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The Streets of Shanghai 2
September 2000 Comrade, comrade!, Shengzhen - the sleepy fishing village, and the night angel in the white dress Back to Awakening Dragon Index
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"Comrade! Comrade!""Miss, miss, ....oh, Mister, mister!..." I was trying to get the attention of the attendant of a general store in Ningbo without success. My local colleague realize that and offered his help... "Hey, comrade!" The attendant turned to us promptly and waited for our requests. As late as early 1992 in Chongqing - a big city - hotel, restaurant, and store attendants, were still used to being addressed as "comrade." Things have changed since Mr. Deng Xiao-Ping's trip to Shengzhen early that year. I was first surprised by the salesladies of a general store in Sichuan who approached me and asked "What would you like to see sir?" That was the first time in China that I found the salesperson approaching the prospective customer. In a very real way, it signalled the change from a seller's to a buyers' market.
This city of 4 million people and tall skyscrapers boasting one of the largest export bases of electronics worldwide had a population of only 20,000 in 1979. Only one daily passenger train service from Guangzhou passed through this small village then. Tens of thousands of people camped out all over the hills and country side nearby looking for opportunities to sneak into Hong Kong... The C.P. Group paid 100 yuan RMB per mu (666 sqm) of land when it invested in the first Sino-foreign JV in Shengzhen in 1979. A friend of mine just bought a highrise apartment here a few years ago for well over $2,000 USD per sqm. The average income per head in this city is now the highest in China.
There is an old Chinese saying that a small flicker of fire can grow and consume the entire land. Shengzhen is a very typical case of a flicker of fire in China's reform and opening up. Twenty One years ago, I wouldn't have even dreamed that I would be sitting in that nice western style pub in Shanghai sipping my cup of Blue Mountain with those midnight ladies of Shanghai. Now in a modern shopping center in Shanghai, I was very tempted to experiment by addressing the sales person as a "comrade" and to observe their reaction... "No, I have never heard anybody except those rural government officials addressing each other comrade.", one of them told me. Then, outside that same store, I had to turn my head for the source of the sound when I heard someone call out... "Comrade, comrade!" It was an old man in his 60's, possibly from the poor rural areas, asking for alms in front of that store. Another sign of the times.
Many years back, we had struggled to acheive success with newspaper recruitment advertisements for many positions for a brand new joint venture. So it was with some trepidation that at 10 p.m. one night, I answered a knock on the door, to meet a young local girl in white dress. Speaking quite good English for those days, she told me she wanted to apply for a job at our company. Without waiting for my invitation she pushed her way into my room. Luckily, I hadn't changed from my working clothes. I told her in Chinese, "You should send your resumé to our personnel department." "Can I talk to you? Aren't you the big boss?", she replied... Having recovered from my initial shock, I told her in no unclear terms to go home, compose her resumé and mail it to the Personnel Department as I had said before. I also told her that if she insisted, she would be automatically disqualified for breaking the company rules even before beginning! Still persisting and advancing further into my hotel bedroom, I issued my ultimatum - "Get out of my room now, or I must call the hotel security!" She left, but still wandered around in the hotel lobby days after that, still in that same white dress - and still trying to talk to me. After some time of my persistent keeping to the rules she finally disappeared. I never found out how she knew my hotel room number. However, the event did keep me awake nights after pondering what to do if she returned...
Piset
Wattanavitukul | Piset Wattanavitukul is Managing Director of P. W. Consultants specializing in Investment, Management and Trade in and with China and Human Resource Development in Shanghai and Ningbo.
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