The Eighties

 

For this one, both the painting and the words are all by mom…

I sat on the edge of my bed in the hotel in Nantung too quickly using up the last of my Kleenex. I was allergic to cigarette smoke. Five Chinese men in their grey Mao suits, or Sun Yat Sen suits as they called them, were sitting around the room chain smoking, and using the bathroom without closing the door. Only one of them spoke English and I spoke only about 10 words of Chinese. Chen was typing up Letters of Intent for us to sign. It was a useless piece of paper but it represented the culmination of my week visiting factories and the port with the possibility of finding a way to do business.  While the men chatted quietly in Mandarin I had time to reflect on why I was sitting there with these men taking me seriously. I imagined my parents and my husband seeing me and being absolutely flabbergasted.

After my husband died in January of 1980 Bill and I moved to Bellevue. He entered his freshman year of high school and I wondered what I was going to do with my life as a widow. Because I had been married for 30 years I assumed that I would get married again. My dating experience over the next few years made it clear I was too independent to tie myself down. Most of the eligible men I met were married or divorced and looking for younger women and I had not met anyone I could happily present to my sons as a stepfather. I also discovered that one does not have to search for one’s future. It will find you. Don’t force it. Only walk through open doors.

I talked about China to everyone I met and one day an old college friend suggested I join the World Affairs Council. I did and heard they wanted to host a reception for the local Consular Corps but had no one to organize it. Since that was the sort of thing I had been doing for years I volunteered, which immediately got me elected to the board. I also heard about their International Visitors Program. The State Department would invite prominent scientists, politicians and business leaders from around the world to spend some time in Washington DC or New York and then travel to selected cities around the country.  At that time Seattle was not on anyone’s list of desirable places to visit but those who did come reported back to the State Department that it was one of their favorites. A nice surprise since at that time we were not exactly San Francisco or Las Vegas.

In spite of ten years of obsessive study of China, the only Chinese I had ever met were the waiters in a Chinese restaurant. In 1979 when Deng Xiao Ping made his historical trip to the U.S. he landed briefly at Boeing field in Seattle. I was so excited I made a point to drive past the field only viewing it from the freeway. But I was that close to the leader of China. If I had only known that seven years later the Chinese man who arranged his trip would become a friend of mine. Cast your bread upon the waters.

Through the Visitors Program I heard that an important man from the Chinese State Department was coming to Seattle. I quickly volunteered to host his visit. He had one appointment at the University and I was to set up home dinners and sightseeing for him. But there was no way I was going to leave it at that. I decided to meet his plane.  He got off the plane in a beautifully tailored Mao suit and hat and the poor man didn’t have a chance. I was so excited I could do nothing but gush. I decided to take him to lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the International district. Always ready to take advantage of an opportunity I brought along my notebook of Chinese flash cards. After my discouragement at the faculty club I don’t know how I had the nerve. I told him I had studied the language and the calligraphy but had not had an aptitude for it. He was very kind and said he was so impressed with my effort that he would keep his appointment at the U. and  then he would spend the next four days talking to me about China.

The next day I picked him up at his hotel and after his appointment at the U I took him to my in-law’s home on the lake. We sat on the dock and it was a perfect Seattle day; blue sky, white sailboats and pleasantly warm weather. I said “See how you could live if you were a rich Capitalist?’ He just smiled and kissed me on the cheek. I have found it pays to be sassy. Also I knew that the elite in China lived very well. The next day I took him to Boeing’s Paine field for a tour. I had not called ahead so we were waiting in a long line. I noticed that people were looking at us very suspiciously and even with concern. I doubt that there had been many Chinese men in Mao suits walking around town. But he was very friendly and charming and quickly put everyone at ease. He wasn’t in the State Department for nothing. I decided that he should really have a private tour so I went up to the window and said I had an important visitor from China with me and wondered if he could have someone show him around privately. They called the office and a VP came down in a jeep and drove us around. But the man didn’t have a lot to say and afterward Hu said he would have learned more on the public tour. Hu later became a businessman with important connections and offered to help me do business.

During the years I was immersed in China I dreamed of doing business there. It was a ridiculous idea. I had never worked, had no marketable skills except that I could organize, instigate and locate anything in the United States. I was living on a limited income and I didn’t speak the language.  However, I knew a lot about the history and culture. And I loved everything about it. I began hosting every visiting Chinese delegation that came through town. I was often told if I wanted to do business in China they would help me. Sounded great, but what business? In 1983 I was invited to go on an architectural tour of China. Unbelievable. I was going to China. It was fantastic. We visited cities all over the eastern half of the country. I discovered with no great surprise that I felt at home everyplace we went. While waiting for the bus in Chongqing one day I scratched my toe in the garden dirt and thought ‘If I dig deep enough I can be home’. I met Hu in Beijing and we went to lunch and toured around the city. At lunch he told me how to do business in China. I took notes. Wish I still had them today.

Back home I gave a report to the WAC board about what Hu had told me., and the head of the WA. State Department of Commerce asked for a meeting in his office. He was impressed with what I had learned. It seemed the Chinese never told anybody anything. I suddenly had a rare gift and didn’t even know what to do with it. He had had breakfast that day with a lawyer from then Seattle’s most prestigious firm who wanted to see me that afternoon in his office. I went. In a trance, but I went. He said I had something unique. Chinese who would talk to me. He told me I needed to learn how to get a product on a train in the middle of China, move it to a dock in Hong Kong, learn about bills of lading, maritime insurance, maritime law, freight forwarders, and custom house brokers among other things and get it onto the dock in Seattle and into a warehouse in Seattle. He said I needed to pick a lot of brains. If I took a businessman to lunch I could have his attention for an hour for the price of a sandwich. If I made an appointment in his office he would charge me his fee. I learned to put down my credit card very quickly so the men did not get the wrong idea. And he said I could consider his law firm was my legal counsel and he would tell me when the meter would start running. When I left his office I actually thought I could learn all that. Over the next four years I did learn a lot of it. My ignorant mistake was not to go back to him and say “Find me an American company who will believe I have these connections and pay me for my services.” That turned out to be my biggest problem.

