Umbrellas, parasols and sun screen...

It’s summer time in China… and in the summer it’s not too different from anywhere else in that people dress more casually… sandals and shorts become more the norm. While we all embrace more informality in the summer there are differences in how we deal with the warm weather and the sunshine. One summertime difference that many Europeans and Americans notice during their visits to Asia is the use of umbrellas or parasols… sure we all have them and use them when it rains but in Asia they come out in droves when the sun shines.

Chinese mothers for example hate it when their adult daughters (and younger children) get a tan and are always warning them to stay out of the sun or use their umbrella. Walk across Tiananmen Square in the full sun and the umbrellas are up in profusion… the Western tourists use their sun screen but it’s umbrellas for the Chinese… makes a lot of sense also… well, at least if the umbrellas are properly coated to cut down on the UV or otherwise it’s pretty much a fashion statement!

Somehow all this umbrella use fits… umbrellas are generally thought to have originated in China and they are now a consumer product with a huge international market. And as you might expect, most of the world’s umbrellas are now “made in China” with a majority of umbrellas coming from the Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. According to various sources, the city of Shangyu alone has more than a thousand umbrella factories.

Personally, I’ve always liked the decorative parasols of Japan and China and while there are still a number of these for sale to tourists and collectors, the modern mass produced “made in China” umbrellas have taken over.

Will we see more umbrellas deployed in the bright sunlight of Indiana? Yes, I think so… but we are still pretty much a “pass the sun screen tube” culture. Too bad, parasols are pretty cool.

Haibao, Shanghai World Expo and the Branding of Nations

In the biggest World Expo yet, Shanghai and China have pulled out all the stops to make another global post-Olympic splash. In this regard they have succeeded… the waterfront of Shanghai’s Huangpu River has been transformed in just a few years. The Bund has a rival (albeit it temporary) for attention as millions of mostly Chinese crowd into this large Epcot like environment in search of “Better City, Better Life”… the Expo theme.

You can’t go anywhere near China without running into ads for this extravaganza or seeing a Haibao figure (looks a bit like a blue Gumby and represents the color water) on a poster or on television (my favorite is the larger than life “Mexican Haibao” I saw in a downtown Shanghai park)… Expo advertisements like Haibaos are everywhere in China and Asia although if you live in the US or Europe it’s rare to see anything. At this point I’ve seen a short ad on CNN’s airport channel in DC and on Bloomberg’s Asia News on cable… and that was late at night.

On the other hand, if you happen to be anywhere near Shanghai, say in Nanjing or Beijing, it’s worth a trip to visit the site and you still have over four months to make it… the “world’s fair” lasts six months and it’s just started.

But what’s the purpose? Clearly this is another opportunity for China to take the spotlight on the world stage. The Expo is huge… not just in scale but in participation and the lines to get into the pavilions are very very long (when I was there the wait for the Saudi pavilion was 8 hours!). Unfortunately, Expo is not widely known outside of China and Asia and the demographics of the attendees reflects the regional character of this event. At the same time it has a global imprint and impact as almost every nation has a presence (Pavilion) at the site and China made it clear how important it was for every nation to be there.

It’s “public diplomacy” at work… originally a chance to show off the latest in technology and architecture (there are some really cool pavilions!) it’s now mostly an exercise in national pride, showmanship and “nation branding” at work.

Interestingly, the U.S. was almost a noshow… if not for the last minute intervention of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton we would have been most prominently and embarrassingly absent. Since it’s illegal for the US to use public money in this endeavor, corporate donors had to be convinced to step up. This was harder than you might imagine since many of what we think of as US companies (McDonald’s, Coke, Starbucks, KFC, etc.) are really global companies and had already signed on as major Expo sponsors… they were already committed to the Expo and not to supporting a US presence.

Despite what you think of these things, the US needed to be at this Expo. As US Commissioner General for the Expo, Jose Villarreal noted in a conversation to a group I was in… “The US Expo Pavilion will see more Chinese visitors in the next six months than our Embassy and all our consulates in China will during the next 30 years. This is the chance of a lifetime to influence a huge number of people”. It was also vitally important for the Chinese… a U.S. noshow would have been a huge snub and this is not the sort of thing we needed for diplomacy of any sort… public or private.

