OFFICIAL LAUNCH IN CHINA

This is a view out of our new office in China. In the next year we will be photographing from this same view to track what is happening right outside our window, which by the way is the site for the World Expo 2010. SAA has been visiting China for two years now to understand the opportunities, make contacts, and to establish an Representative Office, which is a legal entity allowing us do some types of work here. We have just recently committed full time staffing and more resources to this long term endeavor. In addition I see this as a great opportunity to expand the firm’s vision and expertise and to learn about this amazing country and culture.

Some of the things I want to explore here are differences that at first seem odd, peculiar, archaic, modern, or in general just not the way I had expected something to be working.  These observations might be culturally, technologically, socially, etc, however in the end I will attempt to translate some of the information into an architectural vocabulary. I hope to draw some new vision and understanding from this process and will write, sketch, and photograph as a means of recording. Of course I will be sharing this with you in this Blog.

As you can see from our picture here, Shanghai and China are on the move wherever you look.  As a New Yorker I first thought that nothing seemed to work at all, but as I have grown to understand it just works in a very different way.  Notably people will out of their way to help you using their network or “guanxi”, and I mean VERY out of their way.  We had to complete a section of a government form requiring a bookkeeper to be named  prior to being able to set up an office, and of course we didn’t have one yet as we cannot have an office without the form.  On the basis of a casual introduction to a local travel service the Owner sent me around with his car and driver and two of their employees, one and accountant, to resolve your issue; all just to be helpful and build a good relationship! And to top it off invited my whole staff and I out for dinner.

When dealing with large companies like internet services, it may take a while to get them to connect the service, but once they are on the job they will return day after day, and on very short notice until the service in installed and working correctly. The average Chinese person is very patient and very willing to let us get all flustered while the diligently get to work on the problem. And even though there are virtually no traffic rules that are strictly obeyed, there is very little if any road rage.  This slowness is very intriguing for me as a New Yorker used to everything being so fast.

Today is our trip to Suzhou, an ancient city about 120km (75miles) away from Shanghai.  We are going with my small staff and a friend from the US for the day.  Unfortunately, this is the first day since I arrived a week ago that we will have rain.