conference, we visited ABB China, a branch of a huge global company specializing in power and automation technologies. President Zhongdan Wang took time out of her busy schedule to meet with us personally and went on a tour of the micro circuit breaker manufacturing facility.

Madame Wang was one of the most interesting businesspeople we met on our trip. Female company presidents are not common in China and we learned about the effort she had to put in to succeed in a traditionally male-dominated world.

It was easy to see why Madame Wang rose to the top. ABB's China branch is profitable and productive. Interestingly, Madame Wang had already retired from her position as president a few years ago, but decided to return to work.

Our last company visit was Allied Pickfords. Allied Pickfords is one of the largest moving companies in the world, but Scott, our contact there, said its presence in China is actually rather small.

Scott, our contact there, is a British expatriate and candidly spoke about what it takes to manage a company in China. In addition to giving us an outsider's perspective on the ins and outs of Chinese culture, he gave us some valuable tips for doing business there. Scott stressed that guan xi, or good social networks, is crucial when dealing with government officials and it can take a long time to build up relationships with important people. Although outright bribes will result in big trouble, building these relationships often requires annual gifts of cigarettes and expensive whiskey - that's just how things work. Scott said his driver, though one of the lowest-paid people at Allied Pickfords, has incredibly good guan xi connections and is thus one of his most important resources for navigating China's complex bureaucratic landscape.

Scott said Chinese shipping regulations comprise about four pages, which are filled with gray areas and often subject to interpretation. Additionally, he said different regions have all kinds of different rules for transporting cargo, which makes for headaches on his end. This makes guan xi doubly important in case of any mistakes or legal issues.

I think guan xi is one of the most important lessons I picked up on this trip because it truly is a concept that transcends cultural borders. I am often impressed with how my own boss gets things done by using his own social network. He has a good reputation in our field and has worked hard to maintain good relationships with colleagues, so he has a very broad network of people to reach out to when he needs to get something done. Again; it's not what you know, it's who you know.

That evening, we ate at the famous Beijing Shuangjing Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant. Adorning the walls were huge photographs of famous officials such as Mao Zedong and Henry Kissinger dining at the restaurant. Peking duck is a truly amazing culinary experience and we all loved it. The duck is cooked to perfection with crispy skin, and I think it was the best thing we ate the entire trip.

On a side note, Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my friends back home. I found probably the only bar in Beijing offering Guinness. I drank one and thought about how odd it feels to go from the South Side of Chicago to a place on the other side of the world where no one knows or cares why I'm wearing a green shirt on March 17.