Chinese New Year. YAY!
Well hello there. The 2+ weeks of madness, that precede an official week of holidays are over, and that means I am finally available for a post.
I've even made a small poster to commemorate that special time:
Those of you who aren't familiar with the ordeal, will probably ask "what's up with all the trips and all the shit-circus?"
Oh happy those of you, who doesn't know.
As you may have heard, China manufactures a lot. A lot, as in roughly 25% of worldwide manufacturing output in terms of value as of 2015. But that's merely an average: just so you get the magnitude of that number, according to The Economist, China produces about 80% of the world’s air-conditioners, 70% of its mobile phones and 60% of its shoes.
To manufacture all that crap, Chinese factories usually(but not always) work 6 days a week without any holidays except for two: the so-called Golden Week in the beginning of October and for the Spring Festival, aka Chinese New Year a few weeks in January-February. All other smaller festivals and holidays are typically celebrated like this:
Let's say we are talking Qingming Festival, that takes place in the beginning of April. Here is a tropicalized version of what they provide at the official Government of PRC website:
Basically, you get punished with 7 days of work for getting 3 days of rest out of blue. As a person, who got a Bachelor's Degree in China, I can tell you: I would choose normal schedule over 3 days of rest and then a week of studies on hectic schedule. Let me tell you more: one year, some genius has decided it would be a great idea to give students 3 days off for Mid-Autumn Festival(end of September) and then give us 11 consecutive days of classes because well, the "Golden week" is around the corner(beginning of October). Needless to say both students and teachers were exhausted, and already boring enough classes became simply insufferable.
Anyways, the point is that the only adequate holiday people get each year is the Spring Festival. And well CNY isn't like Christmas, as in it is not about putting up a tree in your house and having eggnog while looking at it. Traditionally people in China use that long holiday to travel back to their hometowns. You see, the demographics of China is such, that people from rather depressive central regions end up getting a better-paying job along the coast, primarily in provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Fujian and Guangdong. There is a fair amount of migration a bit upnorth, like to Beijing(duuh, capitol) or Tianjin, and Shandong Province, however South is more preferred.
Just so you get the scale of that great migration process: in 2017, the amount of migrant workers in China was around 287 million people. To put it into a perspective, that is more than the population of Indonesia(currently ranking number 4 with 263.9 million population), or about the same as population of Mexico and Japan. Combined, lol.
So what's in it for you?
Well, my job is to connect overseas buyers* with sellers** in China.
*While the buyers usually can't properly express whatever is it that they want to buy or manufacture;
**While the sellers refuse to understand how the buyers work, but in the same time are ready to take the money for semi-understood order for goods they theoretically could produce, but they never did before.
That involves me into all kinds of situations, ranging from getting a container of sewing threads that were barely satisfying customer's requirements to flying 10 hours to China with clients to sign a contract only to find out that while we were on the way, they have realized something didn't exactly work for our Chinese partners, and so they've bailed out of the deal. Literally something, because at the moment of our trip they didn't tell the reason for the change of plan, just presented us with a new plan, which was clearly unworkable. Fast forward 1.5 years and they call me back to say they are ready to work on original conditions. I'll get to that some other time.
So what's the problem, exactly?
Me facilitating trade deals involves constant communication with Chinese factories and shipping companies, and that is complicated enough even when you speak the language. But get this:
Imagine that you have 2 weeks before a very long holiday. You work with 6 different factories that produce absolutely different produce, as in fabric, glass cups, metal pots, kitchen sinks, faucets and sewing threads. In those 2 weeks you are supposed to send 7 containers of goods in total from those factories.
Sending a container involves:
-Getting all the export paperwork prepared. That has to be coordinated with both the factory and the buyer, because my buyers come from a place with very fucked up import procedures, and getting your shit right on that stage is crucial.
-Coordination of payments for the goods that are about to be sent. Normally it is a customer who is supposed to pay balance for his(her) stuff before shipping; however in my case, we provide export finance for the customers, so there is quite some paperwork that has to be signed by the factories.
Now, the issue this year was to get 3 out of 7 factories above to sign all the paperwork we need to have before shipping, because we worked with them for the first time.
And when you hear something like this knowing you really need to put that container on the truck in 3 days time, you get chills:
-Nik, Ms. Lin from glass cup factory says they aren't signing the contract.
-Why the fuck are they not? Everyone else already has!
-She says it is too much to sign
-Fucking what now?
-She says it is too much responsibility and they are not signing it.
-Fucking hell, really, days before shipping?
-I will try calling her boss and talking to him.
About an hour later
-Nik, I am going tomorrow to Yiwu(3 hours by speed train lol) to talk to them. Her boss doesn't want to sign it either.
Tomorrow
-Nik, we're good, they've signed the contract.
Why the fuck they didn't want it from the beginning? Fuck knows.
Now imagine managing 7 of those micro-crises on a daily basis for 2 weeks straight, all while getting messages from the clients saying something like "is the container out yet?" or "guys, you're so slow, where are the drafts of export documents?". Lol, those, by the way, are coming from people who always promise to pay tomorrow, but end up doing so in a week or two.
There should always be a happy end
This year, on February 13th afternoon my phone has just stopped ringing. For a moment I thought something was wrong with the Wi-Fi again, but then I have realized: China has just gone offline, and the shit-circus of preparations for the Chinese New Year is officially over.