The wait for entry into the US Pavilion can be as long as 4 hours… see what you can do to get into the VIP line (any VIP line)! Yes, it’s always seemed a bit odd to me that in a country with a recent history like China that there seems to always be a VIP line, or lane, or room, or tables… for high party officials, VIPs, etc… one of the country’s apparent contradictions. I could go on for a while, pointing out other interesting tidbits… for example, I’m trying not to read anything into the fact that while the US Pavilion is near to one of the major entry points, the Iranian and North Korean pavilions are all the way at the other pole of the Expo site… China directly in the middle! I’m sure a lot of thought was put into this placement, for this is the country of Feng Shui.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back in September, I just hope the lines are shorter… I don’t normally qualify for the VIP entrances.

For a view on the US effort at Expo take a look at Jian Wang's comments at:
http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newswire/cpdblog_detail/a_little_good_news_from_the_us_pavilion/

Forgeries, counterfeits and taxes

I’ve just returned from China and I’ll admit it… in the past I’ve bought a few $1 DVDs of “still in the theatre” films but I stopped doing this a few yeas ago. I also once bought a “North Face” jacket in a market in Beijing for $20. I’m sure these transactions were “a bit dodgy” and know that the RIAA and the Interpol are likely hot on my heels… well, maybe not. I swear I’ve changed my ways and I’m sure there are bigger offenders out there.

However, I’m in Beijing in December and the Christmas season is in full swing with all the trimmings… fake trees, fake wreaths, plastic bells and Santas abound. Forgeries and fakes in China? … come on now…

On the front page of the “Metro” section of the China Daily (December 15, 2009) two of the four featured stories seem relevant to this theme…. First, an auction of Chinese paintings and artworks by a well known Beijing auction company was cancelled because some of the artworks were deemed “controversial”. Now in the U.S. I would assume that the art has been viewed as offensive in some way… perhaps the art offends some because it's focused on taboo subjects or the artist goes too far in portraying political or religious icons in some offensive postures… but in this case “controversial” means “fake”… quite simply it appears that many of these artworks (which were expected to fetch high prices) are “forgeries” and not very good ones.

Yes, I’d say “controversial” is a word that could be used in this case although it appears an odd choice at first… apparently it’s not illegal for art auction companies to pass off forgeries as the real thing here… according to the article “there is no sound regulation yet” but the artists and their relatives feel the auction company “should at least have a sense of morality.” The artists also report they are offended by the low quality of the forgeries... feeling the counterfeits which bears their name will drive down prices for the "real things."

The second story is more prominent, “above the fold” and focuses on vendors brazenly hawking fake invoices for employees. In this case the advertisements can be seen pasted to trash bins, on the ground and all over the place in public transportation areas (yes, the image that appears here is one of the many pasted on the ground near the Tsinghua Research Park). Apparently it’s the time of the year for workers to turn in receipts for reimbursement and the pressure to buy fake or second hand receipts (called fapiao in Chinese) is intense as people juggle their finances. As if it wasn’t bad enough even these forgeries (as most seem to be) are not very good ones… like the artwork, accountants at companies are quite competent at detecting and rejecting counterfeits.

However, it’s bonus time in China and many employees are desperate to get enough receipts for expenses that are not taxable by the government and account for a good percentage of their annual salaries.

According to the China Daily, when informed by the newspaper of this very visible and illegal activity, the local police reported they had not noticed but would send some officers over to check it out. My friends tell me that sometimes the police actually do show up and enforce the law in a rough fashion… in response, the local counterfeiters have begun using women with babies and small children as fronts… the police tend to respond less harshly when confronted with this activity by women and children!

The national government recognizes this is a problem and has announced that they will print new tax invoices (presumably more difficult to counterfeit) next year. Good luck! I expect to see the same red and white stickers next December.