a socialist's social life.

Apologies for the lapse in updates, as the Internet police (some four million employees of the Chinese government) put a temporary hold on I've been not unpleasantly occupied lately, working during the day, and spending afternoons very slowly and clumsily digesting company earnings reports and audits, which, lucky for me, look as though they've been put together by someone with as much financial background as I.
My humorless and patriotic communist friend, Tao Tao, got us tickets to the opera, which was uncharacteristically awesome of her, or so I thought. Chinese opera, it turns out, is perhaps the unsexiest thing in the world, and it took every bit of strength and social decorum in me to appear attentive during the three of hours of nasal warbling, while TT howled with pleasure and applauded with passion beside me, along with the rest of the geriatric audience.
I met some college friends - Dave, in from New York, and Ding, a Shanghai native - for a couple of dinners, and a couple more drinks at some fashionable lounges and restaurants. The ex-patriot bars, as it were, are the only bars in Shanghai.
Shanghai, despite what it's size would suggest, isn't a big party town. The clubs and bars - stylish, costly, large - are populated primarily by sophisticated Europeans or American study-abroad collegians. There's also a good population of a certain breed of beautiful and terrifying Shanghainese women, birdlike bundles of jewels and furs and Gucci bags and penciled-in eyebrows and very high high heels shopping for wealthy Western boyfriends, with whom they'll be unable to communicate verbally. (My Brazilian boss' girlfriend is one such specimen - twenty-four to his sixty; a hot-pantsed, English-illiterate vision of Orientalism's merry modern carnation.)
I asked - desperately - what young people in China do for fun, and was told that evenings and weekends are spent with the family. In New York, and in college as well, I felt at home among fellow nomadic yuppies. Many of my peers left home at eighteen, a drive birthed of the boredom and wanderlust that inevitably accompanies a rather good life, objectively speaking, and fled to east, for culture, to the cities, for stimulation, to the country, to find ascetic zen, to South America, for the novelty, each year being as disposable and transient as only an obligation-less, American annum can be. TT hits up the opera when she's feeling up for a night out on the town; otherwise, she plugs away at her accounting firm for the seventh year running, and lives with her family. It's no wonder, really, that she was quick to write me off as an errant American, aimless and uncommitted.
My colleagues, most of whom are Western-educated Chinese girls, are a bit more open-minded. My first club experience in Shanghai was by the side of the very-much engaged Flora (an acronym, devised by her fiance, for Flaunting Love Of Ryu Always), who deftly flirted up some Beijing businessmen for drinks. Michelle married a Moroccan man last year, shortly after she had his (cute as hell) kid; Tian Mu's cynical response for every bogus earnings report she tears to pieces (and she's quite good) is "it's China." Here, I feel less like I ought to be shot. Where TT balks with disapproval at every answer I provide to her interrogations about college, working, New York, boyfriends, girlfriends, sports and vacations, the girls at work are much less, well, inquisitive for one, and critical for another. (My uncle says that criticism is a cultural staple. He states with his characteristic authority that the Chinese abhor hypocrisy, and therefore, tend to be more blunt. I considered my small pool of Chinese acquaintances - himself and my mother prominent among them - and was inclined to agree.)

photo back-log

A few of you remarked upon the recent lack of my accompanying visuals, which I took to be a euphemistic preference for looking at pictures over reading about my thoughts and feelings. Very well, then.


Suzhou, the "Venice of the East". I personally think it would do something for Asian self-image if they didn't continually market themselves from a Western point of reference (although maybe it wouldn't be so good for tourism?) In any case, I spent a day over New Year's in and around Tiger Hill, riding boats and catching cold. Wikepedia (secretly) gives us this:
Suzhou, the cradle of Wu culture, is one of the oldest towns in the Yangtze Basin. 2500 years ago, local tribes who named themselves "Gou Wu" in the late Shang Dynasty lived in the area which would become Suzhou.

to start, and also this:

It is a popular tourist destination and is known for its natural beauty as well as historical sites. The hill is so named because it is said to look like a crouching tiger. Another legend states that a white tiger appeared on the hill to guard it following the burial of King Helü. The hill is sometimes referred to in parallel with "Lion Mountain", another hill near Suzhou which clearly resembles a sitting lion. The hill has been a tourist destination for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, as is evident from the poetry and calligraphy carved into rocks on the hill.


