Mingshen Bank, Ditching the Group, + Interviewing
Trip Start
Apr 26, 2006
1
5
13
Trip End
May 10, 2006
Beijing,
China
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Because the paperwork took so damn long the previous day, we had to open our bank accounts the next day. We went to the Minseng bank to open 1 use accounts. This account was only to be used to wire USD so that it could be converted to RMB to complete the purchase. If you thought the DMV was bad, apparently opening a bank account in China is worse. They are slow, tedious and did I mention slow? Apparently the last group that came to Beijing spent 4 hours opening a few accounts. Fortunately for us, we had access to the VIP line through the company and instead of 4 hours, we completed everything in 1.
Ditching the Group
The rest of the group left fo Tianjin to look other real estate properties. Since I was not interested I ditched them. I was getting REALLY sick of the people and looked forward to a day on my own.
I went to eat at some of local food places back at the hotel. I love the food here! It's pretty good and REALLY cheap. For example, a dozen dumplings costs $1 (it would cost $8 in the US). A breakfast of soy milk, pancake w/meat and some pickles was only $0.50. The weird this is that Coffee is still US prices with a cup being ~$3-5, more than a breakfast/lunch meal!
Interview in Beijing
The thing I realized about jobs in China is that unless you know somebody who knows somebody, you aren't going to get too far. While that can be true in certain industries in the US, at the very least you have a host of recruiters or websites to shop your resume around.
I made the mistake of applying a US strategy to the job search in China. I responded to an ad in Beijing for a company that was looking to higher IT consultant. The company contacted me and I went into the office to do an interview. The guy John, was a American guy from Los Angeles. His story was that he recently moved to China to start his business. Apparently they have been developing a low tech supply chain technology to help companies audit their supply chain when goods are stolen or are faked on the way to the consumer. Essentially the "technology" was to slap a sticker on a box and to provide hosting services that generate unique IDs on the box. Supposedly they would keep a huge respository of this info and provide hotlines, point of sales devices, amongst other things for consumers to check the validity of the product they purchased.
The problem was that when I pressed on the interview about the technology, they didn't say much other than that they have customers lined up and also have been developing for the past 2-3 years. Yet it seemed like vaporware to me. Moreover the name of the company Stanford Anti-counterfeit Digital Technology (SADT) is very deceptive. It is not in any way affiliated with Stanford University but the name actively confuses people. This is DEFINITELY not a good sign.
Long story short, I spent a few hours talking with this people wherein all I saw was a decent Macromedia flash presentation. I didn't see any real technological components or anything else. When I got back to the hotel I did a Google search on the company and the American guy and turned out instances were he and his company was accused multiple times of being Spammers or scammers. VERY BAD. Needless to say, I am not going to answer their calls from this point forward.
Beihai Lake and New Friends
I met up with some new friends from the Bay Area in the evening for Yunnan food and a few beers in Beihai park. Jenny was a ABC like myself who moved to Beijing recently to find work in environmental NGOs. Her friend Daniel was a lawyer for the Palo intellectual property firm, WGSR. Daniel was a Beijing'er who spent time between Beijing and the US. He's currently in Shanghai working for his firm to establish an office in China. From what he said, it has been difficult because nobody wants to pay for $300/hr IP service in China. Makes sense because well, IP isn't all that big yet. Daniel is stationed in Shanghai and since I will be out there in a new weeks we made plans to hit the town to party when I get there.
