Tastes like chicken
February 1, 2010 by Chinatex
Y’all know that Chinatex is from Texas. Right down near the border in San Antone. Well, in Texas we like dogs and we have dogs everywhere. In fact, dogs are mans’ best friend. I don’t really agree with that one, but, i did have an old hound dog named Snoopy when i was a kid and he was a good old dog til he got run over by a car. So when i tell my friends back home that they really do eat dogs over here they can’t believe it and say things like “gross”, “that’s terrible”, “what does it taste like?” etc…. Then i have to explain that they are not eating the domestic dogs, that there actually is a dog farm, or lot’s of em, where they raise one kind of dog - just like cows - to be slaughtered and eaten. In Texas, we don’t believe in mistreating our animals, especially our dogs but the thought of raising dogs like chickens or cows or goats or sheep to be eaten doesn’t really bother me too much. In fact, Old Chinatex has eaten a little fried dog meat and it wasn’t so bad - although i don’t prefer it over good old Texas beef or barbecue. That leads me to my point. Y’all know that sometimes i can’t help but write about the interesting stuff that goes on over here in China, rather than boring legal mumbo jumbo. However, when a new law or proposed law is going to come out, i’m one of the first to let y’all know so that you can adjust your business accordingly. So, i was reading the paper today scanning for interesting information to share with y’all when i came across the following: ”Dog and cat meat - age old delicacies in China - could be off the menu in the food-loving nation under its first law against animal cruelty”. ”People who eat either animal, both of which are viewed as promoting bodily warmth” (i can think of other more pleasant things that promote bodily warmth), “could face fines of up to 5,000 RMB (US $730) and up to 15 days in jail if the law is passed”. I’ll keep you posted on the progress of this law, cause i wouldn’t want any of you having to call me from the local jail for mistakenly eating some dog meat. By the way, it doesn’t taste like chicken. As always, yeeha!! Chinatex
Entrepreneur of the Year
January 31, 2010 by Chinatex
Part of the fun of living and working here in this huge concrete jungle is that Old Chinatex gets to be a part of a lot of really cool stuff. It seems that every week and possibly every day, there is something new to participate in, not just as a bystander or paying customer but as an advisor, counsel or just a friend. Since I first came here 7 years ago and looked out my hotel window in the small city of Dongguan and counted 80 building cranes - just on one side of the city - I have seen similar and tremendous growth everywhere I look. While as an advisor to individuals, small businesses and multi-national corporations I most often find myself sorting out problems with doing business here in China as not enough people come to see me prior to entering this market. It can cloud your perspective and even result in the “I’m done with China” syndrome which affects most of us on a monthly basis. However, since I counted the 80 cranes, one thing has not changed - the Chinese peoples’ propensity to absolutely amaze me with the things they are capable of doing and achieving. I often tell people that Shenzhen, the small city of 15 million people feels like Silicon Valley during the late 90’s, except the scale is much larger and it seems to be built on lasting and fundamental economic principles (not carelessly funded by VC and hedge money) without a bubble in sight. For those of you that have not been here or are planning to come here, it is unbelievable the amount of pure entrepreneurial energy that courses through the veins of this city - on an almost 24 hour cycle.
Yesterday, I was honored to be invited to witness the launching of my friend Jame Guo’s new line of sailing yachts. Jame, a veteran of the components business and former resident of the city that claims to never sleep, was looking to have a sailboat made a few years ago. He went all through China looking at the supposedly best and most well funded shipyards and found an opportunity. While overseas joint ventures were bleeding money and producing substandard quality and local shipyards were just not experienced enough to handle the larger boats, Jame decided to build one by himself. Necessity it seems is still the mother of invention and in the sailing yacht business in China Jame Guo is the father. After a painful and hard working year spent in a small trailer outside of his factory, Jame launched the first Farnova 48′ yesterday. 
