China is testing you

Andy is a very nice guy. He is in China for more than ten years, he speaks mandarin fluently and even understands a little the Shanghainese dialect. He is the managing director of a global advertising agency. He is among the most welcome type of foreigners in China. He studied business at Harvard and took a Chinese langage course there. He wrote a memoir about "Poetry in the Tang Dynasty". He is a good earner, rent a spacious apartment in former french concession and works in the Bund Area. Andy is a nice guy but today is pissed. He has been feeling a growing insatisfaction in this month of January. Pollution levels have been very high, and it has been a long time ( he does not remember how long) that he has not seen a clear blue sky. Andy is environment conscious, he will never take a taxi if he can do otherwise, he mostly walks and take the subway. When he has a seat, he always gives it to elderly people or children. He likes doing that. It feels good to do the right thing, he does it willingly and he knows some young local people will do the same after . Virtue is contagious and he knows that in this country, you can't convince anyone. You just can preach silently by your example. Along the years, the subway moment has became a secret ritual of his daily life. So today, he just let his seat to a grateful grandmother. He is ready for his stop, the doors are opening and he feels the force of people rushing in the wagon, leaving him no room to exit. So he looses it he puts in elbow forward and push his way out. He can understand people grievance toward him and some even insult him. He is finally out, walking. He is still pissed. His sense of self righteousness is hurt, he walks straight in front of him. A guy on a moppet is horning behind him. Andy decides he won't budge and gives him the finger instead. People around him start to criticise him vehemently " This is China here! Rude Laowai" " You don't respect Chinese people" " Who do you think you are". Andy sprints toward his office and finally arrives. " F***ing China !" He wants to burst into tears but he can't ( he is the boss) . Later, he will join some friends at a cocktail place and will place this story into the conversation. " They don't respect anything!" " people have no manners" " the world can't be ruled by those peasants" etc... His foreign friends will confort him, and he will blow some steam off with them. After the complaints, they will talk about the next holiday, the Chinese new year long ( 2 weeks) holidays. Andy will go to London and avoid places frequented by Chinese tourists.

Andy is tired. " China is exhausting" he thinks as he seats at the back of a taxi. The driver , hearing him giving the address in a perfectly pronounced mandarin, congratulates him about his accent and ask him where does he come from. Andy has been there a thousand times, he takes his smartphone and deliberately ignores the driver. He wishes he would be somewhere else, and Righteous Andy decide to be rude. For the first time of the day, he feels good.

Lessons :

Andy is a foreigner who has grown a true love of China and Chinese culture. Most of the time he feels like " Pedro en su casa" and has made a good life for himself there. He is resourceful, he has experience, but he could not avoid to loose it. Maybe you are not like Andy, but there will be moments, where you will loose it. Maybe you are not has good as he is, or maybe you are. In any case, you will be tested like that. Maybe it will be at work, maybe just when you try to cross the street at a green light and almost get killed by a car who did not respect the priority. Maybe it will be at a shop, or at the railway station, when you patiently cue and someone jumps just in front of you. Maybe another foreigner will do that to you and you will think : " will you do that at home A****LE !"

China is testing you, and whatever your experience, your achievements, the length of your stay, it will constantly continue to do so.

C/ How to marry a Virgin

" Passion sustains the house, the genius paints the roof" Mencius.

The Chinese people are passionate people, they value passion ( qing) as a higher quality. Nothing is more despicable than a dry heart, a lack of generosity and showing insensitivity ( or lack of compassion). As a foreigner, you will always meet high expectations and the worst you can do is to disappoint those feelings. People might not know about your background, the good deeds you have made, how you built yourself up emotionally, in short you might think they don't "understand you", they are interested by the sensible part that constitutes you. It is a common misunderstanding when dealing with Chinese people to focus too much on their wit, intelligence, ambitions and forgetting about their sensitivity. It is also a fatal mistake and simply put a lack of humanity. The extreme competitiveness in business in places like Beijing or Shanghai, often makes people act in a ruthless manner and too many people. If you scratch beneath the surface, behind the mask of insensitivity you will discover how sorry people are and how helpless they think of themselves. They are just trying to survive, to protect those to whom they can show their real self. The Chinese life is a fight against fate. There is a tragic element in it that is most of the time untold in the daily life but constantly documented into the literature since a very long time ago.

