I have been dealing with foreigners since I graduated from university in 1984, starting as a translator, then doing import and export trade, and then entering foreign companies, and now I am still cooperating in investment. Among them, the most dealt with are Europeans, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Hungary, Russia...
Here are the people and things I remember more deeply
1.Hakan Holmstrom, a native of Sweden, was former President of the Swedish Engineers Association and President of the Group's Asia region. He loves Chinese culture and says he has a Chinese heart. He would use the I Ching to calculate the gua, and once he calculated a gua for himself, and he got the 64th gua- unsound. He thought it was a good idea and asked me what I thought. I told him you were leaving, and two months later he was out of Asia. Once, when we talked about the guilds in Europe, he said that these people were just enjoying themselves, flying in business class, and showing a very dismissive expression. Last year he moved his family to Portugal because of the tax on swedish retirement wages. 6 years ago, I once gave him a bottle of Wuliangye for 17 years, and he drank and happily knelt down for me, saying that this was the highest way for Chinese to express gratitude, and I was speechless! He supported me in setting up a scholarship at Dalian Polytechnic University and personally presented the award. Every year on my birthday, he emails congratulations, sometimes I forget it myself.
2. Thomas Wand, German, Group Operations Director, Ph.D. He is very accurate and likes to go straight. He especially appreciates Chinese wine culture and likes to sing in KTV. 17 years ago, once he went to Hong Kong to hold a group meeting, specially brought his wife to Tianjin to find me, and specifically told me to receive me in our traditional way. At that time, there was a colleague in Tianjin training in China, and he said in his speech that he came to Tianjin to see me. I was a little embarrassed at the time, and this foreigner was too straight.
3. Martin Brandt, German, COO, also in charge of sales, group second in command, Ph.D. Thirteen years ago, I went to the airport to pick him up, and on the way back, I talked about democracy in Germany, and he said that democracy is not good, and that his city needs to build a bridge, which has not been built in five years, and China can complete it in two months. I was stunned after hearing it.
4. A UK taxi driver
Fifteen years ago, there was a group meeting in the UK, during which we went from Spiritimoor to New Castle to watch a football game, and on the way back I didn't catch the company's car, and there were too many people and no one noticed that I didn't get in the car. I could only take a taxi, it was 9:30 p.m., the driver saw me stopping, asked me where to go, learned that I went to Spennymoor a little hesitant - two hours drive, and then asked me if I was Chinese, I said yes, he said come up. After dropping me off at the hotel, I'm going to pay him more, and he's adamant not. He told me he was Pakistani!
5. An American taxi driver
In May 2019, in New York, USA, I once went to the beach with my wife to get an Uber, and the young man who drove the car was 27 years old and was in graduate school. After he learned that we were Chinese, he told us that his hometown was Afghanistan, and that our neighbor, who had come to the United States at the age of 12. I said you're American, he said he was just An American, he was Afghan, and he was never an American in the eyes of Americans. He told us that American smiling faces were fake and disappeared as soon as they turned their heads, and that's how he was trained in the United States when he was young. He said that americans brought the world's elites to the United States for two purposes, one was to work for them, and the other was to pay them taxes.
6. Steve Grao, British, Doctor of Philosophy, President of a British company. We've known each other for 30 years, he flew to London on his 50th birthday, he flew to China with his daughter on my 50th birthday, iron buddy, his kids call me Uncle Michael. 24 years ago, he was the president of the Group's Asia region, and he had set limits on the financial power of the executives in The Asian region, but there was never a limit on the Tianjin company I was responsible for, and I asked him why he didn't include me, and he said you don't have to care. Later, I told him I was going to do an MBA, and he said you don't have to read that. I said, why? He says you know every thing. He wasn't kidding, he introduced me in his 1995 investment report to the group, using two words: encyclopedic knowledge. We have gone from being colleagues to friends over the past 30 years, doing a lot of things together, talking about everything, and it's easy to reach a consensus.
I've been dealing with foreigners since I was 22 years old, and I've learned about the world through them and through them I've looked at China, and one of my British colleagues, Terry Carmichael, says I have more than 50 percent of my Western mindset. As Chinese, I just deal with them in terms of their way of thinking and methods.