Record snowfall hit China in February, which caused a good deal of grief for travelers trying to get home for the New Year. Mobbing, the national hobby, resulted in a number of trampling-related deaths at crowded train depots. The media had a somewhat detached take on the chaos, and timed footage of thousands of desperate-looking Chinese flooding dilapidated terminals to Dual of the Fates. (I kid not.) Rusty, however, was quite pleased to be snowed in:


Shanghai's got a few hokey tourist spots, but the cheesiest is probably Chen Huang Miao. It was a very old and beautiful temple until someone at some point decided that the space would be more utilitarian as a shopping plaza and food court than as a idyll for spiritual reprieve. Someone else cleverly thought to make Asian mysticism its theme. The original architecture is hence in tact, only all occupied by merchants peddling notoriously overpriced traditional clothing, jade trinkets, ocarinas, lutes and prayer beads.





Apparently, it's a popular set for films and soaps, too.

happy women's day.

In honor of this past weekend's commercial holiday (say what you will about them; I, for one, savor the opp to shop), Women's Day, I happily patronized a masseuse, a patisserie and a lingerie boudoir in rapid succession. Feeling languid of limb, sated of sweet-tooth and buoyant of bust, I returned to embark upon‘Where are the Customer's Yachts?', which Christopher had thoughtfully lent me when I told him I was starting work in finance. (It was very entertaining, but unfortunately not so informative.) Christopher additionally recommended that I feel comfortable making blanket statements about China and Shanghai. He, older and wiser than I, said that each passing year has been accompanied by more confidence in his own tastes and distastes. (The latter category, to my knowledge, includes exercise, Edinburgh, limp mattresses, and South America) For him I present 3 things, under observation, that Shanghainese women love:

1. The beauty industry. According to my masseuse, the weekly beauty regimen for a young lady in Shanghai includes a facial, a manicure, a foot massage and pedicure, and a full-body rub-down. It sounds excessive, but I'm not altogether sure it is, given that Shanghai is a filthy city and every jaunt outdoors invites a toxic brew of smog, cigarette and halitosis to coat unprotected pores and fingernails.
2. Bling. It's fair to say that Shanghai fashion is a bit gaudy. I rather headache each time I behold shopping mall windows, which boast the latest pastel tracksuits, teal slouched boots and oversized, scrunched handbags – all emblazoned with monograms and hyperactive, senseless catchphrases like 'FREEDOM TO JOY!' spelt out in glitter, sequins and rhinestones. The Chinese love souping up their cellular phones, daybooks, office supplies and iPods as well, plastering busy, sparkly sticker spreads and jeweled appliqués on all and any surfaces so unlucky as to have been bare. Every so often, I'll decide that I'm going to take the leap and start dressing more fashionably, but I'll inevitably chicken out. It offends about every aesthetic sensibility in my book.
3. Jay Chou. There is one celebrity in China. He's the face of China Mobile, Pepsi, Motorola, Nokia, Lays, Panasonic, Meters Bonwe Sportswear and Guarda Fashion, off the top of my head. He's got a commercial presence so overbearing, that I forget he's a Taiwanese pop star, and not just a ubiquitous pair of giant ears and sloppy hair . . . until I ask anybody in Shanghai who their favorite band-artist-or-movies-star is. I read this morning that he was offered a Performing Arts professorship at Shanghai's prestigious FuDan University, which he accepted. This seems like a bit much to me, as I recently saw his latest film 'Kung Fu Dunk', in which he plays an orphaned martial arts student-turned-professional-basketball-star.

. . . and then 3 things that, under observation, Shanghainese women hate:

