on the campaign trail

I recently started working for a small corporate consulting firm. My boss, Charles, is a very amiable Taiwan-born, Hong Kong-educated Chinese-American now working out of Shanghai. He is basically all kinds of Asian. Although I don't know much, or really anything, about consulting, I was hired as a "campaign intern" - Charles is currently running for Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. (AmCham)

Over the past few weeks, I've gotten a very interesting look into the world of business. And the more I look, the more convinced I become that I don't belong in it. Introvert that I am, I don't think I could handle trying to climb the corporate ladder with my power suit and business card in tow. Nothing against those of you who can - it's really a valuable skill to be able to deal with people and put yourself out there. But it's one that I don't think will ever come naturally to me.

Take the other night, for example. There I am at the Portman Ritz Carlton -- quite possibly the nicest hotel in Shanghai. I've been on the job for all of about 2 days, when my boss invites me to the US Consulate General meeting with AmCham Shanghai. (Technically you have to be an AmCham member to attend, but somehow strings got pulled and I got sneaked in.) Almost all of the other people there are male, middle-aged American business tycoons. I'm given a box of business cards and a 5-minute briefing on my boss's campaign issues, and then I am set loose on the cocktail and buffet-style banquet and told to mingle and card-drop.

A daunting task for a 20-year old undergrad intern with zero business background. After taking a defiant swig of.. orange juice (haha), I carpe diem-ed and started shakin' hands and exchangin' cards. Which isn't to say I wasn't scared out of my mind. Thankfully, people were pretty friendly. I think they were somewhat bemused by the clueless college kid trying to sound like she knew what she was talking about. By the end of the night, I'd managed to collect a dozen some name cards and keep my nerves intact.

And intimidating as it was, this was a really valuable experience for me. It also helped me come to a few conclusions:

1. Business is all about people - who you know, how you maintain your relations, whether people like you and want to do business with you. Competency is only half of the equation - business also requires finesse. I firmly believe that the ease with which you handle cocktail conversations correlates directly with the ease with which you are able to broker business deals.

2. Corporate culture (in Shanghai at least) is still very much an old boy's club. Out of 15 candidates for the new AmCham board, only 1 was a woman. There were only a handful of women at the entire meeting of some 80 people. As a young Asian-American woman, I felt an even greater contrast to the mostly older, white men -- the only other Asian females there were servers working at the hotel. It made me question a little the sincerity and seriousness with which people were treating me.

3. I wasn't made to schmooze. It takes so much out of me to make small talk and try to sell myself and the cause I am representing.

4. The only thing better than a buffet banquet is a free one at the Ritz Carlton. (pictured below)

On a somewhat related note:

American Foreign Service Officers posted at the Shanghai Consulate actually LIVE in the Ritz Carlton. Your American tax dollars hard at work :)

roughing it

DID YOU KNOW?
China used to have 6-day workweeks and just 1 day off for the weekend. It wasn't until 1995 that they switched to a 5-day system and enacted the national holiday break (Golden Week).

It's a nice chance for people to travel or go back home to visit family, but getting around can be pretty crazy. Think touristy places around spring break, except much worse because it's as if ALL OF CHINA went on spring break during the same week. So to avoid the mad rush this past Golden Week (first week of Oct), we decided to get off the beaten trail and do a very cheap and very unplanned tour of the Sichuan province. I basically left Shanghai with a one-way ticket to Chongqing, a Lonely Planet, and a very large backpack. (picture not to scale :P)


















Oh yes, and these are my travel buddies, Evan and Hana. Pictured here en route to the airport on Shanghai's Maglev (magnetic levitating train: the fastest one in the world!)












Our first stop was Chongqing, literally the biggest city in the world. Also probably the most polluted. Visibility is less than a mile in the middle of the afternoon on a normal day. I was talking to a professor about my trip just today, and he described Chongqing as a city that "looks like Hong Kong would if someone had dropped a dirty bomb on it." We ate some spicy hotpot, wandered around downtown, saw a few of the landmarks, but nothing too eventful went down.













If you look carefully you can make out a bridge and a skyline through the haze.

Next we trained to Chengdu, where we stayed at an awesome hostel before going on to Songpan. The ride there was one of the most terrifying 10.5 hours of my life -- we were winding around the mountains on a bus that was blaring some unintelligible traditional Chinese soap opera and honking every 2 minutes. Also, be warned that the yellow line in the middle of the road is more of a "suggestion" in China than it is a rule.













Our only consolation: the beautiful scenery. (photo actually taken from the bus)

Our final destination was Songpan, a sleepy little backpacking town that's famous for its horse trekking. We spent 2 days being guided through the mountains by a local Tibetan family. They didn't really speak Mandarin, or English, but they were some of the nicest, most hospitable people I've ever met. They took care of the horses, pitched the tents, cooked the food, and were generally awesome. Sleeping in the mountains though was..interesting. It rained on our only semi-waterproof tent, and a horse chewed a hole in it during the middle of the night. (we also didn't shower for 4 days, but that's another story..)














Our amazing Tibetan guides.

Definitely an amazing experience, but it's good to be back home. Shanghai sweet Shanghai!