An American boss confronts Shanghai
By Koko Lin as told to Pueng Vongs | Pacific News Service
“I am a Chinese American. I left my job as a hi-tech consultant in an ailing Silicon Valley to seek my fortune in the new Promised Land, the motherland. Born in Taiwan, I speak the country’s official tongue, Mandarin. I came with more than 10 years of expertise cultivated in the hi-tech epicenter of the world.
I was eager to ease China’s rebirth into the capitalist world. But, now, after many months here, I’m tired, frustrated and ready to go home.
I work at my family’s New Tree sheet metal factory, just 35 miles outside the new emerald city of Shanghai. My father employs 300 people and business has been swift lately. His clientele spans the globe. As his eldest child, all this could be mine someday.
At my last job, I worked at a pristine corporate park with a corner office overlooking a lagoon. Here, I share an office and a computer. My desk faces the bathroom door.
I typically start at 7 a.m. On my first day, I marched into my father’s office with a checklist I often brought to client companies to help measure their efficiency. I fired questions at him. “How do you manage your company? What are its strengths and weaknesses? How do you divide the work force?” He responded with a quizzical look and quickly went onto other matters. I soon understood why.
At my first business meeting, we spent hours talking about gossip, such as who had taken a second wife — a common practice for newly successful Chinese businessmen. When the topic of business finally arose it was quickly ushered away. “Don’t worry,” the client told us. “It will be OK.” I was dumbfounded. When another client went bankrupt, I asked my father for the contract to collect what we were owed. He said there was no contract. The agreement had been made by word of mouth. “That’s how we do business here,” he told me.
My father’s business practices are mild compared to those of other Chinese companies, which make the offenses committed by Enron and WorldCom executives seem humdrum. Bribes are frequently offered to seal deals. Books are commonly cooked to the whims of the owner. Companies that insist on contracts and receipts — many started by newly arrived Americans with business degrees and other Western professionals — dissolve faster than start-ups during the dot-com bust. The Chinese simply refuse to do business with them.
During a walk through the factory, I am taken aback by the sight of four workers sitting in the corner playing mah jong, a Chinese gambling game. I have to speak to them twice before they slowly disband. Most of our line workers come from the nearby rural province of Nanjing for the chance to earn $25 (U.S.) a month. Broken by years of hard labor, some during the Cultural Revolution, they don’t understand the concept of production deadlines. They focus only on their own survival. They take breaks almost the moment they step into the factory. They have no regard for equipment, crashing trucks into walls and spilling items onto the floor. At times it is like working with elementary school children who have to be told again and again their duties, to no avail.
These workers, easily three-quarters of the country’s work force, are expected to transform the society into a future economic powerhouse with no rival.
After another missed factory deadline, I do the one thing that has consistently produced results in my decade as a professional in the United States — I yell. I slam my hand on the desk and tell the workers to meet their deadlines or else. They do what I tell them, but sluggishly. In their eyes I see a flash of disdain for their Taiwanese boss, who has come back to capitalize on the country she once fled.
Word of my outburst spreads quickly through the factory, and later my father meets with me. In his concerned way, he tells me how smart and capable I am, but says I must tone it down. “You are too American,” he says.
I step outside the factory compound and gaze at the sky, a familiar brown and gray, clouded by persistent dust storms. I ache for the bright, crisp days when I hiked Northern California’s coastal range. Here, I’m told the nearest mountain in the industrial landscape is a three-day drive.
Life is emptier here. Long days at the factory leave me little time with my family. I find some solace in my sister’s friends, with whom she plays badminton each week. Like me, they are Western-educated Chinese professionals. We cling to each other and share our frustrations. Some came seeking to connect with their culture, but have been burned by locals interested only in practicing their English or being treated to what they call “high class” Western restaurants. I make sure to introduce my parents to the parents of my new friends, for after 15 years of working in Shanghai, they are still lonely.”
PNS contributor Koko Lin told her story to Pueng Vongs, who spoke to her in China and in the United States. Vongs is news editor of New California Media, a project of Pacific News Service.
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