Picked it right up off the pier and carefully craned it into the waters of the South China sea. Chinese style with champagne and fireworks and a large crew of workers intent on protecting the hull from being pushed into the sea wall. So, here is a man who has been very successful in electronic components, he didn’t need to spend a year in a trailer and struggle with things like redesigning (and building) the below deck interior more than 4 times - until he got it right. He could of retired and invested his money in U.S treasuries (maybe not) and sailed off into the sunset. But, Jame 
like so many entrepreneurs in China, are driving the recovery in Asia and doing exactly what we used to do in the west. Invent, innovate, build and take calculated risks. Jame’s new Farnova 48′ is a beautiful and well made cruising sailboat and he has a dozen more lined up in his factory waiting to set sail. For more info you can check out his website: http://www.teammarine.cn/
I cannot explain how exciting it was to watch this man and his team realize a hard fought dream. I have seen teams win championships in different sports and many other similar successes but few have been as rewarding for me as joining Jame yesterday at the boat launch. As we countdown the days until Chinese New Year, one thing is certain - China will take a break to breath and relax and then afterwards hold on world because they are going to come out of the gates roaring in the year of the Tiger. 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
Badmitten
November 9, 2009 by Chinatex
Of course i know i spelled it incorrectly, but the first time i spelled it i didn’t even know that it was spelled badminton. Doesn’t make much sense as in Texas we always called it “badmitten”. In fact we only played this game once every few years at family reunions and picnics and usually beer was involved and it could get ugly as some inebriated and not so athletic relative fell on his big fat behind while trying to smash the birdie. That’s what we called em - birdies, we didn’t even know it’s called a shuttlecock and if we did we probably we would have laughed so hard at the name we wouldn’t have even got to playing.
That brings me to the point of this blawg post. Old Chinatex tried his hand at Badminton tonight and boy was it an awakening. I was going to write about one of my favorite subjects which is the hiring of chinese/taiwanese/hong kong managers by western companies and the company executive management trusting them to give legal advice just because they studied somewhere in the U.S. or the U.K. and speak good English. I realized that i didn’t need to waste my time when Old Dan Harris over at Harris & Moure took the words right out of Old Chinatex’s mind and posted it on his award winning China Law Blog. This gave me some time to try my hand at badmitten. Here is the link to the blog post.http://www.chinalawblog.com/2009/11/first_lets_kill_all_the_nonchi.html
Now back to badmitten! I now have an acute understanding why the Chinese are infatuated with this game. If you have ever watched them play it seems they get an inordinate amount of joy out of smashing that little birdie. I’m talking really smashing it and they get even more joy when their opponent or just the other person smashing it back to them, misses it. I can only imagine that they are thinking about their boss or husband or coworker or professor or who knows when they take aim at that little rubber head on the birdie and give it a resounding whack. So, tonight i played and thought about the rude taxi drivers, the clients who don’t listen to me and hire crooked managers anyway and say “but i trust him, he went to the University of Wisconsin”, and the bad service at restaurants and the noisy people in the elevators talking on their cell phones and a plethora of other unmentionables. Every time i took a swipe at that little birdie i imagined one of their faces - now i know why it is their national sport. With 1.6 billion of them, they have to take their frustrations out on something and those poor little birdies are the perfect foils for their anger.
So, if you hire a manager who went to the University of Wisconsin or some other school and professes to be an expert on China and international law and you trust him and then later you realize that Dan Harris and Old Chinatex were right, i suggest you take up Badmitten. As always, yeeha!! Chinatex
The IP shoe is on the Google foot
October 20, 2009 by Chinatex
In the country known for overt violations of intellectual property and where copying is not really considered unethical or taboo, it seems that the shoe of Intellectual Property is now on the other foot. The Chinese government has made a formal complaint on behalf of its writers and authors to end unauthorized copying and online publication of Chinese literary works – by Google. It seems that Google thought they could scan thousands of Chinese books into its searchable database without seeking permission or compensating the copyright owner. The recent article from the China Daily at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-10/21/content_8822335.htm and also below with my comments. The tables are indeed turning. As always yeeha!! Chinatex
Google violating copyrights, authors say
By Xie Yu (China Daily) Updated: 2009-10-21 07:49
Search engine giant Google is facing accusations that its employees, illegally and without permission, scanned Chinese writers’ works into its digital library, Google Books.