1. The cold. This can be said for the Chinese in general. Our cardiovascular systems seem work under-time, slowly and inefficiently populating our extremities with an insufficient quantity of blood. Hence the abundance of gloves and gloves-variants (finger-mittens, arm-skins, driving gloves), socks and sock-variants (stockings, legwarmers, leggings), coat-makers, coats, hot beverage vendors (see above) and heated floor boards and car seats.
2. Exercise. It's not immediately obvious, because everybody is so trim and there are so many gyms, and all dutifully packed with petite girls in (sequined) sports bras and yoga pants. Upon closer examination, though, you see that the women are engaged in the slowest, most sedate of physical activity: strolling at a leisurely pace on a treadmill, gently rolling a medicine ball in circles, sitting quietly on an unmoving stationary bicycle. Watching an episode of 'Top Model: China' confirms my suspicion that standards of physical beauty are quite different here. They like their women soft, unsculpted, and, as Kim eloquently summed up, 'not like those American King Kong Barbies'.
3. The sun. My mother sometimes says that the best part of my leaving California for college is the positive effect indoor swimming had on my skin. That is to say that some time ago, I lost the enviable golden brown hue I'd always thought was my natural coloring, and became sallow and yellow. My mother and her friends thought this was a vast improvement; I obstinately caught every rare ray in New English in opposition. Women in Shanghai take special means to keep their skin out of the sun (despite tanning so well!). Daily sun block and even parasols emerge on warmer days - despite any sunshine having to penetrate a Fort Knox wall of smog to inflict any harm.

on corporate governance

I spent Friday reading about fertilizer compounds (for assignment), and the history of SOEs in China (for understanding why there's no goddamn accountability around here). While the article from Ethical Corporation, below, describes the phenomenon in business, the operating attitude of
Chinese folks can be pretty eloquently captured by watching the them purchase groceries in the fruit aisle of the supermarket. The produce is laid out in large bins (not unlike end-of-season sales at Express), which everybody paws through, selecting the choicest fructose. Since fruit costs by the weight, and most Shanghainese are not only extremely but also shamelessly frugal, if they're not in a hurry, they'll pause to peel the oranges and carve bruises out of bananas with personal penknives.

That's part one. Now, there are a lot of people in China. I know you know this, but it's extra-evident when you see how many employees have been crammed into every imaginable nook of a service. In the fruit aisle, for instance, there's an attendant standing besides every bin of fruit. There's a worker who distributes grocery sacks, and a team that manages a small scales and prints your receipt. There's a security guard who directs foot traffic (I love this, because everyone shoves and mobs everything anyway) in the produce section. There are at least four women wielding mops, and a station where you can bring your fruit to have it sliced and boxed for you.
Part two is that, with twenty-plus store employees standing watch at a fairly nice supermarket, not one will utter a word as a customer rips a hunk out of a browning pear with her fingernails and dumps the discarded flesh back into the bin.

Chinese corporate governance – Getting better, but still at the bottom: Interest in good business governance is on the up in China, albeit slowly

Corporate governance in China is as much about culture as it is about business practices. In China, concepts of good corporate governance all too often run counter to the prevailing business culture. Such is the conclusion of the annual “CG Watch” survey by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, an investment bank, produced in association with the Asian Corporate Governance Association. Despite accepting that corporate governance has improved immensely in China in the past few years, the country still ranked almost last in Asia. Only Indonesia scored lower. Jamie Allen of the ACGA, who compiles the annual survey and sits on the shareholder group of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, believes that at a regulatory level things in China are improving dramatically. Boards now have more control, rather than all the power lying with a single figurehead chairman. However, without a tradition of boardroom decision-making, many board members, most of whom are recent appointments and board-virgins, are unsure of their roles and responsibilities. This makes them weak and unsure about wielding their new-found power. The pace of change also overwhelms boards. Since China’s WTO entry, the necessary new legislation from the China Security Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has come thick and fast. To be fair, many at the CSRC are feeling just as overwhelmed when it comes to interpreting and enforcing all the new legislation.
Meanwhile, a growing group of lawyers are specialising in corporate litigation and representing small shareholders in claims against large companies. Generally, the chief executives of major Chinese companies have not traditionally thought they were accountable to shareholders, large or small. They thought that they had little to fear from the law or regulatory watchdogs and that telling anyone what their corporations were doing was a very bad idea. Consequently, disclosure, transparency and accountability have all been ignored.
Another report on corporate governance in China, this one issued by the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, generally supports the CLSA-ACGA findings. Companies are feeling swamped by new legislation and are doing the bare minimum rather than embracing a culture of accountability. As the IFC report says, “Too often they don’t know where to start”.
It is also the case, as borne out in any conversation with a senior executive at a Chinese company on the subject of accountability, that many in China do not feel they have much to learn from foreigners – the names Enron and WorldCom are well known among chief executives in China.

