Crap in China

There is an old saying all over the world, in fact there are quite a few sayings:

You get what you pay for.

If it's too good to be true then often it is.

Buyer beware!

I find this story therefore quite funny

"From TFA: 'A Russian friend .... works at a hard-drive repair center in a Russian town, located near the Chinese border. A couple of days ago a customer brought a broken 500GB USB-drive that he had bought in a Chinese store across the river, for an insanely low price. But the drive was not working: if you, say, save a movie onto the drive, playing the saved movie back resulted in replaying just the last 5 minutes of the film.' Apparently, the contents of the external HDD box included: two nuts, glued to the inner surface of the box with a 128MB flash drive wedged between them (image). And it was a clever hack, too — if ever an attempt was made to write a file that's too large, it got cycled — rewriting itself over and over from the beginning, while leaving the existing files intact. And it reported everything correctly — file sizes and all!"

Yes yes there is a lot of counterfeit shit from China, soy sauce, tofu, eggs etc the list goes on and on. But what do you expect when you pay an insanely low price for something. Buyer beware and check things carefully! The cheapish parachutes I buy I check before I jump the damned things!

No seriously I don't have any DVDs

Changing stereo types?

It is extremely uncommon for me to go into town centres ever these days or even walk the streets since you know why walk when you can pay $10 for a (UK) gallon of gas and drive everywhere instead. But years and years ago people would be arse holes they would make nasty Bruce Lee type taunting noises...... heh little did they know that a lot of Chinese martial arts are silent.

Anyway, I;m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but wherever I go I seem to get approached and asked if I've got any pirate DVDs on me. Which I don't... because I don't sell pirate DVDs.... I must have three DVDs my entire collection. Heh... this is because around town centres and back streets leading into town centres today you see the ubiquitous Chinese looking guy with a gym bag stuffed with pirate DVDs.

Ok ok sure sure I can understand why some of you buy these things.


But seriously if I'm wearing a suit and a tie when going to work I'm just a normal person not selling pirate DVDs....

Heh I'm not sure if this change in image of Chinese people is positive or negative these days.

TANSTAAFL

I don't believe it.

PAY & SIT: the private bench (HD) from Fabian Brunsing on Vimeo.

This of course might well be a hoax like the Enri Suzuki hoax, but my god if British government officials see this they'll be everywhere! We already have people searching your bags and pockets to go into the cinema in the UK (I no longer go) . How long before we have guards outside park gates which search your stuff for fold up chairs?

What next charging us for oxygen? I bet the British government is spooging at this proposal. Won't work in China though as people know how to squat

Feng Shui

Dear TCG,

What is Feng Shui and how does it work?

Kevin B




Dear Kevin

Feng Shui

Is a form of mysticism which some people believe in and some people don't.

Essentially the gib is supposed to be that you can improve energy flow of Chi by moving things around, the critical thing is have no sharp objects or edges pointing at you like ceiling lights and stuff like that. I mean it is just common sense right? In your car you have a steering wheel which does not have a sharp spike sticking out of it right?

Though you know this would increase road safety so much, and it'd stop all my friends being killed while biking.

A really bad Feng Shui type of bed to have. Even if it is on sale.

However TCG's dad puts it much better, if it looks neat and tidy to the eye then it has good Fung Shui. I.e. if your home doesn't look like level 7 out of contra (in the UK we call this probotechor)



My personal belief is that it is semi psychosomatic. The mind being the most powerful organ in the body can change things psychologically.

It is one of those things people consult JUST in case. You know the kind, in the UK we've had loads of fuel shortages due to protesters blockading the refineries. You always get some smart arse who says we are all suckers for panic buying petrol.. When he himself gets home he goes and buys some petrol JUST in case he needs it. Or the people who don't believe in bad luck yet refuse to walk under ladders or take a baseball bat to a mirror.

Which is why it still has a place in modern day Chinese life. People consult such things just in case, as doing it and practicing it costs relatively little compared to the negative outcomes which can occur. In ALL Chinese villages you'll have a second hand tale about somebody not consulting a local shyster the feng Shui man and falling on hard luck.

