Hefei—First Impressions

By Patricia Mohr@

Arriving in Hefei, Anhui Province, had a much different feel than arriving in Beijing only a week earlier. Located 251 miles (404 km) west of Shanghai, the Hefei airport had a more insular feel than the tourist-friendly one in Beijing. Immigration officials asked more questions and appeared solemn and strict. The hotel had a different feel too. The receptionists collected our passports and held them at the front desk for the duration of our stay, the tone was less hospitable, and internet service was more limited.

“Get your bags!” said Jing, a tour guide accompanying us throughout our two-week trip, as I waited for my luggage at the airport. It was the first time I had heard her raise her voice, and it sounded strange. I started to feel the limits of my individual freedoms. This place has rules, I reminded myself.

I later learned that on the day we arrived, news broke that a brick factory in the province had been busted for using slave labor. "This is a police state," said one international business man in reflecting of the news story.

Thankfully, I saw neither slaves nor police during my stay in Anhui Province.

We spent our first afternoon in Hefei visiting the University of Science and Technology of China’s School of Management, where our host in China, Dr. Lu Wei, works as an assistant professor. Dr. Lu is a highly intelligent and articulate man who accompanied us throughout our China tour. His office and classrooms at USTC were first rate. We visited at a time when very few students were present.

Dr. Lu spoke to us about entrepreneurship in China. It is something the government wants to promote as a way to create jobs for some of the tens of millions of college students graduating each year. Dr. Lu says not all students are ready for entrepreneurship. The central government chooses which graduate students are ready to become entrepreneurs based on the quality of their ideas.

The concept bothered me. After all, history shows it was individual innovation that sparked some of the some of the most successful technology upstarts in the United States. Google, Facebook and Craigslist all claim their start by college students who innovated on their own and later received venture capital funding.

“Not everybody can be the general,” Dr. Lu said.

And with that, it crystallized in my mind that spontaneous innovation is one thing that differentiates Americans from the Chinese. The Asian appreciation for collectivism may have its advantages, namely strategic planning, but the strength of individualism is it lends itself naturally well to entrepreneurship.

Dr. Lu was conducting research on the topic of entrepreneurship, and we became part of the research. He asked us to fill out surveys about our backgrounds, family history and parental savings. Some of the questions were rather personal. For example, it asked for our blood type. Apparently, blood type is very important in China, not for matching blood donations to recipients but for assessing personality. I guessed that providing my blood type was not too intrusive. It wasn't as if he was drawing blood.

A friend of mine who did work in China said one of the requirements for working in the country was to have a full medical and dental examination. It was more complicated than it sounds because it was conducted entirely in Mandarin. The language barrier made the eye exam particularly vexing. Next came an intense sonogram of her internal organs, tendons, muscles and joints. “They kept hovering over my kidneys,” she said in air of wonderment.

It sounded strange. But in retrospect, maybe it’s just China’s way of preventing foreign workers from bringing diseases into the country. Maybe the health inspectors are just being thorough, much like the luggage inspectors in China’s international airports who inspect every single bag moving through the country.

That evening, we were scheduled to visit a local Karoke bar. Karoke bars are popular in China, and I was excited to mingle with students and locals while listening to Chinese pop songs.

The Karoke bar turned out to be a private coffee house, and we were the only guests aside from our host, one of his graduate students and his son. Perhaps with a group as large as ours—some 35 of us, a private venue was appropriate. The coffee house was adorned with bright red and gold Christmas decorations, which the Chinese admire for their colors all times of the year. It had a small stage and comfortable seating areas around small tables. We enjoyed a lavish dinner and set ourselves about having a good time.

Returning back to the hotel that night, I reflected on the day. It was easy to creep myself out. I had heard so many stories, seen all the wrong Richard Gere films, and am naturally prone to worry. It didn’t help that my netbook made a strange cranking sound while connected to the internet, regardless of whether or not I was using it.

In some respects, I was right to be cautious. The U.S. State Department warns visitors that U.S. individual rights and privacy laws don’t apply in China. “Security personnel carefully watch foreign visitors and may place you under surveillance. Hotel rooms, offices, cars, taxis, telephones, internet usage, and fax machines may be monitored onsite or remotely, and personal possessions in hotel rooms, including computers, may be searched without your consent or knowledge,” a State Department web site says.

My business friend working in China said she once heard a strange voice on the phone line when speaking to her mother back in the States. "Speak slowly and clearly," a male voice had said. Other times, the phone lines would abruptly cut off after a taboo word or phrase had been uttered.

It all sounded ominous and unattractive to me. But I guess the price of doing business in China is a forfeiture of personal liberty. At least the invasiveness is overt and apparent.

As to the mistrust, it is easy to see why the Chinese and the Americans are suspicious of each other. Our countries are the two largest economies in an intensely competitive global environment. One is rapidly developing; the other struggling to maintain its strength under a fading superpower status.

Suspicion in itself is not a barrier to friendship. After all, it was President Richard Nixon, arguably the most suspicious president in U.S. history, who successfully opened up U.S. relations with China some 30 years ago. As long as our intentions are good—namely economic cooperation buttressed by diplomatic relations, amity will override distrust.