Then I met Ding. Without Ding and Hu I would have no China story. Two brilliant men who coincidently had once lived a few blocks from each other in Beijing, were polar opposites but by some twist of fate met me and chose to make many things happen. In the early 80’s the whole world wanted to do business with China. Everyone saw that billion market and wanted a piece of it. The competition was brutal. However most of the world knew nothing about the culture. If you want to do business in China you must first learn why they revere jade. This is not someone’s quote. It is the summation of my experience. China hated Japan but Japan had their foot in the door because they did understand it.

I was trying to do the impossible and it turned out to be impossible, but I loved every minute of it. In the end, my business turned out to be receiving a list of projects the Chinese wanted and I was to find Americans who wanted to do them. Most people went to China with money but no connections. I had the connections but no money.  In case you imagine I was just handling fluff, my first deal was to sell half a ship for a Seattle company. I was totally puzzled by the whole thing. Why half a ship? The company wanted to use the bow to add on to and build a larger ship. How could they get half a ship across the ocean? Seal it up and tow it. For what purpose? For the steel. It was called ship breaking and is a big deal world wide. I telexed Hu with the offer but by the time he got back to me the ship had sold. I was starting my climb up a steep learning curve. Internationally business was done with a phone call and a snap of the fingers.

After three years on the WAC Board I resigned and joined the board of the World Trade Club. I also joined the Seattle Chongqing Sister City Association and became vice chairman of their Trade and Technology committee.  It was very popular and during the second year I organized a trade mission to China. Not surprising, the only thing that came out of it was the Seattle-Chongqing Chinese Garden. But at least that was a good thing.

The man who had been Deng Xiao Ping’s advance man for his US trip was sent to Seattle to open a new company. Yao Wei was very impressive. A handsome, quiet, reserved man who had attended both Stanford and Harvard. He had to have been a party member as had Hu, to have such an important position. He was a good friend of Hu’s much to my good fortune. Hu told me he was coming and asked me to introduce him. It wasn’t long before everyone in town wanted to meet him. He was very popular and very impressive. I was often asked to introduce him but it wasn’t as though I saw a lot of him. He was too busy.  At a luncheon one day I was talking to a bank president who saw Yao across the room and said “He even glitters from the back.” It seemed that way.

The World Trade Club asked me if I could get Yao Wei to speak at our annual dinner. I said yes if I could introduce him. They let me and Yao moved everyone telling the story of his life, When I decided to move to Ireland they asked me if I could persuade him to take my place on the Board. I called Yao and he said he would think about it. If I had lunch with him he would give me his answer then. I took him to the Washington Athletic Club where as a member only I could pay. After lunch I asked him if he had decided. He said he already knew when I called him that he would. I certainly thought he was attractive but had never allowed myself to think of him romantically. I knew he had a wife in China and I was always afraid of being misunderstood. Only in hindsight do I see that maybe he and a few others were flirting with me.  When I returned from Ireland he had been transferred. I always thought it was because he had become too popular.

In 1987 I decided to take one more trip to China, this time with an engineer and an interpreter. Interpreters were very interesting. If they had too much personality they stole the show. If they were boring they put a damper on everything. I learned to look at the person to whom I was speaking as though I understood them and even through in a word or two of Chinese to hint that maybe I understood. I didn’t. I had learned just how difficult it was to do business then. The Chinese would put up the labor, building, workers and infrastructure risking nothing because they already had them in abundance.  They wanted the foreigners to put up the money and sell the products overseas. That one billion market had no money to buy anything. Also the only business that was actually happening was with whatever the government needed such as Boeing planes and Microsoft computers. I was offered an apartment in Beijing for $15000 for the year and big name companies were paying several hundred thousand for the same thing. I was also offered a job teaching English to the State Department employees. But I still had a teenager at home.

Ding arranged for my second trip to Nantung to discuss a port project. We had already begun discussing it the year before. This time my engineer was able to get a better idea of what small project we could start with. I already talked to Holland America, the Port of Seattle and the dock unions and they were all interested. This was one project I thought might work. I was invited to speak to a business class at a college there and was amazed how well the young students spoke and understood English and the intelligent questions they asked.  Afterward the president and other college reps invited me to a meeting and told me they would help me do business in China. I had learned that one never knew who called the shots in China. One needed to get to the right commissions and ultimately get government approval but who knew colleges could also do it? Several students wrote to me afterward and one had joined a company who were bringing him and a delegation to the US. When I told him how much a hotel would cost they decided it was too expensive and they would go onto New York. I gave him some advice about doing business in America including getting UL approval for their electrical equipment. I also sent the requirements and application forms. He wrote me later that they discovered everything I told them was true. Duh.

I did not hear from the Port of Nantong after returning home and a year later I was told that all of the men I had been dealing with had been moved away. I knew it was time to quit. But what a ride! I met a fortune teller who told me if I moved to Ireland it would work out well. I did and it did.

-Jean Clarice Walsh