Though Chinese people can be somewhat gullible, for instance there was a Taoist master who performed a complex ritual for a HK model to change her luck. Which involved sex some people have called fuckshui quite recently a few people in HK being tricked into buying perpetual motion machines. However considering 419 scams are still landing in my email boxes everyday there is a sucker born everyday.

Big buildings and such like also have such a master come take a look and give advice. I mean you're going to give him $2000HK or so, when your building is going to cost $100 million HK the $2000 is insignificant.

Hey man this building's gonna cost us $1billion US$, think we should pay off this bloke claiming to be a Feng Shui master his $10000 fee?


Ordinary people see this happening and copy them. As they must have done something right to become wealthy.

Follow the more successful thief and steal his ideas. - "The Book of Cataclysm"

On the other hand people can use it to extort the government too! In Hong Kong villages on Feng Shui grounds denied the HK government permission to build a radar system for HKG airport. What they really meant is we want bigger compensation packages for having a big radar system in our village. The HK government told them to get lost and decided to cancel it till 2015.


Though this is somewhat at odds with the generally held idea that in some areas of China that fortune and luck are what matter above hard work, qualifications and talent (TCG is writing a book in collaboration with others about this keep your eyes peeled).

What some clever so and so in the 1990s thought of was applying this to western cultures. In that hey look those Chinese folks tend to live longer than us. It must be something they do (forgetting stuff like diet, work and psychological support though in truth I think this generation of Chinese ants are going to die much younger than their parents and grandparents). And they built a whole industry around it selling books, advice etc.

In the UK such people are considered to be entertainers the UK government recognises them as entertainers because they need to buy entertainment permits before being allowed to 'practice'.

All of this changed a small superstition in Chinese society into a whole industry which gives out inconsistent advice and has no industry standards. Penn and Teller exposed this when they asked several people who were said to be masters and all of them gave inconsistent advice.

Therefore to me it is a mere curiosity and I take it like my dad says, as long as it looks neat to the eye it is good. Which works for me just find since I live like a bum and live under a big stack of papers everywhere for the work I do. But because there are no sharp edges it's A-OK!

Bonza!

Atonement?

From the Sun

A BRAINY Japanese porn star is offering to have sex with the Chinese students — to apologise for her country's invasion of China.
Raunchy Anri Suzuki has a doctorate in Sino-Japanese history and feels so bad about what her countrymen did in 1937 that she is offering to make up for it in the only way she knows how.

The 24-year-old, from Tokyo, has made the naughty offer to Chinese students in her homeland after studying the Japanese invasion.

She said: "We have to respect the lessons of history and although we cannot obliterate it we can try and make recompense.

"I want to cure the wounds of China with my body, and I offer to do this by having sex with Chinese students in Japan.

"I think it would be a symbolic compensation for them

You know all of a sudden I feel incredibly insulted by what the Japanese people did to Hong Kong, you go around my dad's village and find one armed Pete, he pissed a Japanese soldier off and had his arm hacked off as punishment. Or the bloke in the other village who had their eyes poked out for fun by Japanese folks, or the way the villages.

Granted this is a disgusting publicity campaign where she is using the traumas of what Japan did to China 60 years ago for her own personal gain. But hey Chinese people no longer give a fuck any more. The Nanjing rape was a nasty one. However you go there and nobody seems to really care compared to say Mao's Mausoleum.

TCG however is not so apathetic, this has nothing to do with sex really. No really don't be so fucking cynical, no really you gotta believe me. And thus TCG is fulling willing to accept your apology and Atonement by Anri Suzuki.

Bring some lingerie and wear a latex cat suit...

Afterwards I may forgive you.

Yeah yeah I know it is probably fake news or a publicity stunt.

China scams 10

Ok ok so we've covered the first scam from the construction company. But they are all in it and pay bribes to the HKG therefore there is nothing people can really do about it. (For you Americans Estate agents are realtors just in case you didn't know).