Dirty business, dirty governance
As more and more Chinese companies float on the stock exchange and gain new board members, and transparency and accounting demands, there is a need to assess risk from the investors’ point of view. David Webb, a former bank analyst turned scourge of Chinese and Asian listed companies through his governance web site www.webb-site.com, has raised the issue of voting power, or rather the lack of it. He also highlights the lack of clarity for investors when it comes to third-party transactions, soft lending between corporate divisions and deals within the same family that constantly raise issues of transparency. Still, some improvements have been noted. Major insurer China Life notably improved its disclosure last year while Hopson Development announced a new
and more independent board and better investor communications. The CLSA-ACGA report notes that both companies saw improved returns. When it comes to the general state of corporate governance in China, Jamie Allen says: “It can’t get worse. I’m fairly certain that it will continue to improve.”
The corporate governance issue in China clearly is not going to go away. A raft of new IPOs by Chinese companies is set for this year (including the long-awaited China Mobile launch in Shanghai). So it looks like the pressure for better governance will only be ratcheted up both at home and abroad.

Culture or strategy?
Corporate scandals keep occurring in China. The CLSA-ACGA report highlights some typical examples:
· Yangzhou Coal providing a loan to a third party in an attempt to generate a higher return on excess cash – the third party then defaulted.
· Beijing Media’s successful flotation being followed several months later by a reported loss.
· Appliance manufacturer Guangdong Kelon’s board members being arrested for fraud.
· Various Chinese state bank officials being detained for corruption.

What the CLSA report does not mention (because of its timing) is that many of these poor governance issues in companies have mirrored those in the latter half of 2006 in Shanghai’s pension fund scandal. This has led to mass arrests including that of the Shanghai party secretary. This sort of scandal adds to the belief that poor governance is as much a culture as a business strategy.

work.

I feel obligated to inform my readership that I took a new job recently, and that today was my first day of gainful employment, after nearly five full months. Prior to leaving for Bali, I'd spammed my resume out into cyberspace, no longer wishing to be coddled by family at their companies. Upon return, bearing severe suntan inappropriate for this time of year and at visual odds with a coat and scarf, I met with the employers who had showed interest. Getting a job in Shanghai, as an expat, is, in two words very easy. (I'm wholly unaccustomed to being courted for employment. Applying for corporate jobs in New York was an exercise in humility. For every lacuna in the ladder, there are a couple hundred clever and eager applicants, most of whom are better educated and more experienced than a)you, likely and b)me, certainly. And who knew that an English major was worth about as much as not having attended college at all? Not I, is who.)
In any case, there's a lot of employment in China, due in part to creativity and into the rather blithesome work ethic of its people. (For instance, purchase and rental apartments come fully furnished; the furniture industry booms. Nearly every family hires a housekeeper to cook and clean; wealthier families have one, two, three tutors for their children. After-school schools are quite popular in Asia as well.)

So I interviewed, donning my suit for the first time in almost a year, for a variegated pool of potential jobs. The most intiguing lead by far - chiefly on account of its hipness - was a job as an assistent for a crew of Dannish photographers and political journalists. The interview took place at a cafe outside their minimalist French Concession loft space, which resembled an Apple store. They sipped cappachinos and chain-smoked Dunhills; I timidly lit a Raison, and spoke passionately about my unwavering committment to the freedom of the press and Chinese politics. I didn't get the job.

When I interviewed at SinoLinks, it was in response to an inquiry for an executive assistant, but when I left, it was with an offer as a (gulp) analyst. The company, from my lesser-than-rudimentary understanding of finance, acts as the executive arm for a fledgling hedge fund in New York (New York!), sourcing opportunistic 1)corporate and 2)real estate investments because - and I extrapolate - they lack certain resources necessarily for investigating Asian corporations.

The notion of my working in high-yield asset management borders on the comical. I told Stephanie that I don't have the testosterone for this game, not to mention the knowledge or interest. The MD had promised that it would be interesting, though, and, given that I think my time would be better spent training for a marathon, learning the ocarina, memorizing the chapters of the Bible in order, anything, really - than resuming work in communications, I accepted the job.
The first day was not so bad. The office is quite nice, and my colleagues are six savvy and loquacious young women and one frequently absent MD. I have a rather generous monthly meal stipend and a nice view, and, like four new email addresses. I spent most of last night and this morning cramming investment (and thought, hey, investing sounds like a good deal!), and had lunch with a very sweet analyst named Flora, who was very eager to be friends. I suspect this is because she's a little annoying, but, since I am in no place to be choosy about pals, agreed to have dinner with her this week.