The Road to Shanghai

Afterall, I was coming to a county where I lacked cultural sophistication and (even after a month of study) had the language proficiency of a grade schooler. Things turned out to be even more difficult than I anticipated, though. Immediately upon my arrival it was clear that I need to fire my local manager for incompetence and at least small-scale corruption. Doing that and changing the lock were easy. Wading through adminstrative paper work was harder. Fortunately, a friend introduced me to a couple of local government officials who are smoothing path toward issuing a new "chop," changing bank accounts, revised the registration of our Representative Office, etc. Getting control our our supply chain for the maching castings and other vehicle components we buy in China is still more challenging. In the first phase, I spent the past week bouncing around country roads in buses with worn-out shock absorbers, explaining our reorganization to our vendors. The coming week will entail further discussions and manuvers. My good friend and colleague Liu Sheng left his post as manager of our Nanjing Office to help me during the past two weeks. His sense of humor buoyed my spirits, and I couldn't have acoomplished what I did without his help. The coming week will entail further discussions and manuvers. The feeling is a lot like playing xiangqi -- making one's best move, based on resources available and in anticipate of potential moves by other players. -- Norty