Anyway the even worse insidious people are the estate agencies. They double count like politicians.

As I said before using say a 600sq ft flat, you'd expect there to be 600sqft of floor space right? Like if you buy a car you would expect it to have wheels right?

In HK estate agents are scummers, as said often the livable space in a flat/apartment is as low as 50% of the advertised floor space. Estate agents also count the walls as living space for starters. But they count things you don't even think of!

• The landing outside your flat ~ this is counted as usable floor space
• The freaking LIFT ~ this is counted as usable floor space
• The lobby downstairs is often counted too but divided between the flats ~ this is counted as usable floor space.
• The stairs! ~ this is counted as usable floor space
• A shelf no really you have an 8x8 room, minus the wall space lets say it is really 7x7 (it often is) so you get 49sq ft, not too bad, livable not great but this is Hong Kong remember. An estate agent will come along advertising place including the wall space as 64sqft. The scummer agent then sticks a 4x1 shelf up or even four of the damned things ~ this is counted as usable floor space this then becomes 68sqft. He adds 4 more shelves and suddenly your 49sqft room has become 80sqft.
• The above can be repeated in all sorts of ways, so a shelf above a shower thats space.
• Window sills are counted.
• The narrow shelf which sits OUTSIDE your flat hanging 200ft above the ground is counted as space.
• The freaking window sill on the outside is again counted as usable livable space.
• The washing line! is counted as space.
• A fan vent which is a hole in the wall is double counted too

Hey wait, I think I just thought of a way to pick up the hot babe who works as an estate agent in Tai Po. When I can claim to have a Lexington Steele or even a Jonah Falcon freakshow and when I finally whip it out claim exactly the same arguements as she claims.

China scams 9 You thought estate agents were scummers?

This applies to ALL China, especially HK and Macau.

But consider this Los Angeles advert says 695sq ft right and you would expect something close to 695sq ft right (I do metres though). Another nod to the HPC crowd.


In HK a 600sqft flat is not going to be 600sqft at most it will be 85% of this i.e. 510ft if you are lucky. If you ain't and have a particularly nasty scummer estate agent you may get 396.5ft - 65% of the advertised space. But get charged the rent for 600sqft.

What the? How why!

Initially the construction firms are cheating scummy shits, firstly when you measure something lets say the size of a room, you put the tape measure on the wall then walk to the other side of the room once you get to the other wall of the room, you then take your measurement.

HK developers don't do this they put the tape measure on the outside of the building to start with and then pull it not until it meets the other wall but the other outside of the building. In effect the walls are included in the living space. Unless you are some kind of ethereal being how the hell can you include the walls in the living space?

The Sham Shui Po things are more honest to be erm honest, as the walls are made from 3mm plywood or metal sheets and as expected will be considered as part of the living space.

On top of this developers are extra scummers too, they will say oh yes the walls will be 1ft thick, they will change the design of the building so you can't measure it properly i.e. at ground floor level. Thus to measure this you have to play spider man. Thinner walls need more expensive building materials like more steel in the concrete. Construction firms in HK use thicker concrete to give the same strength but at lower cost which encroaches on the living space. So to start with your 600sq ft flat, now has 1.5ftx3~4 missing on account of the walls.

Once it has been built the construction company quickly liquidates its subsidary company completely removing all liability when the residents who move in think fuck me this is smaller than I imagined!

But to save face the new residents will rather than complain will say oh it's nice, and try to off load it onto a bigger sucker.

The way Hong Kong used to be

Halt ICAC! from here

VANCOUVER — A three-decade-old manhunt for one of the most notorious figures of the Hong Kong underworld — a man who pumped millions of dollars of his ill-gotten gains into British Columbia — ended Thursday in a cemetery near Vancouver.

Sgt. Lui Lok was part of a cabal of five powerful station sergeants who ruled Hong Kong's police jurisdictions during the early 1970s, collecting graft while allowing the triads to conduct their criminal activities.

