The Mayor

After being in the City of Taixing for 24 hours I found myself getting ready to meet the mayor and his entourage. The company that I am working for has a fairly large construction project under way and the mayor wanted to come and check it out. I was put out front as the big white show pony that I am. We were all in suits waiting for him to show up in the Taixing heat. (Taixing heat is a little different then regular heat due to the pollution) Note: Taixing is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Eventually the cars show up and the mayor comes out. Right away I am introduced and I give my Ni Hao to him which blows his mind. He asks me if I can speak Chinese and I say a little bit. Then he breaks into his local dialect and starts speaking a mile a minute and ends his speech with a Hao ba? To which I answer Hao. He then walks on to be greeted by my Laoban and to take the tour. His Right Hand Man sidles up to me and tries to get the conversation flowing but I really could not understand his accent. It was harsh and he spoke quickly. I had to smile and nod and eventually he walked away from me. From that point on I was simply there as a quiet member of the group walking up and down shaking hands with the engineer and his workers. After the tour we all went to the restaurant. It was one of the nicest restaurants in the city and we had the back room. It was a very dramatic back room with a self serve bar and a bathroom attached. It had card tables and sofas and a huge hand carved table in the middle of the room set with elaborate place settings. There was a lot of art on the walls and many of the classic trifold Chinese shades around the room to block off the different sections. It was pretty cool.

To make a long story short..........When it came time to eat the mayor wanted me next to him. i of course obliged and he then asked me if I wanted red wine or north wine? I told him either was fine. He seemed to not believe me and asked me if I was sure I could handle the north wine. I said of course. Everyone went ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh at the table and I was served a little jug of clear alcohol. The alcohol tasted like sweet vodka which was actually quite nice but the funny thing was that they served it in a jug that was about the size of both of my thumbs and the shot glass that they used to drink it with was so small that my baby finger couldn't fit it. The style of drinking in this area of China is to always cheers with someone when you drink. As it turned out, I became a target to try and get drunk. The mayor's right hand man decided to do three cheers with me in a row and everyone thought this was great. Then he wanted to drink the rest of our jugs together. I said okay and everyone said oooooooooooohhhhhhhh be careful you will get too drunk. i said no its okay I will be fine. The total amount of alcohol that I drank during this show down was about 3 ounces of alcohol. I honestly felt nothing from it but the mayor's RHM had the reddest face I have ever seen and he needed to sit down. There were others that tried to get me drunk, but of course I have some experience with holding my liquor and this group certainly was not up to the challenge of bringing me down. By the end of the meal I was pretty much sober and every other guy at the table was red faced and slurring their words. I shook the mayor's hand at the end and told him that I really hoped we could do it again. He told me that he looked forward to our next meeting. I told his RHM that the next time he wants to drink with me he needs to bring a bagel.

It was a little surreal to be at the table with no one speaking English and the food being hard core. I ate turtle cartilage, which was not as good as it sounds and some other things that were equally not as good as the sounded. But overall it was a great time and invaluable insight into the way deals are done here.

That is all for now........