By Jack LeBlanc

On a miserable drizzly Friday afternoon, a minibus from the Chongqing city government turned up at the university gate, blaring Michael Jackson’s Thriller over the sound system. An import/export company had arranged the bus to drive us to their offices for a price discussion. Jackson and, surprisingly enough, several familiar and unknown faces greeted me from inside the bus. There were ten of us, including the driver. ‘Come on, we’ve decided to bring you to the Northern Hot Springs!’

Yet another unexpected change: the official agenda had been transformed into an entertainment program. The official goal was to ‘get a vehicle to pick up the customer for price negotiations’, while the unofficial goal was ‘having fun for the weekend’. For any time conscious Westerner, this was a stressful experience.

Unfortunately the unexpected move most often wins, and agendas change no matter how hard one holds on to them. Getting used to the ‘mysterious forces’ of intermingled relationships, interactions between government departments, and connections between people all looking out for their own interests, is probably the most frustrating and at the same time the most rewarding aspect of business negotiations in China. By now I had learned the hard way that going with the flow of events was the best way of avoiding unnecessary stress.

One thing I could already predict with 100 percent accuracy: Two days of rocket-fuel drenched meals, hot springs and karaoke-saturated nights. As expected, everything the first evening went according to plan B. After the karaoke session we all decided to rent bathing suits and take a night dip in the thirty-five-degree-Celsius hot springs. This was a major mistake! The hot water sent the alcohol into overdrive and our slightly tipsy feeling turned into a recipe for a killer hangover. That night closing my eyes made the room spin like a tumble dryer, and the bathroom was my new home. The next morning, most of us swore never to touch a drop of rocket fuel again, and even Old J committed. That was something new.

After a late breakfast we ended up in the conference room of the hotel where the discussions were to start in earnest. All the officials were present, with Jackson sitting next to me. Mr. Zhang of the import/export company opened the discussions by claiming that the offered price was much too high, and that no one in Chongqing would pay such a horrendous price for glass. Sheepishly, I told the audience that I could offer a twenty-percent discount if we could just establish some technical framework to work from. ‘Not enough,’ came from the other side of the room. ‘We want a price that is much closer to our Chinese glass, which is at least thirty times cheaper’. All my protests led to nothing; I tried to explain to them that the quality of the glass was much better than any available on the local market, with uniform thickness, no air bubbles, and smooth color.

All dragging on tar-heavy cigarettes, puffs of smoke slowly filling the room. All listening very attentively, but nothing but serene quietness in response. I tested the waters again with my mantra of technical questions, hoping that it would get some kind of reaction. Then, for the first time, Mr. Yu of the Chongqing Building Research and Design Institute articulated something that resembled a technical question. ‘What type of aluminum frame do we need to have? How do we install the glass?’ After this initial timid foray a torrent of questions breached the wall of silence. Will you provide us with technical drawings of the aluminum frame? Can we receive a sample of the frame that holds the glass? Who will give us the structural details of the glass? Can you assist us with the calculations for the aluminum structure?. . . Most of the questions remained unanswered, as I was unable to respond without first receiving feedback from Jan. This in turn made some of the people in the room uneasy – now they started noticing that I wasn’t at all the picture-perfect expert that Jackson had claimed I was during the previous meetings. But it didn’t bother me any longer. Even the bus driver started grilling me about the price and quality of the glass, and if he could get in on the discussion too, I had to assume that the whole group was simply putting on a theatrical act. Even Jackson didn’t mind that his storyline had fallen through. In the meantime our meeting was interrupted by the noises of a marching band outside, at least fifty people snaking through the streets waving colorful flags, beating drums and shouting: ‘Long live birth control. One child is enough!’ On this note the meeting was finally adjourned, after three hours of lengthy and, in my opinion, futile discussions. The only tangible result I could see of this meeting was two bulging ashtrays.

Next came a local delicacy: a very basic but nutritious bowl of cold noodles to wash the lingering traces of rocket fuel from our body, then we went off to a thousand-year-old Buddhist temple in the neighborhood. During the short walk from the hotel to the road, the Bank of China director got the giggles, and all the others followed moments later.

‘Jieke look, look: this is progress in Sichuan, this is a modern-day birth-control slogan.’ He pointed at a red banner on the other side of the road, printed with white Chinese characters: BEAT IT OUT, KICK IT OUT, WHIP IT UP, LET IT FLOW, BUT DON’T MAKE CHILDREN! The desperate and frustrated bureaucrat who came up with that slogan had probably been in shock after receiving the latest birth statistics for hi s county. Quotas exceeded, fearing for his position, he must have felt drastic measures were called for.

Jack LeBlanc, author of Business Republic of China, Tales from the front line of China’s new revolution.

This is the fifth part of “The great glass curtain walls of China”, next week we will publish the sixth part. Here you can find Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.