Meeting with Government officials

I got back to my apartment and found I had several messages about needing to attend a meeting with a government official on Thursday afternoon. I was nominated because our local American leader was in the U.S. and they want to have a U.S. person as part of the group going to meet with the local Chinese group. I was driven there with one of our Staples local management team members.

It was another beautiful day in Shanghai and I will say it was hot here. We get to the official's office very early so we're escorted into another official's office to await our lawyer. They are prepping me for the next meeting, no A/C and hot tea which you have to drink out of respect for your host. Without getting into any particulars of exactly why we're there, we are just letting the local government officials know we are still interested in a positive outcome of a matter they need to push forward to the next level of government. Our lawyer arrives so we have a brief pre-meeting with her.

At precisely 2 PM, we are escorted to the local business district official's office. (His business card says, "Vice Warden" but I'm told he's really deputy governor.) They insist that I sit in the "seat of power" directly across from the vice warden. After polite greetings and another cup of boiling hot green tea is presented, the government official begins to talk to me through the interpreter saying all the politically correct things about the importance of Staples to the business community and how they appreciate our presence, etc. My response is in line with his, "We are honored that he took the time to meet with us, that we appreciate everything they are doing for us, how happy we are to be located in the Changning district, etc." Then with apologies to me, our lawyer says, correctly, that they will continue the meeting in Mandarin for expedience. I agree and sit there to listen, hanging on every word like I understand. Of course, I realize how little vocabulary I know. Hey, most two year olds wouldn't keep up this conversation either!

Suddenly Jack Bauer appears. I am sitting there in a pool of sweat. The A/C appears to be on, everyone in the room is quite comfortable but I have sweat continuing to pour out of my body. I slip off my suit jacket (I"m the only one with one on) and I realize they are torturing me. The key way to torture someone is to control their environment, right, so they serve me steaming hot tea, have no cool air circulating and they are all ignoring my plight. Of course, there's also a huge clock in my field of vision, so I'm imagining when the meeting will end so I could begin to return to a normal state, while feinting my interest in all the words I don't understand. This goes on for 50 minutes while the clock goes tick, tick and the sweat goes drip, drip. At some point I must have run out of sweat because, I stopped sweating and now was just downright uncomfortable.

The meeting mercifully ends on a positive note as our team made some good points to the Local officials. They continue to meet when we leave and we head to an air conditioned auto for the trip back tot the office. I go to bed thinking, I hope I didn't do or say anything wrong.

Friday afternoon, I was invited to go with the same local Staples' executive to view our distribution center to see our operations. At the end of our visit, he says, "Let's stop by the local official's office for this area and have a brief visit". So we go to a beautiful and seemingly underutilized district office and proceed to the #2 local official's room. Well, he must have gotten the word from the other guys that they could wilt me with no A/C because, of course, his isn't on either. (Did I say it was ..., oh, never mind). This guy is going one step further in his Jack Bauer torture. He isn't satisfied that steaming hot tea and no A/C is enough, he politely asks if it's okay if he smokes while we meet? Of course, I smelled the strong cigarette odor when I entered his office, so this was no surprise. Despite all of the witty one line comebacks, that quickly raced through my head, I decided to just give enthusiastic approval to his question.

This meeting was low key and very friendly. Just the three of us in his office, with me sweating profusely again. Thankfully, this was only 30 minutes of sweating and I had no business jacket on, so I survived. I did realize during this meeting that I'm not very good at speaking with an interpreter. While the officials i met with all spoke directly to me, I tended to answer looking mostly at the interpreter, not the officials. I need to pay attention to this next time.

Okay, so Friday night it was off to Korean BBQ and another Jerry Seinfeld moment. We go into a very popular, very nice restaurant as a group of six people. Because, I'm tall, I always try to position myself at the end of the table so I can stretch my legs away from the table if necessary. This turned out to be a real good move.

Korean food is very tasty and there are a lot of different things to eat, some I really liked and some, not so much. The meat, which is cooked right in front of you, was very good and a welcome relief from some of things I've had in Shanghai and the various sauces made it easy to find ones you liked to enhance the flavor. All good. There were some things that I found uninteresting due to texture, taste or spice. Seinfeld fans may remember the time Jerry was served mutton which he couldn't eat, he continually sneaked the undigested pieces out of his mouth and into his napkin. Well, I continually took the things I didn't like and moved them from my bowl to the server's table next to me on a low shelf so no one would notice. While it appeared I was eating everything and cleaning my plate, the not so good stuff was being shuttled to the servers table for someone to clean up. This will probably disappoint the Korean member of our team from Canada who was absolutely enjoying himself with every bit of food that was presented. (Of course, he had a digestive issue related to this meal the next morning, but that's a story for a different day.)

A very interesting last three days!