Shanghai Reloaded

It has been 5 months since my family and I have boarded the plane to Shanghai. Would we still like our old home where we spent so many years??

4 years in Germany were great. Spending time with my parents and extended family, reconnecting with friends, but also with my cultural roots was what I needed after 10+ years of “hyper growth” in China. I particularly enjoyed time in the outdoors and I appreciated the perfect landscape in the “Odenwald” forest where we settled down.?Work has also been awesome. For the first time in my career, I started off as “the experienced guy” who was expected to build something new based on previous experience. Before, I was always the “young guy” who grew by exposure to new challenges and observing the best and worst practices of my senior colleagues. This change in perspective was very refreshing. I guess I was still more of a “player coach”, but the experience to build and lead a team of seasoned professionals was unique and very rewarding.

So why then make a move?

Well, after some years, life in Germany became too much of a routine. Obviously, Covid and the “hammer and dance” lockdown situation did not help. Too much home office, home schooling, home cooking, home drinking, and so on. I watched Amazon Prime, Netflix and when I convinced myself that a Disney+ subscription is a good idea, it became clear that something needs to change. Mandalorian was great though… Obviously there are also other personal reasons in a cultural patchwork family like mine, but in the end it was clear that we would give China a try once again. What should I say? After getting through the 2 weeks quarantine, my two girls went to German school as guest students. My wife and I wandered the city, had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, and simply enjoyed the fact that in Shanghai the whole Covid thing was (almost) not limiting our lifestyle. In the evening, our girls came home from school with big smiles on their faces, they were immediately invited to birthday parties and fully embraced by their new classmates. It took one round of pearl tea for them to say “we want to stay here!”. For my wife as local Shanghainese the case was clear anyway.?

And what about me??

I have always been in love with China, its people, culture, the “can do” attitude, the food, and the raw energy that I feel here like nowhere else. Obviously a lot has changed in the last 4 years. And this time, I feel it is not so much an “outside change” in terms of new buildings and a changed city layout. It is much more of an “inside change” in terms of the attitude and the way things get done. On the one hand, life in Shanghai got more structured and predictable. In general, people follow the rules more than a couple of years ago and I was joking with my friends that Shanghai becomes a bit more like Singapore these days. On the other hand, there is a strong - and justified - sense of achievement and confidence. I guess it is now more difficult for foreigners to be successful and contribute in China. But this is good, because it is not enough anymore to recycle best practices from “the West”. That was the story in the last 20 years. Now it is about building something new and specifically Chinese, (hopefully) blending elements from different cultures, different technologies, different mindsets and different approaches to doing business into something new, that is up to meet the demands and challenges of the 21st century. Obviously there are huge risks which endanger this opportunity, in particular the geo-political tensions. But I remain optimistic and cannot wait to also embark on a new professional journey in China. Stay tuned!