You probably have heard about the concept of " face", and you "know how " usual treaty about "negotiate in China" usually focusing in this exotic notion. It goes like this : the notion of face is central in Chinese society. The face is the social currency of everyone, and in order to get what you want you should not alienate or deny anyone's face.

There is nothing wrong, technically, with this way of describing things. The only problem for me is that it just says :" don't be a prick !"

There is something more powerful than this notion of face, it s the passion beneath. Too many foreigners in China, bet on this notion of face, become really good technicians of it, apply the "know how" set of rules, and forge themselves a superb reputation of hypocrites or "double face devils".

Sometimes when i hear those Chinese specialists or read some articles i have the feeling that Chinese people comes from another planet. Maybe what i have written there might foster this feeling of extreme alterity. There is without doubt some very different cultural traits in China. But i recuse this idea of China as exotic. Exo, means out of... it has been an intellectual construction started by the Jesuit missionaries ( in order to edify their readers, and make what they write more appealing at a time where letters took months and sometimes years to reach their readers), fuelled by the philosopher of the enligthment period of the XVIII th century to promote, by contrast new concepts ( such a atheism etc...) and institutionalised by XIX th century colons to justify their deeds. The great French Writer Andre Malraux ( who in the book " the temptation of the Occident" published in the beginning of the XX th century shows a truly subtle of Chinese sensitivity) coined this idea in one formula :

" China is the other versant of human experience".

That is a great sentence, but it was written at a moment when westerners knew very little about China from the Chinese perspective. This trait was also fuelled by the Chinese themselves who used it to their advantage . The talent of Chinese culture is to know how to use foreign misconception at their own advantage. it has more positive outcome to use what people think of you ( even if it is incorrect) than wasting energy to try to convince otherwise ( that is a principle or tactic).

So a lot of our western misconceptions derive from this double aspect.

The way to untie the gordian knot is to simple cut through it. The notion of face is not as important as you think . It might be good for some "china consultants" to sit you in a classroom in from of a ppt and charging you by the hour, but there is no mystery in that. just don't be a dick and be human.

What you should put your money in ( your time and focus) is more into people sensitivity, especially if you do not quite understand how they are wired.

Why this matter?

One sentence you will (or have ) pronounce is the following : " there is some much energy there". Now wait a second! Why is that that you feel so much energy. Maybe it is because the western culture is exhausted ( that was the feeling of Andre Malraux and before him Paul Claudel ). This exhaustion of the west has been running in Europe since the end of Napoleonian wars ( Stendhal), and caught up the US in the sixties ( end of the pioneer feeling, abandon of the project Apollo, the raise of the anti hero, grunge music, Californication etc...), and pushed some vigorous ones to go as far as this Terra Incognita that China has been for a large lot of us in the 90's. This coud be described as a post romantic feeling.

The energy you feel in China is both fuelled by passion and hope. Hope in better days to come, and passion of life in various spontaneous forms. The great paradox of China today is that it is both the oldest civilisation existing and the youngest country.

It is a country that is "young at heart" like a virgin. A virgin has a very developed and refined sensitivity. She has not been corrupted by life, tend to idealise, and will be very cruel if you can't meet your expectations. She will embrace you and trust you if you win her heart, and might kill you if you break it. Do not misunderstand the favors she has for you. She return your favours asking more, for her, so you should be ready to level up and let her keep her candour and hopes.

Example : The Luxury industry in China

Recently some European brands have been facing very embarrassing moments in China and had to present excuses to have hurt the feelings of Chinese citizens. Balanciaga had a problem in one of their Paris 's shop when some sales people appeared to have mistreated some impatient Chinese customers. More Recently Dolce&Gabanna had a big crisis over racist campaign and tweets and Burberry's in a lesser extent just had a campaign against them for "misunderstanding of Chinese values" after a gloomy photo campaign. Each case is different of course, but the reaction of Chinese citizens and netizens is to express their fury and call for boycott of those brands. Some may argued that there is some oversensitivity there, and maybe in some case there is, but it is missing the point. Those brands and Luxury Groups such as Kering or LVMH have had a beautiful run in China and made tons of money the last 18 years. They went from non existing in the 1990's to a national presence. Before the ascension of Xi Jinping to power, they were able to occupy historical landmarks ( fashion shows on the great wall, projections on the Bund waterfront and even events during the national congress reunion in Beijing... they have been widely encourage to accompany the economic development in China, and were useful to project the success of China's economy, the rise of a Chinese global elite and the appearance of a growing middle class. Bags and tote bags rapidly became a sign of social statue among the urban population. Expensive items such as perfume, scarfs and other accessories found their place in the gift giving Chinese culture. Anyone in the earlier years who was vaguely identified by those foreign firms as something of an influencer ( artists, capitalists, socialites etc...) receive a lot of things during lavish parties as those brands were competing with each other to win this premium market. Some groups such as LVMH had so much cash generated in China that they even invest in shopping mall dedicated to their brands (L'avenue). China after all was recovering its position of the wealthiest world country as it was in XVIII th century, and everyday, hundreds of fortune were made even in the most remote place of the country.