The most infamous of the corrupt cops was Lok, dubbed the "$500-Million Man." He and three other so-called Dragons fled to Vancouver in the mid-1970s before seeking sanctuary in Taiwan. They left their families behind.

They sure took their damned time didn't they?




Still crime doth not always pay. As corrupt cop Fitzroy Godber was apprehended and caught soon after he tried to make his escape.

You can read more propaganda Sucessful ICAC case files here


I will say one thing though if Jacqui 'Jackboot' Smith was in Hong Kong the ICAC would be all over her like a bad rash, look at this woman claiming to be unfairly treated by the media. Well deary you got your hands slammed in the till.

Doing business in China Prt 3

Guanxi

Guanxi can be loosely translated as contacts. In the UK there is the old saying it's not what you know but who you know that gets you places.

For example Peaches Geldof would never have gotten anywhere without her dad being famous.

The same applies to Kelly Osbourne and also Hack Helene Hegemann all sorts of people like that, there is a similar thing in China too in that you need to contact the right people. Finding contacts is the hard part of course in that for every good decent business man out there, there are probably 10 maybe 100 shysters.

Where to look for such contacts? There are various tactics for this:

Approach the British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong hang around some bars in Lam Kwai Fong and or approach some established businesses. Remember Hong Kong and Macau are safer placers to do biz than China.

Hong Kong shares British business tradition of limited liability companies which is good but it can also be an arse, in that they can steal your money liquidate the company and bugger off.

A good way to do this is if you do find a contact is to check up on them and request their accounts and or directorships for the past couple of years, if they have a habit of liquidating and running away this will show up. HK people and Chinese people are assigned ID card numbers that you can't escape!.

Anyway once you have your contact it is in effect a begging mission I hate this too, in that you have to take him out to dinner YOU'LL have to pay for it and generally massage their ego to get permissions to get permits or further contacts. You may well lose your shirt doing this as they will take the piss and exploit you ruthlessly. This applies even if you go through the chambers of commerce. You must massage their egos until the project is done and dusted and it is in operation as people you will meet who can get things done for you will invariably have contacts of their own.

In 2008 for example there was a story of a guy who opened a hotel in Zuhai (I know him personally) it is a fairly middle sized hotel, but the contact who set him up with builders and staff and permits was not invited to the opening. So what happened from this snub? The contact fixer phoned up the electricity company and cut them off. Myself and friendly girl (not girl friend) had to go and find him and then almost beg for him to turn it back on. He insisted that my friend drink a ton of booze and sort of demanded to have sex with her, we ended up walking out the electricity wasn't turned back on, so we went to find some petrol generators, except the fixer was good. He had told the people selling petrol generators not to deal with us. And the owner had to go grovelling back (for historical reasons I can never kneel or prostate myself or beg anybody a habit since 55BC). Finally after lots of bribes were passed back and forth the electricity was turned back on, but it was too late the grand opening had been ruined.


As many have said corruption is rampant, and in the UK you'd go to a judge and complain except the judges can be just as corrupt too..

The moral of the tale is all this could have been prevented by acting humble as if the fixer/contact was the sole reason you could get into this place. So if you find a contact a non corrupt one (like a needle in a stack of needles) you are going to have to act humble and invite him as an honoured guest until you are established. Once you become established you start growing your own contacts and fixers and cease to be at the mercy of your original fixer.

Doing business in China Prt 2

Due to writers block I'm writing this before I originally intended to do so.

Face, mian (phonetic)


Saving save, is old as something very old.

Some back ground on this Chinese people and Asians in general like to save face when they do something nasty or they will do something else that makes them look better than they are, quite simply lots of people will bullshit. It is terrifically important that in doing business you don't make companies lose face or their owners. Else they will utterly hate you and make take revenue.

I think this is similar to that of Ask the Korean. In that China only 100 years ago was mostly an agricultural society. Hell the small village in Hong Kong my dad was born in as recent as 10 years ago still grew water chestnuts. 40 years ago still grew wheat. There has been uber development. Take a look at the photo of 1950 vs today.




