Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kaiser's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, April 7th, 2005
1:07 am	Charlie Martin I had lunch with a guy I haven't seen in some time - Steve, who works at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Great food, by the way - the restaurant of the Sichuan provincial government's rep office in Beijing, so naturally the Sichuan food was amazing. Ordered the standards just to make sure. But I digress. Steve mentioned an article I somehow missed in yesterday's WSJ on a bribery scandal involving Monsanto's operation in Indonesia. The reporters named names, and one name named was a guy I once interviewed for a story, Charlie Martin, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce here in Bejiing. The Journal reporters say they viewed an e-mail from Martin's Monsanto account to the private e-mail address of one Michael Villareal basically asking Villareal to disguise bribes paid on behalf of Monsanto by invoicing the company for consulting fees totalling some $66,000. Charlie Martin was a career foreign service officer who had been posted around Asia, and seemed to me a thoughtful, well-spoken, upright man. I believe in innocent until proven guilty, and no charges have been filed, but I don't think there's a way out of this for him, and he'll almost certainly have to resign his post as head of AmCham China. I've always heard American businesspeople complain that they're hamstrung by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is basically an anti-bribery law that renders an American subject to US law while conducting business abroad. They say German and French companies engage in bribery all the time in Asia; I've heard a few anecdotes by people quite close to me. Anyone have any stories they'd like to share? (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 5th, 2005
12:53 am	Generic catch-up type post Work and more work. Can't say it's not rewarding though: I'm right proud of some of the pieces I've done for this big forthcoming cover package and I look forward to reaction from RH readers. Wrote on semiconductors for the first time, really. An interesting little factlet: China exports about 90% of the chips it produces, and at the same time imports about 90% of the semiconductors it uses. An intriguing paradox, no? No. Guenevere turns 1 year old in a week. We've decided not to make too big a deal of it -- just have the families over for some food. Words: mama, baba, daddy, Fanfan, something that sounds suspiciously like Kaiser, pretty, cookie, and the following unmistakably Chinese words: jidan (egg), yazi (duck), deng (light, though it comes out more like "duh!"), and wawa which means doll. Crawls well, cruises (moves around rooms standing but only while supporting herself with various pieces of furniture, for you non-baby people), I'd say 80% potty-trained now. Fanfan's started English at a school called Wall Street Institute. The pedagogy seems sound, like I know fuck all about second language acquisition. But she's really into it, and appears to be learning quickly. Life with her has been blissful -- when I've had any time to spend with her. Met up with a guy named Alex who was here some years back -- huge ABC dude of Shandong extraction, an environmental lawyer and a musician. He came to a show with his very smart wife Hyeon-ju, and we had lunch today. He turned me on to a cool band called Darediablo - sort of prog-inflected instrumental rock outfit that's a bit like an amped up Modeski Martin and Wood, or an Emerson Lake and Palmer stripped of pretension and, alas, Greg Lake's nice voice. They're on now. I'm playing bass in an AC/DC cover band called the Dirty Deeds, getting ready to book our first round of gigs. The singer's going to blow people away. He's the real thing. Rocks circles around me. I've been spending some afternoons writing and taking meetings at the Bookworm when possible. I've made some new acquaintances there - Dan, a young guy with a formidable intellect, a job at IBM and very nice shirts; Olivia, a henna-headed, grad student Berliner whose mother is a mighty Montenegran and whose Chinese trounces mine; Maya, a lawyer-on-leave from Jersey via DC who's finishing up a book that would sound intriguing were I not so squeamish about the prospect of reading numerous first hand accounts of sexual exploits by the author; KC, very smart business writer who worked for years at the Street and seems like she's very solidly grounded and therefore inspires my confidence. It's nice to regularly see Ada and Daming there too. So many cool new people in Beijing these days. I feel fortunate. But I don't know when the venerable 'Worm will have its date with the wrecking ball, but they've already knocked down quite a few buildings in the old Sanlitun apartment block on the west side of the street and I believe my cozy little haunt's days are numbered. Fortunately plans are already in place to move it south a coupla hundred meters. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 15th, 2005
5:19 pm	For those of you who haven't seen this yet, here's the "Instant China Journalism Template" that I wrote for December's column in that's Beijing. This is in its original form, pre-editing. ( Read more... ) </p> (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 14th, 2005
1:15 pm	As promised, some of the recent that's Beijing "Ich Bin Ein Beijinger" columns, starting with last month's about the legendary Dess Maitou band Grave Robbers Guild. ( Read more... ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