“Google’s infringement to Chinese authors is very severe,” said Zhang Hongbo, deputy director-general of China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS), the only domestic administration of written works copyrights.
Chinese government departments, such as the National Copyright Administration, will push the US government to handle the issue properly, considering Google is such a major force in the online world and has acted arbitrarily in this issue, he said. According to a rough estimate from CWWCS, nearly 18,000 books from 570 Chinese writers have been scanned by Google and included in its digital library, which is only open to netizens within the US borders. This was done without informing or paying most of the writers.
“So far, no writer we reached said he or she has authorized Google to do the scanning,” Zhang said. Google has not yet replied to the accusation. Its spokesman was not available for comment yesterday. Hmm, no authorization and nobody available to reply to the accusations. Looks like Google is learning from the Chinese.
Google has been scanning millions of books under US copyright since 2004. Under a tentative settlement with US authors and publishers, that will cover all books unless the copyright holders object. Google is in the final stages of reaching a settlement with two US copyright organizations, which brought copyright infringement lawsuits against the search company for its book-scanning project.
A US court has given the parties until early next month to revise their current settlement agreement and ensure its compliance with antitrust and copyright laws. According to the settlement offered by Google, authors who accept Google’s scan could get $60 per book as compensation, as well as 63 percent of the income from online reading. Readers of the books online would pay a fee for digital access to the book.
According to the settlement, if the author rejects Google’s right to scan, he or she should appeal before Jan 5, 2010. Authors should approach Google authorizing the scanning and get the compensation before June 5, 2010. But Zhang said this settlement is not acceptable to Chinese writers. Of course it’s not acceptable to Chinese writers.
“First of all, Google violated Chinese writers’ copyright. Actually this is a difficult issue and one for the lawyers to work out. Did Google violate Chinese copyright? It doesn’t make sense for them to set a deadline for Chinese writers to protect their interests. “Secondly, the company should show a clear attitude to admitting its infringement and then negotiate with Chinese authors sincerely,” he said.
The US often criticizes China’s inefficiency in protecting property rights, Zhang said. Indeed they do.
“But you see what their company is doing in China? Many of our writers are infuriated,” Zhang said. Zhang Kangkang, a prominent writer and also vice-president of the Chinese Writers’ Association, said she was “surprised” and “angry” at Google’s copyright infringement. “It’s one-sided agreement to scan the work without permission from the author. It is illegal to enjoy the writer’s work in the name of knowledge sharing,” said Zhang, whose books have been scanned by Google.
Chen Cun, another well-known Chinese writer who lives in Shanghai, said Google is “day-dreaming” if it wants to buy copyright from him for $60. “The price should be set by both sides. It is impossible to buy an object with your bid only,” he said. I love it when I hear Chinese speaking in reasonable business terminology and standards that we have been playing by for years. Yes Google is daydreaming and this could turn into a nightmare although Google has probably performed a financial risk assessment and made a strategic decision to violate copyright and sort it all out later. $60 dollars, you have got to be kidding!!
Google Books is planning to turn millions of books into electronic literature available online.
Google’s head of Print Content Partnerships in Britain, Santiago de la Mora, earlier said that Google is solving one of the big problems in the print world - that some books are pretty much dead in the sense that hard copies can no longer be found. “We’re bringing these books back to life, making them more visible to 1.8 billion Internet users in a very controlled way,” de la Mora said. Thank goodness for Google bringing these dead books back to life – perhaps they should be awarded the Nobel Prize. However, Google Books is facing big legal problems in the US, Europe and elsewhere around the globe over the issue of copyrights.