Anyway in agricultural societies people are close knit everybody knows everybody else and you need to gain the respect of everybody else in order to survive and prosper. As China didn't industrialise until Mao's disastrous policies and even then until the late 1980s. The country remained mostly agricultural and therefore people still have a strong need to keep the respect of others.

This respect and face is still apparent in western societies where people need to justify that they didn't do something. If anybody remembers the 1990s there were tons of hidden camera programmes that showed people in traps where things would fall off shelves and people would immediately deny it. This is apparent even though western societies became industrialised close to 200 years ago and less people worked the land, bonds between people dissipated.

The force is strong in this one, said Vader, the face saving force is equally as strong in China. A prime example is the self destruction of farmers crops (replanting) to impress government officials causing them to starve to death.

How this plays out in modern day life and doing business?


It is a bit like this



In that the invitee needs to save face in that if they leave the guests hungry then they lose face.

And while you are actually eating in a restaurant there is a culture of looking down on others, in restaurants people will be openly critical of the staff. Shout and blame that kind of thing, it is almost like bullying in that to make themselves appear better they will put down others.

More curiously you'll see when different families eat together you see this even in the UK, families will fight each other in attempting to pay the bill. I exploit this ruthlessly by putting up a weak fight then saying ok then. I sit back and enjoy the free lunches now and again. HUGE tips will be left again as a showing off type thing.

So whatever you do in Chinese business don't make people lose face, it will piss them off massively and they may never do business again with you. So in striking a deal you have to suck up to them even if they are arseholes.

I hate this form of business dealing, this is probably why my business dealings are done via email or phone as I don't like to stroke peoples' egos at all. But currently if you want to do business in China, Asia even then you gotta play by their rules.

However remember this one thing in that they are just as human as me and you and therefore there is a very high chance that it is bravado to conceal their real selves, it is just that they wear their masks extremely well.

Doing business in China prt1

This video here is still relevant

China has a bad no a VERY bad reputation unless you are a big multinational company, that is not to say you can't make money as I used to do the accounts of somebody who made bathroom fittings in China and was considered a hero of a small northern town in China.

However you get more of this

The problem is the guy who went to China to build motorbikes walked right into it. He had a wad of money no experience, no business plan and couldn't speak the language and skimped on a translator too. Imagine if a Chinese business man who couldn't speak English went to somewhere like Newcastle and asked a bunch of chavs to design and manufacture your bike. It wouldn't exactly be successful would it?.

In fact you don't need to imagine in that in the 1970s the owner of Hong Kong Li Kar Shing did come to the UK to attempt to do business, he nearly lost his shirt under the same circumstances.

Acquaintances who have been there to do business also state that they have a bad reputation Chinese motorbikes for example are terrible quality, you state you must use THIS grade of steel, they say yes and use a cheaper kind of steel and then wonder why things buckle and break.

In fact if anybody remembers the CIA fact book in the 70s and 80s it did indeed depict Chinese business men as snakes.


This does not apply to Hong Kong, or Macau but to China (Hong Kong and Macau don't have such corruption the ICAC prevents this kind of corruption) that doesn't mean there are no shysters in Hong Kong. Have a walk down the golden mile in Kowloon and it is full of shysters.

However for business negotiations here are some personally attested to guidelines (TCG attempted to go to Zuhai a couple years back to get something plastic manufactured there but the prototypes were consistently shit quality so this was abandoned I lost a couple £100 but that was it).

Anyway for negotiations:

1. The Chinese like to tell you they look for a win win deal in business. Good for you good for them type things. But really they prefer win for them lose for you.

This is because in China, there is still a mind set of super short termism, make money now damn the future. This is kind of similar to Africa. I remember reading a quote somewhere about African women having sex with people with AIDS. Bah whats the point of worrying about AIDS? I could be dead from Malaria next week 8 years is a life time away.

Changes in China are so rapid a similar mentality has developed, a similar mentality existed in US car factories were car parts were so fragile they would break if you looked at them too hard. Best cheat them out of money now, who knows what the future will bring. This even happens to BIG international corporates.