12:26 pm	Shit, I really need to update more frequently. I figure with the new that's Beijing website unable so far to display magazine content it might be nice to throw some recent columns on LJ for people who haven't picked up a hard copy yet. I'll do that. But first, the banal details of my life you're surely all dying to hear! ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 29th, 2005
6:19 pm	Oh, if only I could tell y'all how much fun it's been here in Davos! Communicate with me privately for all the dirt; I'll go home and sort through my (copious) notes and at some point try to figure out what I can post without jeopardizing my chances of ever being invited back. Actually, for the most part I'd have only good things to say. Best thing has been hanging out with some of the other summary writers, most of whom are first-rate minds and very cool individuals. I'm pretty sure I've made some lasting friendships. The homesickness thing is pretty rough, though -- longest I've spent away from the Fanster and Guenevere to date. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 27th, 2004
10:47 pm	Hey, so guess who the new Associate Editor, Asia, for the re-launched Red Herring magazine is? Yep, I've decided after lengthy deliberation to hang up freelancing and take a real job at a real magazine. It is, I suppose, what I've been after all along. This came up serendipitously: I didn't formally apply, they haven't even seen a resume, and as far as I can tell their due diligence on me involved Googling my name and asking a few of my editors what they thought of me. The fit with Red Herring seems to be a good one: the owner and the editor-in-chief, both of whom interviewed me for this position, are sincere about broadening the RH's focus beyond Silicon Valley, and Asia (and especially China) is due for serious coverage. The areas I’ll be covering--telecoms, IT, energy, capital markets--are all things I’ve written on seriously in the last year or so, and I’m fairly well sourced on those beats. I’ll have the opportunity as their main guy in East Asia to travel all over the place--Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia. And they’re saying they want me back in the US--their office is currently in Mountain View, moving to Belmont on the Peninsula very soon--at least three times a year for a minimum of three weeks each time. That suits me nicely: being back in the States has been surprisingly pleasant, especially here at my aunt’s place in Foster City. Oh, and the money’s not bad (barring a sudden RMB revaluation) and so far the folks I’ve met there are pretty cool. The magazine's owners' company, Dasar, has an office in Beijing at Xizhimen but it appears that I'll be able to either work from home or set up a small office of my own somewhere. Now I have to tell all those editors I’ve been writing for these years that I’ll no longer be able to contribute. Anyone want some freelance strings? I’ve got lots to dole out to the right people. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 27th, 2004
12:39 am	Dinner conversations in my family revolve invariably around politics (when we're not talking about the personal lives of those sibs regrettably not present, and yes, there was plenty of that over turkey last night too). After we were through with the post mortem on poor John Kerry, my younger brother Jay took me to task for the "rooting for China" he says is perceptible -- nay, conspicuous -- in all my writing. Guilty as charged, I suppose, though I'm by no means a knee-jerk apologist and he'll grant as much. We had a spirited discussion about "the vision thing" or, as he would say, lack thereof in Chinese politics: Jay thinks a great nation should have a mission statement -- what the raison d'etre of the state is, what it strives to become, how it sees its role in the global arena -- while I countered that in China's case let's be thankful there isn't one, and that the ad-hoc pragmatism aimed at raising income levels and creating what Beijing modestly calls a xiaokang society while putting out the innumerable fires is, well, good enough for now. I'm glad that ideology is a dirty word for most Chinese people I know, and if we have to endure a generation or two of near-naked materialism so be it. He knows what I think: that wealth can only come about in a stable business environment, something fostered by and which in turn fosters rule of law, which I still think is the cornerstone of a pluralistic polity. Not an argument many Americans buy, I'll own, but living in China has convinced me of it. The flight over was something of an ordeal, with Guenevere not being too cooperative. Barely slept a wink. The in-flight trivia was fun, though. Fanfan's had a very interesting time here so far, though the bits of America she's managed to see I couldn't quite call representative: * A mostly gay party in the Swish Alps above the Castro in the City, thrown by Jay the evening of the day we arrived. * Oakland, where we stayed the first night at my older bro's house: nary a white person in sight, she remarked as we walked up Telegraph to buy baby supplies at Andronico's Park-n-Shop. * Central Valley along I-5, and various fast-food-and-gas-station oases on the way. Gas station attendant who was clearly a crystal meth head: that was amusing. * Our time share condo in Pinetop, AZ, where everyone's been showing off their culinary chops and we're all getting fat. John & Rachael's three daughters Kaili (9), Camille (5) and Hartley (17 mos.) plus my Guenevere (7 mos.) have made for pleasant pandemonium. * Wal-Mart, which were it a country would be China's 12th largest trade partner. Bought a nice digital camera off casino winnings (see below). * The Deparment of Motor Vehicles in Show Low, Arizona -- a trailer-based office where I got my driver's license re-issued. * An Indian casino five minutes down the road, where we've won a total of nearly $600 dollars already through dumb luck on slots. I hit a $375 jackpot on quarter slots; Fanfan won some $200 on one herself. * The sad and cheesey lounge in said casino, with its Mexican band doing La Bamba and disco medleys while various less-than-urbane Americans boogied rather comically. We're off to the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest tomorrow, then to the Grand Canyon on Monday, then down to Tucson on Tuesday. A few days there, then to Chicago and Madison... (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 13th, 2004
