Business or Pleasure? – Beijing & Yentai, China

Business or Pleasure?
Beijing & Yentai, China

Leave the moldy ruc sac behind, a briefcase is placed in my hand. Jeans with holes in and old T-shirts, discarded. A quick visit to the silk market, Beijing’s haven of fake designer goods, and along with my silk-lined suit – tailor made in Hoi An, Vietnam, – I know I look the part.

Ah, the extremes of travelling. Twenty-bed dormitory room substituted for a suite at a flash hotel in Shanghai. Cramped, dark, smelly 14-hour sleeper bus, substituted for Air China seats. Lonely Planet cheap restaurant recommendation substituted for 5-star oriental dining. Sure there were more, but I think F.I.F.A only allows three substitutions per game. (Side-tracked, can’t believe we didn’t beat Finland. Finland, for christ sake! Bring back Venables and his Arthur Daley camel hair coat.)

So I find myself pulling the wool (or should that be duvets?) over peoples eyes. And not just any people, Chinese people. I have flashbacks to the times I’ve been ripped off as a backpacker. AAARRRHHH, sweet revenge. And not just any Chinese people at that, Chinese business people, with years of experience. Poor bastards, if only they knew. Maybe they did! Oh no, paranoia.

I’m a bedding buyer from a fictitious company in England. I even have the business cards to prove it. (They should have known, anyone can get any business card they want made up in China. You can be a policeman if you want.)

My Chinese friend is the middleman, dealing with the Chinese end of my business. He actually is a real buyer. He invited me to visit the manufacturers because when the Chinese see a foreign face, a foreign buyer come all the way from England just to visit their factory (we laid it on real thick), they really throw out the red carpet (or red duvet). And we can take back as many bedding, duvet, pillow cases and throws samples as we can carry. Actually it worked so well that we couldn’t carry them all in the end. They had to be express-delivered to my mate’s office.

It was a long few days. I could start to appreciate why business class exists and why business people stay in over priced hotels. Up at 6am, 8am plane to Yentai, met by the factory at the airport. Driven one and a half hours to the factory, introduced to everyone, head of design, head of sales, the vice manager, and the man himself, Mr Mao, the president of the country (thought he was dead!) No, only joking, the main man himself, the Managing Director.

The factory employed about 200 people, and a huge room is put at our disposal. Maybe 150 duvet covers are shown to us. Now to me a duvet cover is a duvet cover, but we had worked out a scheme. If Ming pointed at the duvet cover it meant he wanted that sample. At which point I would go into over-drive on appraisal. On the other hand if no pointing was involved, negative comments would come out. Needless to say, we messed up a couple of times, but what the hell, what’s a few extra duvet covers between friends? As long as they couldn’t tell…

Prices, timings, and the European quota were discussed (in at the deep end!). We even made recommendations on design changes (“Can I have a picture of a large-breasted blond on that one?”). Business cards were exchanged. I had been briefed on this: never offer a business card until you are given one. I’m too important to offer mine first. Then you must take it with two hands, and offer yours in return with two hands, the print facing them so they can read it.

Then off to lunch. Yentai is a coastal town so seafood featured heavily, and damn, was it good. Maybe four types of fish, king prawns and fried vegetables and pi jiu, a local beer. We managed to skirt the usual lunchtime or anytime appetizer Mi jiu, a very strong clear whiskey, by saying we had to attend other meetings. I just didn’t want to fall on my back and crumble in fits of drunken giggles and let it out that I was only a humble backpacker.

I’d read about Chinese business meetings and lunches. They can extend for a good few hours, and toasting is obligatory almost anytime anyone picks up a glass. So we found ourselves saying “Cheers” maybe 10 or 12 times, with little speeches. I managed to avoid the speeches, no Chinese see. And get this, when glasses are clinked the fools try to get the glasses as low as possible, sliding them across the table even. And if “Gambay” was as much as whispered, even remotely, by anyone, which it frequently was, the whole glass has to be drained in one. Business, Chinese-style. I don’t know if it’s to get the clients drunk to make rash choices, or just pure hospitality. But when we returned to the sample room, pricing was heavily discussed. A tour of the factory, another short meeting with the M.D., then all handshakes and we were out of there.

Cigarettes are lit up. Ming was ecstatic, he’d never had so many samples before. We left with perhaps three boxes, maybe 60 samples. It was about 5pm now, and an hour and a half back to the hotel, where another manufacturer was awaiting us. This guy was quite a close friend of Ming’s, so the pretence wasn’t as pressured. He dealt in bed throws. We go through the same exercise, then it was off to dinner; we go through the same exercise at dinner. Fantastic fish, numerous toasts and “Gambay’s”, then back to discuss prices. It was now around half past 11. Think we came close to placing an order for a whole container (2000 pieces). It was $26 a bed throw, we would buy at $22, but it didn’t happen. Pack up and off to bed.

I’m caught off guard the next morning at 9am by the next manufacturer when I open the door to my room. He’s looking for Ming. “Mix up on the rooms,” I tell him, “Ming is in the lobby.”

He vanishes, and I tell Ming on the phone that someone is looking for him. Another power breakfast, then off to the factory. The design room, we have been beaten here by other buyers. Marks and Spencer buy from here (I thought their business was on the slide?), and all the best samples have gone. Taking second-best we retire to another factory. Here we have better luck with duvet covers. The head of design invites us to lunch, but we politely decline and leave the factory. The export agent who has been driving us around in his car invites us to visit his offices and then to lunch. There’s no getting out of this one. Besides, did we really want to turn down another feast on fantastic fish? So it’s yet another round of great food and “Gambay’s”.

This time there are about eight of us. We have our own private Karaoke room in the restaurant. The TV is on, but thank god no Karaoke. The table is round; I have the chair facing the TV – this is the guest’s chair, the most important chair at the table! I’m offered everything first, and I have to try all the dishes first. And when I raise my glass to drink, everyone else does the same, Arrrrh, power! The person to my left, the export agent, actually has a spare set of chop sticks to serve me with! (What the hell’s going on?) Fit to burst from too much food, our hosts want to take us on a tour of their town. (Think they were hoping we were going to place a large order?)

A car, a blacked-out beast of an automobile, and driver are provided. Doors are opened, umbrellas used to shelter us from the rain for the 10-pace dash to the car. Hazard lights flash; this apparently means, “I’m driving fast” in China. And we are off.

A tour of the docks, boats to Korea, a quick look at the rain-soaked beach. “Come back in summer,” they tell us.

Then they want to take us to the most easterly coastal part of China. It was about an hour away, almost dark by the time we arrive, but what a great place. A spit of land, raging seas all around. This spot in China sees the beginning of each day first. The Emperors believed it was a mystical place, the sun rising out of the ocean. There are huge statues of them gazing out over the Yellow Sea. Keeping an eye out against invasion, no-doubt. If anyone could land a boat on this shore, they at least deserve a cup of weak Chinese tea before being offered up to the Gods.

Darkness envelops us. There’s a quick round of flash-assisted photos, then back in the motor. Sweeney style(Starsky & Hutch, for you Yanks), back to the airport.

Enough pleasure for one day, back to business. Us bedding buyers had a plane to catch.