Take a Trip to Another World

A colleague who does business in China recently expressed how difficult it is to find gifts for his Chinese business clients. So much here in the US says "Made in China" on it.

Travel abroad is a wonderful thing. If you take the time to look around the world and set aside your preconceived ideas and biases, you really can get glimpses into other worlds.

Years ago I delivered a training class in China to go along with some expensive hardware they bought for one of their institutes. It helped that all of the Engineers I was training were foreign educated. Mostly in US colleges. And it helped that I had plenty of free time to tour and observe.

This was in Chungdu China. Located about as central in China as you can get. The last stop before Tibet.

When I first arrived at the institute, I noticed a group of men and women with hammers and chisels working on a section of the sidewalk. I looked inquisitive enough that my host let me know that they were taking out a section of the sidewalk to put in a driveway for the institute parking lot. They had been working for about a week and were about halfway done. He must have known my thoughts, because he added that in China, it was more important to keep the people employed then it was to get the job done quickly. This was food for thought. So whereas in the US we would have a couple guys watching another guy with a jackhammer or backhoe take out the drive in about half a day, in China they kept six people with hammers, chisels, and a wheelbarrow chipping away at it for two weeks or more.

But then, their lifestyle didn't have all the encumbrances we take for granted. Even the well-to-do engineers didn't have cars. No payments, no insurance ... no overhead. They rode bicycles. They didn't have to pay to support the idle unemployed. Their expectations of life were different. And their outlooks. The pace of their lives and the way they interacted was notably different. It was truly another world. And it is tough to be a fair judge of what is better or worse when your bias comes from your own.

Are the Chinese stealing our jobs? Or are they just more willing and able to do them for less?

There are two ways to be rich: make more - desire less