12:04 am	We're leaving for the States on Tuesday and I've managed to pack quite a bit into the last week before our departure. Finally about finished with all the work I have to do: only one little interview to write up - a good one I had this afternoon with Shao Yibo, founder and chairman of Chinese auction site EachNet (now eBay EachNet post-acquisition). He's one hell of a cool guy: child prodigy from Shanghai who graduated suma cum laude from Harvard and sold first a third of his company to eBay in March 2002 for what, 25 million dollars or so if I remember correctly, then the rest earlier this year for a cool 160 million. I knew him socially back in the late 90s through Eric of ChinaNow.com. His wife Jenny - a lovely woman and Bo's intellectual equal or better they say - is expecting their second child, a boy, late this year. Their 17-month-old daughter gives my Guenevere a good run in the cuteness sweeps. All around good person, Bo is: sterling rep, well loved and now fabulously wealthy. And he's what, all of 31 years old. What a stud. I got interviewed by China Radio International for a couple of shows, one a live Webcast mostly about the music biz in China and goings-on with my band, the other just to harvest some sound bytes for various pieces on music-related topics. Met some very nice folks over there but missed a chance to tell that fuckwit Rick O'Shea - the cheesiest, lamest DJ ever to have existed and a sore embarrassment to any English-speaker - what I think of him. Ah, well. I also did a spot with CBS News that's supposed to air on Sunday morning after Thanksgiving: I was talking about various Sichuan dishes in this wonderful Chuancai guan across the street from our new digs, explaining lazi ji and shuizhuyu for the folks back home. Try out this place if you're up near Yayuncun some time: it's called Shunanrenjia (蜀南人家）and you should feel free to ask me for directions. The CBS crew then accompanied me to Nameless Highland, where my band played just now, and shot us doing Tianxia. The show went very well, I think, and there were a bunch of young American English teachers in the crowd with whom I spoke afterward; they all seemed to like us quite a bit. We played first, and were followed by this interesting Mongolian band with a throat-singing frontman who looked to be just out of puberty but had a voice like a Klingon baritone; there was a Mongolian horsehead fiddle player as well, who played that thing like no one I've ever seen. The guitar, bass and drums were competent but painfully introverted. They need a makeover, but the music was impressively executed. I believe they were called Han Gan. Of course with so much fun going on - a brunch with good friends tomorrow morning, practice with the AC/DC cover band I'm playing bass for tomorrow afternoon, dinner with Daming and then a party at Betsy & Mike's tomorrow night - I'm sure to get homesick for Beijing when I'm there in the States. But I'm still psyched to watch Fanfan reacting to America. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 4th, 2004
11:10 pm	I'll be going back to the mainland US for the first time in close to four years on November 16, because Fanfan actually got her visa! I wish of course I'd be going back to celebrate a Democratic victory, but hey, it's going to be nice at least to see the extended family and my friends from college, Drew and Dave. The thing that excites me most is the chance to see America through the eyes of someone who's never been: she's bound to ask all sorts of questions it had never occurred to me to ponder. Looking forward to this immensely! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
12:40 am	Depressed, yeah, but I'm also embarrassed, frustrated, anguished and still in a state of disbelief, hoping I'll wake up and somehow it won't be real. How it is that more than half of Americans can actually believe that Dubya is the better man to represent the US internationally, to make sober and intelligent decisions with consequences that will resonate globally for decades, even centuries -- it's entirely beyond me. European friends of mine who in the past have blithely dismissed the differences between the parties as essentially inconsequential are coming to understand that the schism in the American polity is really profound: it cuts to the core of belief, of character and personality, and polarization as far as I can tell is only going to increase. I wonder if it's even tenable in the long term. Ah, well, I'm pretty well used to disappointment by now. I've been in Beijing now for four presidential elections and only one's gone my way -- Clinton in 96, and that wasn't even close. I've watched Dukakis, Gore and now Kerry go down in defeat from this side of the world. In fact I've voted in twice as many presidential elections from here as from the States. I'm sure I'd feel even worse about things if life weren't so damned good on a personal level. I'm through the worst of it in terms of work: just a handful of minor pieces to finish up over the weekend and I can relax (and fume about Bush) until we leave for the US -- that is if Fanfan's visa comes through. She got turned down for her first interview, bad bit of luck not having hit a visa officer who we knew socially, and her second interview -- this one buttressed by a referral from an embassy friend of ours -- is Thursday afternoon. Guenevere says "mama" all the time now, and occasionally will look at me and say "baba," and that's an inexpressbly huge joy. She's healthy and tons of fun. We moved to a splendid apartment -- 213 square meters, tastefully done, enormous kitchen, space for the little ankle-biter to scoot around in her little walker and shower water pressure so strong it hurts! Fanfan put the whole thing together down to the littlest detail inside of a week. Finally, I've been picked to be a summary writer for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January: a week of well paid and relatively easy work, great opportunities to meet government and business people I've long admired, and all in a lovely little Swiss ski resort. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 20th, 2004
6:44 pm	Episode 178 of "This American Life" -- Superpowers, from February 23, 2001 -- poses the most trenchant, pressing question of our time: If you could choose just one superpower, and you would be the only person in the world with it, would it be flight, or invisibility? (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 5th, 2004
5:12 pm	Three shows in two days! We played Sunday afternoon at the much-vaunted Beijing Midi Music Festival at the Beijing Sculpture Garden after the whole thing was nearly cancelled due to complaints by neighbors. I grant it was quite loud: I could hear Reflector playing from 400 meters away in a cab on Chang'an Avenue. They worked out a compromise whereby all the acts would get compressed into a shorter time frame, wrapping up at 7pm. That meant that instead of going on at 6:30 and playing five songs we could only play three (we ended up doing four) and played with the sun still high in the sky at around 4:30. Xiao Kou and I collided 10 minutes before show time while I was warming up and he hit my whammy bar and snapped my D string. Astonishingly no one anywhere in the vicinity had the Allen wrench I needed to change strings so I ended up borrowing some guys shitty Strat knock-off and playing with that. Then just into our last song I broke a string on that guitar, so I grabbed the lead singer's from him while Kou tried to cover for me, playing a riff of mine; I jumped in just in time to play the main guitar hook of "Tianxia 天下" and it wasn't a complete disaster, though I was too rattled to really perform convincingly. Monday there were two post-Midi shows -- first at Nameless Highland, 无名高地, where we played first so we could get to the other show, and then at New Get Lucky，新豪运. Thing is the Get Lucky organizers figured we'd be playing late in the lineup at Nameless Highland since we were the only well-known band playing there, so they lined us up ninth out of 10 acts. We went on at 2:30 AM -- we sat around backstage picking our noses, and me without a book! -- and finished our set well past three. But I have to say we played one of the better shows we've played, even if it was only five or six songs. Afterward I had the unwelcome affections of Wang Yuntao -- Tao Ge, who I call Tony Soprano -- visited upon me. Hulking, powerfully built and quite drunk, the owner of the Get Lucky -- who I strongly suspect has not inconsiderable underworld connections -- has this touchy, man-huggy kind of enthusiasm that I find somehow extremely menacing. Tony Soprano. He actually scares me: I never quite know what to say to him, and I often can't understand what he says to me as his tongue is thick from drink. It's the kind of friendliness that could so easily turn to violence; he'd take offense, I surmise, were his 10-minute handshakes and bearhugs not reciprocated with passable earnestness. He does love Chunqiu, though, and insisted to his house promoters that we do a big full-scale concert there (meaning just one or two opening acts and a nice long set for us). The highlight of the evening for me was meeting this awesome band from Shanghai called "Lengku Xianjing 冷库仙境," or "Cold Fairlyand" as they're known for now in English. (I gave them some other options, like "Frozen Fairyland" -- your suggestions are welcome). The band's fronted by a young woman who's a graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory. She plays keyboards and pipa -- both excellently, I should add -- and sings. They have another woman who graduated from the Shanghai (Peking?) Opera School (戏曲学院）who plays electric cello, and a guitarist, bassist and drummer who are all really good players. Their musical style I'd describe as "Heavy New Age," like Yanni but with big fucking balls and much cooler arrangements. I talked to the frontwoman for a long time about arrangement and composition; she's heard us a bunch and had all sorts of insightful comments and questions about how we write. My sense is she really likes us musically but isn't too keen on our vocalist -- something hundreds of people have told me. What to do, what to do.... (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 21st, 2004
5:19 pm	A Weekend in Shanghai Fanfan, Guenevere and I took the train down to Shanghai on Friday night to spend the weekend with Fanfan's family on the distaff side. Her mother is the third of six daughters; the seventh-born in the Nie Clan, a son at last, was an afterthought and no one seems to like him much. Number Two Aunt lives in Nanjing and Number Four (who was a total knock-out in that pig-tail-and-Mao-hat kind of way back in the day) lives here in Beijing, but the rest -- One, Five and Six -- are all in Shanghai. All six Nie sisters are highly musical and when they all gather they evidently sing complex three-part harmonies -- that is, when they're not cackling maniacally and shrieking at 120 db in Shanghainese. Seriously, though, they're all great and super warm. The whole thing was renao as fuck and naturally they stuffed us full of good food, having first inquired of my mother-in-law what my favorite dishes were. I've now met all the cousins save Number Two's son in Nanjing. Number One Aunt has a daughter Fanfan's age, Peipei, who's very attractive but evidently has commitment problems which are the source of much anxiety on the part of her somewhat overweening mother. I've been solemnly sworn to set her up with Mr. Right; any 32-to-40-year-old single men out there can apply in the comment box below. Her sister's a bit of a wall flower but attractive in her own right. Number Six Aunt has a hottie daughter too -- a very bailing KPMG accountant -- but she's got a beau. Number Five Aunt has this 1.86-meter colossus of a son, now at Fudan. Very hip kid. It was exhausting, of course, but most of the attention was focused on the wee one, who hammed it up and made her mother and I very proud. On Monday we took a few hours away from the family obligations to do the Shanghai Museum, which I haven't visited in five years. It's even better than I remembered, and I was psyched to see Fanfan get so into it. I also got a chance to meet an editor I've worked with closely but only known by e-mail and phone until now. He talked me into another friggin' cover story that's going to require tons of research and reporting and ruin my sleep for the next two weeks, but whatever. On the way down I started Bill Clinton's My Life, which I would highly recommend. I'm finding it nothing short of inspiring. Oh, and my little familia had the soft sleeper cabin all to ourselves both ways. Unbelievable luck! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 26th, 2004
5:38 pm	Back to the Grind I managed, against all odds, to take a couple of days off from work (and from updating this LJ). Circumstances conspired to keep me from really relaxing at all during my so-called vacation: my nine-year-old niece Kaili, a terrific and preternaturally wise child who just left -- tearfully -- this morning, had been staying with Fanfan and I for the last 10 days or so, as my parents had to take off for Taipei to deal with funeral arrangements for my maternal grandmother. We had a good time, reading books together -- she likes Kipling, so we Kipled a lot -- and taking her out on little excursions, but it was confessedly taxing thinking of creative ways to feed and entertain her. Since she couldn't communicate with Fanfan (who alas doesn't really speak English) I had to attend to her pretty much all the time. Mind you I'm more than happy to do it: My hat's off to my brother John and his wife Rachael for raising such an exemplary child. I'll be delighted if my Guenevere turns out half as mature and well-behaved. Grandma -- Sung Man-ch'ing (Song Manqing), but we called her Laolao -- is dead. Doesn't really sadden me, truth be told: we were never close, and in her last few years I can't say she held onto a whole lot of dignity. Alzheimer's is awful. But hey, at least once she became totally addle-brained she got a hell of a lot more kind. Growing up -- and it's not really fair, since I always compared her to my saintly paternal grandmother -- she always struck me as vain, aristocratic, supercilious and flat-out feudal. After she went senile her accent reverted to this quaint, yokel Shandong dialect instead of the high-bred guoyu she used to speak. She was something, though. A stunner in her day, the pictures attest: statuesque with excellent posture that she kept into old age, musically gifted, politically cunning. She practiced tai-chi sword every morning until her stroke in the mid-90s. She was a real pistol, I hear -- chased my Waigong around with a gun shooting at him after one of his famous philandering episodes, and that's one of the more tame stories I've heard. She was the principal of a well-known school called Kuang-jen (Guangren) in Taipei and a member of the Taiwan legislative yuan (representing, absurdly, Xiping County in Henan). I didn't make the funeral, though both my brothers dutifully crossed the Pacific for it. The normally fucked-up Liu family evidently pulled itself together pretty well for this send-off for Laolao, and hid its deep-rooted dysfunctionality tolerably, or so reports my brother Jay. So Kaili's gone, and I'm a bit saddened by that, and I'm back to work. Now of course the plate's piled high with tons more writing: an agriculture series for a new client, a big cover story on R&D in the PRC for an economic review, a profile on the founder of the Qiaojiangnan Sichuan eatery chain for a travel mag, and something I hadn't quite finished off from before the break for Asia Inc. Daughter Guenevere is now four-and-a-half months, and she seems to find much in the world to be very humorous. She has long laughing sessions nearly every day, sometimes more than once, where just about anything you say or do gets her giggling and shrieking with the most beautifully earnest mirth you've ever heard. I don't know greater joy. Got a show tomorrow night at this new club we've started playing at, way out on the west side by the Shijingshan Gymnasium. Nice place -- cavernous disco -- with a decent sound system. Best of all, only two bands per night! And when we finish, they bring on the dancing girls. Shitty House starts pumping, and slatternly women in serious warpaint start gyrating on the dais behind the DJ. God save us. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 27th, 2004
8:04 pm	Freelancer Needs Time Off (Fenghua, Zhejiang Province, July 27 2004) - Sitting in his shabby room at the Fenghua Hotel in this satellite city of Ningbo, freelancer Kaiser Kuo reflects on his desperate need for a vacation. "I’ve been running myself ragged lately and it's not been any good for my health of that of my new little family," says the paunchy aspiring journalist as he studies the dark circles under his eyes in the room's dirty mirror. "I'm either out reporting all day or out of Beijing entirely, like I’ve been since Sunday night and will be until next Monday, or I'm at home and unavailable, sitting at my computer and writing," says the beleaguered Kuo. "Why it is that as a freelancer he ends up working far longer hours than someone with a regular job?" asks wife Zhang Fan, as she comforts their neglected three-month-old girl. "The band hasn't rehearsed in a month," laments Diao Lei, drummer for Kuo's band Spring and Autumn. "That's why I keep fucking up when we play shows." Kuo tells himself that his situation is only temporary, and that once his nascent company Sinica is up and running his workload will be substantially reduced while his income isn't. But analysts suggest that this isn't likely to be the case for many months. "Until then, unless he simply decrees that he's on vacation and takes the hit economically there's nothing he can do about the workload piling on," a source close to Kuo told LiveJournal. Kuo protests that he intends to do just that: "I will be officially on vacation for a week starting roughly August 15," he asserts, though unconvincingly. Until then Kuo faces substantial challenges, including five deadlines all within the first 10 days of August: A report on MBA programs in China for Asia Inc, a long-promised piece on controversial radical reformist officials for that same publication, a cover story on energy for China Economic Review, a piece on China's recent emergence as a center of mobile handset design for Cox News Service, and his monthly missive for that's Beijing. "He needs to put some effort into the that's column this month," said self-described Kuo sycophant Brendan O'Kane. "Last month's just didn't do it for me." Meanwhile, Kuo's gluttony for punishment only increases. He is rumored to be in consideration for part-time China correspondent to a major American journal and is in negotiation with an agricultural publication to take on more freelance work. "He needs to learn to say no. For some of these publications, the guy's writing for shit pay." (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 2nd, 2004
12:11 pm	I've been working on a cover story for the China Economic Review about recent signs of meaningful reform in China's capital markets. It's been one helluva steep learning curve for someone whose formal study of economics ended in 1986 after a 2-semester macro-and-micro series at Cal my sophomore year. It was bad enough trying to sound informed and authoratative as I interviewed various economists and analysts for the story in English, but this morning at Galaxy Securities (China's largest securities firm) my already shaky command of financial terminology in English was multiplied by my halting Chinese (here I'm being generous: I don't have this vocab down for shit). Fortunately the senior economist I interviewed there, a guy named Wu Zuyao, cut me all sorts of slack and helped me muddle through terms like 'convertible bonds' and 'derivatives market' and he ended up giving me some terrific insights. Really nice guy. Life as a freelancer isn't easy, but it sure is fun, and it's perfect for someone with a dilettantish intellect like mine. Since I gave over my life to it in October of 2002, I've waded into telecoms, IT, cotton, energy (oil, coal, natural gas, electric power), commodities, health care, microfinance, US-China trade, macroeconomic policy, automotive, Chinese film, music industry IPR, postgraduate education and occasionally even Zhongnanhai politics. It's all stuff I should know something about anyway, and in truth my dabblings haven't done much more than prep me for cocktail party small-talk, but along the way I've met some phenomenally intelligent people and I feel like I've got a much firmer grasp on how things actually work here. On another note, I've discovered another ABC blogger who shares my taste for bad puns: His blog, like mine, is called "The Unbearable Lightness of Beijing." We seem to have some friends in common, too. Check him out: he's a good writer and his observations as a relative newcomer to Beijing are refreshing and insightful to one who, like me, has been here so long that all perspective is lost. It's a pity, then, that I have to kill him. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 28th, 2004
9:15 pm	Dammit, didn't get to talk to Qiu He. Closest I got was a conversation with the mishuzhang and listening to Qiu prattle on a bit from the back of the Suqian Hall of the People for some celebration of the 83rd anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. I did, however, manage to visit the preposterously large Jiangsu Suqian Economic Development Zone on the southwest side of town, and as luck would have it my visit coincided with the visit of some three dozen angry peasants who were out for justice: they felt they had been inadequately (and some claim not at all) compensated for the land and houses that had been bulldozed for the building of all those large and -- as far as I could tell -- mostly unoccupied commercial spaces. Not surprisingly the peasants were as encouraged by my presence as my hosts were embarrassed by that of the angry mob. To be fair, I also did talk to the labor union chairman of the Suqian success story, a big glass factory (that isn't located in one of the four Economic Development Zones in the vicinity of the city. This factory, if their numbers are to believed, has had average year-on-year growth of over 50% since 2000. I cabbed back to Xuzhou, discouraged but not prepared to give up this story, and as my new acquaintance Professor Zhang was unable to get me a ticket on the K508 I wrangled with all sorts of untrustworthy Subei ticket scalpers until I got one, for a 50-kuai mark-up, on the 1501--a slower train that takes me to Beijing Xi Zhan, which sucks as I live only a couple of blocks from the main railway station in Beijing. But at least it's got an electrical outlet, and I'm posting from the train. Neat-o! Looking forward to seeing Fanster and Guennie! (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 27th, 2004
6:00 pm	In the Satrapy of the Reform Zealot I'm in Suqian, a smallish city in northern Jiangsu province about 120 km east of Xuzhou. Suqian is the personal fiefdom of one of the most interesting and controversial characters in Chinese politics today: Qiu He, the secretary of the Suqian Municipal Party Committee, radical reformer extraordinaire. He's gone off the reservation, most Party faithful will tell you, in his eagerness to privatize everything and build towns to yank the desperate poor out of agrarian idiocy. But he's got a loyal following here. On my way here, as I opened my dossier on Qiu to re-read various clips, I kept thinking that I should write a parody of Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness for that's Beijing about my mission. "It may have been my mission, but it sure as hell was his taxi," that sort of thing. I've taken a room at a hotel quite close to the municipal government office, and after having spent most of the day today talking to various folks around Suqian about their famous dangwei shuji I'm planning on ambushing him outside the humble apartment compound where he lives as he makes his way to work, and pestering him until I get an interview. I decided that it was worth risking because a) if I had called ahead and tried to make an appointment I would have likely been routed through the Waiban and the whole gig would then be up, what with me being unaccredited and all, and b) even if I can’t get to him I can at least gather enough local color and vox pop on the man to make the story work. There’s been tons written about him in the Chinese press; he’s been on the investigative reporting show Jiaodian Fangtan twice, has made the front page of Nanfang Zhoumo (where I first heard about him), and he and his phenomenon—the "Qiu He xianxiang"—was even supposedly the subject of special sessions of the NPC in March. Everyone in the area knows about his guy. On the train from Beijing to Xuzhou, I shared a soft sleeper compartment with a professor of management from Xuzhou Engineering Industries Institute who was quite up on Qiu and all the controversy surrounding him — the contradiction between his autocratic means to democratic ends, the inherent paradox in his promotion of rule of law through personal charisma. He knew all the same anecdotes about Qiu that I’d heard — how he chased down a woman for jay-walking and cornered her in a women’s bathroom, summoning his female secretary to come drag her out and fine her; how he’s mandated that all municipal Party committee meetings be televised; how he’s downsized the Suqian Party and forced 2/3 of them to either start enterprises or go out in search of investment; how he made all Suqian Party cadres do 8 days of road-building work, levying corvee labor Tang Dynasty style; how he took on the local cops after discovering corruption, reassigning the captains of 41 precincts overnight to pull their personal networks out from under them. Like just about everyone else I’ve talked to, Professor Zhang didn’t come down as for or against him The city is as I expected: It's obvious still that the population was recently poor, but evidence of prosperity is everywhere: clean, well-ordered streets, lots of name-brand retail shops, huge well-stocked department stores, a fair number of private autos, nice housing developments (and less that 2000 rmb a square meter! Maybe Fanfan would consider... nah). It seems to be more than just a Potemkin village-type façade, but I'm left with many questions about what actually sustains it. Suqian itself is quite new: it was formally given city status only a few years ago. This part of Jiangsu is near the area where the Nian Rebellion broke out in the 1850s, if I remember correctly. It's near the juncture of Shandong, Henan and Anhui in an area that historically was a bandit breeding ground. There are no real tourist spots to speak of: Not too far from here is the place where Xiang Yu, the Hegemon of Chu and archrival of Liu Bang who founded Han, was born. There's also a palace that the Qianlong Emperor built here in the 18th century. Other than that, nada. I’ve got a long list of questions I'm hoping to ask Qiu He, and God willing I’ll get my interview before Tuesday as I already miss the family. For the full story, you'll have to wait for the August issue of Asia Inc! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 17th, 2004
