China really means business

A very Happy Easter to all of you. I hope the holiday break has energized you and cleared your mind for more of the same struggles in the months ahead. I found myself spending a whole week with my family in China, visiting five major cities in one hectic run.

Now, I need a vacation from my vacation. My wife found this budget tour that offered a week of China for just about $500. Well, one lesson we relearned: you get what you paid for. Put another way, there is no such thing as a cheap tour, which I will explain later on.

My disappointment with the tour arrangements however, was more than made up for by China itself. The country and its people are really amazing. I felt a strange kind of pride in being Asian of partly Chinese origin. This was my second trip to China, the first being in 1982 or thereabouts. But what I saw last week is a brand new China. Not all of it is positive, the increasing traffic jams for instance, but on the whole, it gave me hope that it is possible to develop economically and care for your people’s welfare as well.

The China I saw 20 years ago was struggling and the people not as happy and self-confident as today. Infrastructure at that time was poor all you could see is this vast number of humanity in standard blue (or gray) Mao jackets riding in bicycles all over the city. The leading if not the only store where you could buy some things to bring home was the Friendship store. They also had a special currency for foreigners, and we couldn’t use the regular one used by the locals.

Today, Beijing could stand proud as a world-class capital of a world power. They have cleaned up the city so much that one wonders what kind of garbage collection system they have in place. Given that their population is several times bigger than ours, I was simply in awe at how they are able to house them decently and provide them with the essential services. Traffic jams seem unavoidable in rush hours but they do manage their traffic well. Chinese drivers drive like us, but our tour guide commented they take their traffic rules seriously.

What impressed me most with the Chinese cities I visited is the road infrastructure. Everything from elevated highways through Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing and excellent expressways leading to Nanjing and Shenzhen are now in place. Transport infrastructure like mass transit rail and subway are in place. And they are building more. In fact, I noticed a building boom all over China – from massive buildings and soon, an Olympic village a few miles from the Great Wall. They are also rebuilding the face of Beijing’s inner city, tearing down old decrepit structures to give way to more efficient and more modern buildings.

I touched base with old friends from the First Quarter Storm who got stranded in China when Marcos declared Martial Law. Now bureau chiefs of CNN, NBC and ABC, they tell me that life has indeed changed greatly in China and the pace of change is faster still. Now I understand why their GNP is rising eight percent or more a year on a bigger base and we can barely make 3.5 percent.

Having taken the capitalist road did not mean losing their socialist values. They seem to still care for the welfare of every citizen, although the problem of their government is how to muster the finances to provide for all the basic needs. Housing, for instance, is no longer practically free. They are only now being introduced to the bane of us all, taxes.

Still, if I were an investor choosing between China and the Philippines and I didn’t have ties to either, China will win hands down. They have a government that works. One’s sense of personal security is stronger in Beijing than in Manila. And they have taken care of the basics, like infrastructure. It is obvious that if we even want our feet in the door, we have to work feverishly on our infrastructure first and foremost.

I didn’t get to see the rural areas but I can imagine they have their agricultural sector humming to feed 1.2 billion people. Food is excellent in China as we all know. And cheap, if you manage the language barrier enough to eat at places where ordinary Chinese eat. In fact, even in the classier places in Shanghai and Beijing, food costs are reasonable. I paid the equivalent of less than P1,200 for a whole Peking duck plus a plate of fried rice.

The one major problem they have is language. There are not enough Chinese who speak good enough English for basic communication. I was surprised that not one of the clerks in the front desk of our hotel in Beijing spoke a word of English. The way things are these days, full world power status means speaking the international language. But, I am told, they are working hard at this. Soon enough, there may be more Chinese speaking English well than Filipinos, at the rate we are losing our touch.

China and its people simply energized me. You can feel the energy emanating from the country and people the moment you land on Chinese soil. The entrepreneurial spirit had been unleashed. And because they have a government that understands how to manage that, they have a country that works. Of course they are not a democracy the way we understand it. But we did have an authoritarian regime once and that didn’t do us much good either.

Maybe, just maybe, if we toned down our kind of all consuming self centered politics for a moment and really got down to business, we can manage an economic take off. China was just where we were 20 years ago, probably even worse. But they managed a take-off and are now cruising at 30,000 feet. I don’t have to tell you where we still are.

Cheap tour

Now a few words about our cheap tour. It wasn’t cheap, after all. It was badly organized, characterized by pressure selling of optional tours to the point that our tour guide refused to bring us to our hotel unless we bought one. In Nanjing, we spent 45 minutes sitting in a bus haggling and arguing with the guide. Feeling hijacked, we had to give in.

We also had to endure two sales presentations of a Chinese ointment that is supposed to take care of burns. The bizarre demonstration involved the sales presenters touching a glowing red hot iron chain with their bare hands. The foot massage, according to my wife, was not bad at all, though.

Only one hotel can be considered good. One was passable and two others, including the one in Beijing were downright deplorable. My two daughters had to evacuate their room in Shanghai the night we flew in because it smelled of a dead rat. They had to squeeze in our room because the hotel was fully booked. We also wasted two days traveling long distances on a bus.

The tour organizers didn’t do their homework. It is so easy to please Filipinos but they abused us instead. Lucky for them I was really impressed by the country or I’d really be sore at the end of the tour.

Chinese English

Chinese English is so bad one wonders why hotels and even government agencies who put up signs or print brochures don’t hire someone competent in the language. Take this printed material from our hotel in Shanghai where one of the rooms assigned to us smelled of a dead rat. I shouldn’t have been surprised, if this line from their brochure is any indication.

The hotel claims it "has an accommodation service including more than 320 standard rooms, Rats, high-grade guest rooms etc..."

A standee in the bathroom expressed concerned about pollution in this manner: "In order to minimize the pollution caused by detergents, we hope to get your assistants."

On a sign over the peephole in the room door is this sign: "You know the visitor first and then open the door please."

(Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected])