Surviving the Chinese lunch kidnap
One of my chief responsibilities as district sales manager in my LED factory was to ensure my clients left Shenzhen with fond memories of their time and accomplishments there.
Being the rare token that I was—the pentalingual Ivy-League graduate Colombian based in China working and living in the heart of the manufacturing sector—I got invited to the major wine and dines of our factory from early on. As a Westerner, to find common ground and build personal connections with our clients in a short amount of time suddenly became a main responsibility of mine. It didn’t even matter that in the beginning I knew absolutely nothing about my product or the general industry my customers were involved in…
To our boss, I represented an air of modernism—a Chinese boss investing in foreign talent in order to better understand and therefore service business accounts overseas. Furthermore, if he was paying foreigner salaries, he couldn’t be doing TERRIBLY, right? I never cashed my foreign chips in by bargaining an excessive salary; to me, this was all a hands-on learning experience few MBAs would be able to offer (renting foreigners has become a thing now, so surely some people out there are capitalizing on this). Initially, this was a dream come true. I ate Kobe beef cooked on the spot at a 7-star massage parlor (the chef came into our private room as a small army of foot massagers, ear cleaners, and waitresses finished working on our bodies and prompted us to take a seat around the classic lazy Susan dining table, for example.
This is exactly what my face looked like the first time I let my ears be violated thoroughly by a complete stranger. I have now done it twice but it’s remains a pretty stressful pleasure despite the eargasmic sensations the feather instrument makes.
Another time, I went to one of Gothenburg’s Michelin restuarants and ate delicious salmon while breathing the freshest air I’d taken in since New Zealand. It was certainly memorable, nothing I’d ever look back on and complain.
My territory is still Shenzhen. The point of the lunch or dinner kidnapping is to spend as much social time as possible with your customers so as to build a rapport that will outlast the memory they have of any other potential supplier. You see, every minute spent with you represents a minute less spent with your competitors.
Now, this isn’t a malicious scheme aimed solely at sabotaging your options in China. This practice is simply an expression of Asian hospitality whereby creating a good friendship will lead to developing good business. Where in the West we may strike clear lines between family and business, friendship and business, love and business, in China these personal relationships are precursors to successful business partnerships. Indeed, it’s a very rare find to visit a factory where a portion of the staff is not directly related to the boss, or at least come from his same background.
My most successful client takeaway involved the son of the owner of one of Brazil’s largest food manufacturers and his advising counsel (they were visiting out factory to negotiate a 1.3 million dollar order that would retrofit their entire production facilities and offices, making it the largest private building LED project in the country to date). Needless to say, there was a great pressure for me to go out and have the craziest possible time with them.
We bounced around a few bars, did things, got hammered, ate greasy Wok noodles sitting on stools on the streets, did other things, but in the end my best friend of the night turned out to be my stomach! Yes, you read the above label right (Red Labial, the closest online image I’ve found to the alcohol moonshine culture throughout Chinese bars and clubs).
Parenthesis: I went to India during the fall of 2008 and met an American friend who’d been living in Bangalore for the past 12 months. I drank the orange juice from the dirty stalls outside of the train station (‘don’t order ice!’ my buddy said, which I of course did—have you FELT Dehli heat??), enjoyed the spicy, spicy curry, and woke up startled by a wretching friend coughing up his intestines after a chicken cheese sandwich entered our bodies across the street from our hostel. The moral of the story is? How dirty must food in China be that I am completely immune to the Indian palatte?
I woke up a little bit after 13:00, relaxed a bit and then hopped on the subway on my way to work. I wasn’t too worried about showing up 5 hours late, as I’d done my duty and worked late (or early in the morning I should say) taking these guys out around Shenzhen. It turns out these guys got home overly excited after I dropped them off at close to 6am, called downstairs and had the bellboy send some call girls up to their rooms (it is amazing to me how foreigners who speak no Chinese whatsoever can sometimes manage such complex tasks), then freaked out and never opened their doors to let them in after they saw the kind of tricks turners that are still available at the break of dawn! I heard this story once I actually go to the office, as lo’ and behold there they were again! The VP of the lighting department was extremely pleased to see my expression as they vividly reiterated the amount of times they vomited in their two factory visits preceding this final meeting. The funny thing is I felt groggy and tired but otherwise FINE! How much fake alcohol had I had up till then to be completely immune to the evils of fake whiskey!???
They took videos of each other that showed pallid faces and weak laughter, in essence proving they’d had the most terrible time in our competitor’s offices… a true testament to a mission accomplished by yours truly the night before.