10:24 am	There really IS a sucker born every minute Jerry at that's Beijing just forwarded me an e-mail sent to the magazine in response to a facetious column I did a few months back lampooning the Nigerian 419 e-mail scam with my own Chinese version, appended below. Here's the letter: Article: Your Most Urgent Attention is Needed Magazine Date: April 2004 Feedback: I am writing to inform you that I am a likely candidate for your proposal, I do not yet quite understand the nature of your situation, nor do I want to discuss such things over the internet. Please respond if you are indeed in urgency, and perhaps we can meet and discuss how this will work. - Sincerely, E.R. From: (deleted)@yahoo.com This explains why the 419 scam is still going great guns. A woman I know used to work at the US Embassy in Lagos and told me that every month or so they'd be called upon to rescue some poor American schmuck who fell for it and ended up penniless and passportless in Nigeria. Greed's the downfall! Here's the original column: Your Most Urgent Attention is Needed My most esteemed and distinguished reader, I bring you warmest salutations from Beijing, China. In the last several years, I've received e-mails from relatives and associates of every head of state, dissident statesman and rebel leader in West and Central Africa. Naturally, I'm honored that they've all chosen to correspond with me, a humble freelance writer living in Beijing. I'm most impressed, too, by their BOUNDLESS GENEROSITY, and moved at times by the now sordid, now heartbreaking tales of intrigue they tell in such vivid and colourful prose. I came to realize that I have many things in common with my correspondents. As a proud son of Henan Province I feel a natural affinity to my Nigerian and other sub-Saharan pen-pals, but it goes beyond even that. I too believe that THE USE OF ALL CAPITAL LETTERS gets my point across most effectively. (Alas! My editors don't share my conviction). I believe, as surely my friends in Lagos and Kinshasa do, that using free Web-based e-mail providers like Yahoo! and Hotmail lends authority and legitimacy to my correspondences. And like them, I too find myself sitting on a FABULOUS SUM OF MONEY that I am eager to move out of the country-a TIDY FORTUNE of which I am willing to share a HEFTY PERCENTAGE if you will but provide me with a bank account number, blank company letterhead from your prestigious company, and your sincere trust. Because you are my dear and trusted reader, I will share with you-in STRICTEST CONFIDENCE, I must stress-the story of how I came into possession of this MAGNIFICENT WINDFALL, and what I'm hoping you can do to help me. Please know that GREAT DANGER might befall my family and myself should this SENSITIVE INFORMATION come to light. In 1996, shortly before he was led to the Western Paradise by the INFINITE COMPASSION OF THE AMITABHA BUDDHA, my maternal grandfather Liu Jingjian returned to the mainland from Taiwan. It was his fond wish to revisit, one last time, the ancestral lands of our family in Xiping County, Henan, that he might gaze his last upon the fertile alluvial plains of the Yellow River - and that he might see to the disposition of a considerable TROVE OF HIDDEN TREASURE. Knowing nothing of the FABLED RICHES, I offered to accompany him as any filial grandson would. On our third night in Xiping, as we quaffed cup after noxious cup of the local swill, he told me in hushed tones the secret that he didn't want to carry with him to the grave. My grandfather was the aide de camp of the famous NORTHERN WARLORD Feng Yuxiang (1882-1948), the 'Christian General' famed for baptizing his troops with a fire hose before sending them into battle. Feng vouchsafed to my grandfather FOUR IRON CHESTS, each containing about 400 KILOGRAMS IN GOLD BULLION (worth a total of about US $25 MILLION), slated for the purchase of some two-dozen German field artillery pieces and payroll for Feng's 11 divisions. As fate would have it, Feng's forces spontaneously disbanded on the eve of a battle against Nationalist armies in 1930, their morale mysteriously abated by my grandfather's sensible decision to invest in some engraving plates and a modern printing press, and to pay the troops with the crisp new notes that came off it. Fearing the bullion might fall into the wrong hands, my grandfather secreted FENG'S WAR CHESTS in Xiping, sealing them inside a brick kang in the home of a feeble-minded second cousin until such time as Feng's fortunes might wax again. They did not. The Anti-Japanese War of Resistance kept Liu Jingjian out of Xiping for many years, and after a series of missteps during the Civil War he found himself fleeing, empty-handed, to Taiwan. I came into possession of the bullion in 1997. Having duped the ADDLE-BRAINED COUSIN into allowing me to renovate his hovel, I hauled away the SHINY INGOTS in a dump truck. After a complex series of transactions involving a dotcom IPO, the Shanghai Sharks basketball team and Amway, I unloaded the GOLD and now have the FULL SUM OF US $25 MILLION tucked away in a Zhengzhou branch office of the Agricultural Bank of China. With a contract on my life taken out by YAO MING, whose presence straddles the Pacific, I no longer feel safe in either America or China and now think it prudent to flee with my family to a neutral non-extradition country. But I require a partner willing to assist me in completing the transfer, all the while keeping this business transaction in STRICTEST CONFIDENCE. For your kind assistance I am prepared to share with you 20% OF THE TOTAL AMOUNT, or 5 MILLION DOLLARS. Let me emphasize, dear friend, that this will cost you no money: only the blank letterhead for administrative purposes and details of your bank account, to which the full sum will be transferred. I most humbly and gratefully await your reply. Respectfully yours, Kaiser Y.K. Kuo (6 Comments |Comment on this)