Shanghai by Night – August 22, ’05 – taken from New Heights (3 on the Bund)
Originally uploaded by Marc van der Chijs.
Sometimes it seems the world is really small. Look at what happened yesterday for example: I was riding in a cab with Gary, my biz partner for Toodou.com, when he got a call from a guy from the US that he would meet later that afternoon. Turns out I also met this guy a couple of weeks ago through an online business forum, and when he arrived in Shanghai the week before I had lunch with him and his wife. This was a total coincidence.
In the evening I went out for a couple of beers with Hugo Verkuil. Hugo arrived from Europe that morning for a short biz trip, but has so much energy that even though he did not sleep on the plane, he still was ready to go out. He is a friend from university who used to be with BCG, but just started a high-level job with Unilever. I picked him up from a biz dinner that he had to attend, and there I see a guy who I know from several years before in Beijing. This guy, Peter, used to be Chairman of Wall’s ice cream in China. Turns out he is now Hugo’s boss (head of worldwide ice cream activities for Unilever), who ‘lured’ him away from BCG.
Over a beer at New Heights I am talking with Hugo about Toodou.com and about Gary Wang. And yes, you might have guessed it, Hugo knows Gary. They were classmates at INSEAD 3 years ago. The world seems to be really small. Or is the international business circle so small?
hoho, not because the international business circle so small, but the INSEAD circle is too big:)
Recyling Factory? I mean international business community.
If one takes this into a larger social scale, we will then understand/acknowledge why the poor will never get rich, and the haves will have even more? And why the gap between the rich and poor are growing further and further apart and not narrower?
The environment we are in help to make what become of us. If one does not have the chance to MINGLE with other CEOs, how should one get to be noticed? Same notion why Chinese parents are so eager to send their children overseas to be educated? And why they would envy those that can afford to attend Yale, Harvard, INSEAD, Leiden, Delft, London School of Econ. etc. ??? Not so much for the degrees they might attained eventually, but the environment they can plant the seeds.
I am old and therefore cynical about the unhealthy gaps we are building in our own social environment.
Shanghai of today reminds me of the Shanghai of the 20s, 30s of the last century.
Cindy
Shanghai today reminds of you of the Shanghai in the 20’s of the last century? Well, I am not old enough to have lived through that time period, but after what I read in (many) books about that time period, I happen to disagree. The 20’s were a time in which many people in Shanghai died on the streets from poverty (both foreigners and Chinese), while a a small upper-class group had the time of their lives. This is not the case in Shanghai right now. True, there are big differences between rich and poor, but the terrible poverty like it existed 70-80 years ago is not here anymore, at least not for me to see.
I also do not agree that the environment we are in determines what becomes of us. I have several Chinese friends coming from a very poor background who have come a long way by studying and working very hard. I believe that if you are smart enough and are willing to work hard that you can get as far as anyone else. It may not be as easy as when you are born in a golden cradle, but in China it is possbible. A friend of mine is a succesful American-educated invesment banker from a dirt-poor family in the Chinese country side. He had no guanxi whatsoever, but made it anyway. OK, he had to work 16-hour days for years, but it paid off. And don’t believe that you will get into Yale, Harvard or INSEAD because you are rich, without being very intelligent (GMAT scores) and having the right personality (interviews) you won’t make it. Chinese have a disadvantage to get into American schools because they are sometimes not given visa’s (yes, even students accepted into the Harvard MBA program), but that says more about the US system than about China’s environnment.