China-foreigner relationships: it gets complicated when you’re sleeping with the enemy – Book Review of Pearl Buck’s Patriot
In a perfect world, being an international couple would be as glamorous as a James Bond movie. You would spend your days intermingling your world in different languages, swept away by the fascinating customs of your partner’s country, and have the benefit of dual citizenship and a jet-setting lifestyle. It would be nice, wouldn’t it? […]
The Holocaust of Hiroshima…what happened to the Holocaust of China?
I was listening this afternoon to NPR’s All Things Considered, and was stopped dead in my tracks by this excerpt from a story about a Japanese survivor of the Hiroshima bombing who became an artist and an ambassador of peace: Hirayama immediately began sketching out what would become one of his most powerful works, a […]
China iPhone survey results are in…so is the mobile phone the new symbol of China?
Last week, I received a fresh market report from China Polling about the growing popularity of the iPhone in China. Some of their results got me wondering. First, the numbers: Unsurprisingly, over 65% have heard of iPhone, and among this group, more than 85% are willing to actually buy an iPhone if it’s available here […]
Five ways to tarnish your company’s image in China
1. Open a store at the Great Wall. We could learn a lot from Starbucks on this front. Their store in the Forbidden City has generated enough negative PR to warrant high-level government discussions on closing it for good. Why? Because the move was perceived as an imperialistic invasion into one of China’s most sacred […]
The muddled and perplexing state of Japanese brands in China
With the recent visit by Wen Jiabao to Japan, the press is in a frenzy about Sino-Japanese relations. After all, it’s been seven years since any top-level Chinese officials set foot in the land of the rising sun, and anti-Japanese sentiment looms large as China has historically considered Japan a rival. It was only two […]