To my knowledge the first warning of a change of atmosphere came with the Japanese brand SKII. The signal went unnoticed by those European brands. It was during the Diaoyu island controversy between Japan and China and there was an anti Japanese fever for a while.

Then came the anti corruption campaigns and some brands became synonyms of corruption practices. Business slowed a little but still good money.

The Xi Jinping era marks a new era for those brands and their business model. It also corresponds to the vast adoption of ecommerce and the raise of a more conscious generation of customers that is usually called the Milleniums. Big luxury brands who have been successfull with becoming a statement of "nouveaux riches", are now threaten by more smaller brands with higher quality, less margin, who appears more chic than the giants of the sector such as Louis Vuitton ( better buying Smythson - no shop in china,classier-) Gucci or else. In 2010 i was astonished when invited by Chanel to their giant event at the Shanghai Peninsula hotel. Karl Lagerfeld shot a movie using the cultural revolution aesthetic showing his own boyfriend as a communist hero. I am quite certain it will be impossible to do that today. But 2010 was a liberal time and China was signing its return as a leader of the global world by hosting the bigger and most frequented( close to 100 milions people in 6 months) World Expo in the history of the World.

The situation is similar in the tourism industry ( with lesser extent). Chinese consumers are aware of their purchasing power, as a group . Every customer becomes an ambassador of the others, and an army of 5 mao trolls is always there waiting to flood comments on any foreign brand who insults "national values". Wether this army is back up by some institutions such as the government is another question. The point is that thoe brands are now operating under a very thight scrutinity.

The previous litterary image of the "virgin" do well apply that, and you could describe the critizing campaign as the Erynnies ( also called the Furies in latin) pursuing Oedipeus in the ancient greek mythology.

The Luxury industry is at a Pitchfork in China, and we will probably see some dramatic changes in the near future. Moreover some giants chinese groups such as Fosun or others have been in an huge buying stree those recent years acquiring Top european luxury brands making them chinese owned brands. This movement is even accelerating and i know from first hand information ( no names ! don't ask!) that a lot of things are going on in Italy as i write those lines.

In the case of Balienciaga it was triggered by the attitude of the sales french people. Those people whose psychology is not foreign to me, have usually delicate manners, are trained to be polite and cope with the daily frequentation of far richer people than them by growing a snobbish attitude and an extreme attention to details, especially in manners. That is the usual Slave/master dialectic as described by Hegel. The slave is reigning on its master by his sense of morality or the extreme attention is putting on behaviour ( which unlike luxury goods and money is affordable for him). So one can imagine the reaction of those snobbish contemporary "majordome" when unlike facing some european nobility or even Wall Street patricians type, faced a crowd of chinese customers from second or thierd cities... They most probably had the feeling thay were untitled to "educate" those customers.

For Dolce Gabanna, it was even more obvious. The tweets the founder ( and the overall campaign ) showed bluntly how much disdain those italians had for their "cash cows".

The key element is contained in the notion of "education". Many years ago, when talking with ignorant luxury brand officers and their communication agency people i started to hear this anthem : " we are more than a product, we are a lifestyle and our mission is to educate our chinese customers to our universe" .

Even the chinese staff was trained to repeat this nonsense... i could not believe it! Post colonial textbook. Today we see the consequences and the "cash cows"are now rebelling and tell the europeans : " when your ancestors were digging soil to eat roots with their hands, ours were bulding palaces !".

Now , the "virgin" is fighting back. She is grewer richer than the once sugar daddy that used to make promises he could not keep. It is time for Luxury brands to reinvent themselves and to " se refaire une virginite" ( to become virgin again, to get a clean slate).