Cars manufactured there are copied examples are here.

This is reflected in UK immigration.

The Hakka immigrants in the 1970s took the long term view possibly as most of them came from the Hong Kong area and had British influence. This might also have been lessons learnt from history where Liverpool Chinese community were forced out at gunpoint multiple times, once they started to get the local people on side it became harder to force them to leave. But this is history for another day.

They have run successful hot food places for decades, and build relationships with their customer base. Peter Li for example of Cornwall has managed this for 35 years, people will come from miles to go to his place to chat etc. He initially lost money for a few years but they found he was a sound guy and therefore over time he effectively carved himself a nice little business.


While over the last 10 years many of the migrants from China are from Mainland China generally from Fujian, you can tell by their dialects when you wander through China town where the language is changing. Their business failure rate is incredible, Fred an accountant who deals with their accounts states that they have over 97% failure rate, it gets sold on to other migrants who fail again and again. The local shops around here once the Hakka/Cantonese people sold and retired have been flipping owners every 6-18 months.

I mention this in my book, where in Azerbaijan everybody cheated me, petrol that was 12p a litre suddenly became £1.20 a litre, shops with clearly marked prices were jacked up for my appearance. Cops would harass me relentlessly, sure they make a quick buck, but on my return Azerbaijan has been slated incredibly in various articles and news papers. Azeris may wonder why they have so few tourists in the future. Although Azerbaijan is a shit hole anyway.

2. Contracts mean NOTHING in China. They can be changed, modified and ignored any time any place. How are you going to enforce it? go to court where they have bribed the judge?

Much to the chagrin of the Korean guy this also happens in Korea. In that people sign a contract to go to a Hagwon and on the first day the owner of the school will give them a long winded speech in a euphemism manner about how their contracts mean jack shit. Again how do you enforce the contract? Go to a Korean or Chinese court when you don't speak the language and even the CCP doesn't respect contracts.

3. The Chinese are very patient in the negotiation process. They wait to wear you out and then get the upper hand when you are most tired.

My English bosses perfected this, in that they would always get you at the end of a long day and put pay negotiations at the end of hectic weeks to catch you off guard.

4. The Chinese take time to find out more about you and your business and they never strike a deal with you right away. So if you’re imbued with western culture, and aim to get the deal sealed as soon as possible, do remember this cultural difference.

A case of know thy enemy

5. The Chinese will tell you that you cannot do this and do that because the regulations forbid it. Don’t trust them. Go and find out the truth yourself and use an independent translator to research the regulations and laws. They will use the language difference to extort advantage over you, in most of the cases you will find that your Chinese negotiation counterparts are lying.

#6 Face ,Oh man face you must not make them lose face, China and Asians in general must never lose face, in China people in 1954 great leap forward would rather starve to death than lose face.

#7 Copyright law, China not even the government respects copyright law, just look at the J-17 which is a copy of the Mig 21 and copied stolen military technology. You go and walk around any market in China and you see 100-1 game cartridges etc. You see this in Hong Kong too but it is kept out of sight, it still happens. So if you have a wonderful invention perhaps you may want to manufacture those parts elsewhere say Malaysia or Singapore where copyright laws are more respected.

I am a Chinese but I am pretty fucking dismayed with the Chinese culture exhibited in business negotiations. In that as I said before the CIA fact book once said Chinese are lower than snakes, I can protest and say this isn't true, yet other Chinese people seem to consistently prove me wrong.


The issue is, if something seems too good to be true, then often it is too good to be true, greed avarice etc all seems to make us lower our shields. This is why the 419 scams still perpetuate if they capture 1-20,000 emails they send out it is still profitable.


A recent trend in this is a nasty confidence trick. In that they will send westerners employed by such corrupt companies above to meet them somewhere like Hong Kong, Its Hong Kong its gotta be safe right? To lure the negotiator into a false sense of security. And therefore let their shields down and thus lose their shirt.