lets talk about how i don't like china. i was just totally sick of beijing after 7 days. for some reason, its just extremely exhausting. my language is good enough, my reading is good enough, my stomach is strong enough and my fervor is good enough. yet this city completely wears on me. first, on a social level, that accent is so strong it makes understanding difficult. word choice is also an issue. second, it's not the heat nor the humidity, it's this film of dirt that u get just from walking around for a day, and not just walking outside, but indoors. after a few hours of being awake, alive, i just NEED to wash my face. third, beijing traffic is wretched. absolutely wretched. china just has too many people. even if you want to be that baller and spend the money to be away from the masses...YOU CAN'T. we waited an hour for a taxi and then realized it'd be faster to take the subway, being that our hotel location was very close to the hyatt via 1 subway transfer. first 4 stops, packed train. then the transfer. it was a combination of war time fleeing, concentration camp, exodus subway transit underground for what felt like 20-30 minutes. sweat drenched and adrenalined out from the culture shock we finally made it to the grand hyatt. only to witness a guy PISSING ON THE COLUMN NEXT TO THE TAXI STAND!!!! C'MON MAN!
now lets talk about doing business in china. i'm not protected by big corporate structure so my experience is the nitty gritty locals of chinese people with polo shirts, belly's, bad fabric pants, a fanny pack or strap purse, smoking 1 pack of cigarettes per hour with yellow teeth and a stench of china that is not metaphorical. they smell, drink tea and talk about only one thing. "佣金". WTF is 佣金?? COMMISSION. i've been in this industry a while now. and i can pretty much sniff out whether there's potential synergy or not from the get go. but i have the patience and i know the culture to sit and endure the meaningless talks from my friends mothers who say "oh alex, u have coal? i can buy it." or people who run restaurants say ...."oh...we want to be m100 diesel from russia"...just by circumventing details like LC's and Logistics, u get a sense of whether they are for real or not. but that's not what i'm here to complain about today. there are then those people, who without talking about anything need to figure out HOW TO GET THEIR OWN COMMISSION. we haven't even talked about details and you're talking to me about commission? even without a middle man, negotiations and logistics and details are difficult and now i have to talk about agent fees before we discuss any possibility of business?
"this is how it's done in china. u sit and talk, and talk, and business opportunities arise"...thats what they kept telling me. i can't deal with it. so i just told my uncle to handle it. i've paid my dues sitting through commission talks for a week. u can weed thru the potentials, tell me when there's a real one u want me to meet and i'll come back again.
PS: made in china wasn't that good.
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