Digging a tunnel to China

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My journey to China started when I was a kid, living with my sister and our parents in a very small house in a short, dead-end street containing a total of nine row-houses. Each little house had a front yard where bushes and trees were planted and a backyard with a water-well capped by a pump, a prized chicken coop and a postage-stamp-size vegetables garden. In the carefree summer of ’57, a time the poet described as the "dawn of my youth which the years no longer can bring back," my sister and I had a project that lasted a few weeks and consisted of digging with vigor around my mother's vegetable patch. Occasionally, my mother would look out of the kitchen window and ask, "What are you doing?" The answer was always the same, "We are digging a tunnel to China."

Fernando Bensuaski [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

We had this vague idea that China was on the other side of the globe and not much else. In our city of nearly ten million people (today, it has almost 20 million), immigrants were plentiful, from multi-million Japanese and Lebanese, to Italians, Germans, Syrians, and Jews. The Chinese were not many but were famous: they operated the best "pastelarias," shops that sold a popular snack called pastel, deep-fried layers of dough filled with either meat, shrimp or cheese.

My ignorance about China and the Chinese stayed constant as I finished an excellent high school, moved to the United States to attend university, and worked in many countries. I visited Hong Kong in 1980 and found it colorful and exciting, but I still did not learn anything about China, its people and its culture.

Although in the 1990s I made numerous trips to and lived in Taipei and Hong Kong, it was in early 2003 – a few weeks before SARS – that I would finally finish digging my tunnel to the Chinese mainland and begin to look at, observe, listen to, study and admire the 'real Chinese.'

The differences began pouring into my head, a true overload of information: business methods and systems, relationships, inner spirit, daily occurrences, choices, family life, dreams and expectations. A country full of great hardware but without a corresponding software. Life was a constant, "Why are they doing it this way?"

The avoidance of the number four; men rushing into elevators ahead of their wives or girlfriends; a whole population with an uncanny ability to separate their feelings and beliefs from business; boyfriends and girlfriends fighting on the sidewalk, one dead quiet, the other accusing loudly; waiting to get married until an apartment is bought; wedding photographs days before the wedding.

There was more: parents who hold kids above the curb to answer the call of nature; toddlers walking around, fully bundled up for winter but with their cute little butts open to the world; and open-air fairs in the middle of People's Square where parents advertise their spouse-seeking children. In business, I noticed the initial mutual distrust among Chinese businessmen unheard of in the West; designed inefficiencies in exchange for higher employment; lack of shame in simply copying other people's designs; an unreasonable faith in Westerners; an unquenchable thirst for recognition and success.

Eventually, over time, after visiting thirteen provinces and over 50 cities, after creating friendships, after meeting businessmen who sought advice, participating in conferences and simply talking to anyone who could understand me, the differences became understood – one at a time – and, slowly, people's behavior are no longer alien. Thought process resulting from materialism having replaced theism; the eagerness to succeed that comes from an entrepreneurial spirit and a fear of reverting to poverty; the inability to speak up and disagree due to a near-innate respect for elders and authority; the difficulty to innovate arising from a fear of failing; the quickness to enter into a contract because they are meaningless due to a lack of a moral code, or the rule of law. Still, every day I notice something.

Today, I noticed again that when I call the massage place and ask for a long-time favorite therapist, I ask for No 35. No American that I have ever met or expect to meet would agree to a system whereby he or she is known by a number instead of a name. However, the hundreds of thousands of masseuses in China seem perfectly happy to be called "No 35" or "No 18" and are surprised when I ask their names.

Today I know China and the Chinese a little better. It is an incredibly entrepreneurial people; but a people that, by Western standards, is definitely marching to the sound of another drummer. I feel comfortable with their "oddities" but I still find daily surprises, both good and not-so-good.

Today, I realized again that in a city full of people lacking a moral compass and that thoroughly dislikes making small talks to strangers, taxi drivers are overwhelmingly honest and curious about my origin. And, when I say, "Meiguo' (The United States), they smile and say, "Obama!"

The author was born in Brazil but has lived in the US most of his life. In the past 8 years, he has lived in Shanghai, where he is the managing director of Goshawk Trading Strategies. Mr. Bensuaski was an advisor to the World Economic Forum on matters dealing with private equity in China and has delivered lectures on US-China management at Renmin University and Nankai University.

The opinions expressed do not represent the views of the China Daily website.

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