Damian Holmes

Recently I posted on my professional blog – China Landscape Architect - Making Connections with other designers in China and thought it would also be a good post about making networking connections in China on this blog.

Making networking connections are done in two ways in China either in person or online but most connections that are fruitful are the ones in person through a friend or business connection.

In Person/Offline

The best way to network with people in China is through business connections or friends. ‘Guanxi’ is a term you will often hear in relationship to networking in China and it is true unless you have good connections business will be harder to conduct in China. These connections are fair stronger between people as they are often old schoolmates or business connections or a friend of a connection and rely heavily on the concept of ‘face’. If you have any opportunity to broaden your connections through Guanxi with other friends or business associates I would take them as they often lead to other connections and so on and you never know where it may lead. China may have 1.3 billion people but you will be amazed at the number of people who know each other or someone – the six degrees of separation often feels like 2 or 3 degrees in China.

There are many networking events in China either as conferences or weekly events. My advice is to go to networking events that are paid for and run by a Chamber of Commerce or Department of Trade/Commerce. Also any event run by an established group or organiser that has a good speaker and/or theme. These events are useful and often lead to long  business or personal relationships.

My advice is to steer clear of most free networking events as they are renowned to be full of “financial consultants” or sales people or English Teachers trying to change to another job – I have nothing against these people and respect that they have a product or service they need to sell but I really don’t want to be called the next day or week to setup a meeting or have my details sold to a list(usually this is done by people attending not the organisers).

Online/Internet

Online networking is relatively new and the majority of internet users in China are under 35 – thus you online connections will often be middle class Mainland Chinese and be 20-40 years old. My advice is to Join LinkedIN and include lots of detail in your profile and join the numerous business groups that are focused on China. Also get a translation of your profile into simplified Chinese and you can include that in your profile under “Create your profile in another language”.  You can connect with me on LinkedIN by using the email address damian@damianholmes.com

The other way to connect is through Ushi.cn which is a LinkedIN type site that many Chinese are joining – you may need an invitation to join – just email me at damian@damianholmes.com and request an invitation in the subject line.

For Online connections, there is also social media sites including microblogging, blogging, news and more in China but most are in Chinese so it may become a little cumbersome unless you have a good grasp of Simplified Chinese characters.

If your a designer got to  Making Connections with other designers in China post from Chinalandscapearchitect.com

9. First in

Try to get your presentation on the first day or prior to lunch on any day – often people will organise lunches(long lunches) and business meetings after lunch at the conference to make the best of networking opportunities. Also many people will attend an event on the first day to be seen and then leave to attend to business.

10. Be a Polite Visitor

When you are giving a presentation in China unless you have been invited as an expert to give observations on what you think about China and its development it is best to keep observations to a minimum as you may come across as naive or reeking of colonialism.

11. Different Culture – Different Norms

The culture at conferences in China can be different from what you are use to and therefore what is acceptable at a conference differs also. Attendees will have their phones ringtones on and take calls during your presentation, they will also make conversation with other people and take photos of your presentation. These are just the norms in conferences in China. Be ready for it to happen and do not let it startle or distract you. If you are worried about IP in China with a new idea or concept then remove anything that you would be sensitive about.

12. Questions/Question Time

Most conferences in China do not have question time due to people preferring to ask questions in private, also asking a question of the audience  during a presentation will often go unanswered, so its best to leave it until afterwards after the presentation or during the meals.

13. Have hundreds of business cards

In China, handing out business cards is like second nature so get extras printed before you arrive in China or have more printed while you are here.

15. Off handed comments

A quick reminder to keep any off the cuff or joking comments/observations to yourself. Some people relax their manners after a couple of days in China as they are surrounded by non-English speaking people. Always remember just because you think they can’t understand what you are talking about doesn’t mean they can’t.

16. Have Fun

Presenting and meeting you people is fun. Enjoy the new experience and always try to take something away with you.

Some tips on presenting at conferences in China, this is mainly aimed at presenting at large conferences with over 100 attendees.

1. Know Your Audience

In most countries presenting at conference is usually to peers in the industry or segment of the market and most will have the same cultural background ie they have lived and worked in this city or country for years. In China it is very different you can get different conferences and the audience. They could be mostly foreigners or mostly Chinese or a mix but usually I find that one group is in the majority. When coming from overseas ask the organisers and who the audience will be as a guide you can look at the number of foreign presenters if they are more then the Chinese presenters then the audience will be mostly foreigners and vice-versa. If the audience is mostly foreigners you can follow the same presentation guidelines that you would follow in your home country. However if the audience is mostly Chinese then the following pointers will help you.

2. Get your content translated

Always get your slides translated into Simplified Chinese for Mainland China. It just makes common sense, you would not be interested in 20 slides of Chinese in your home country so why would people be interested in your English/German/Korean slides in China. Make sure when you have the translation done that you get the English included (usually in smaller font) as this is easier for you to follow and second, the company appears to be more international.

3. Statistics

Many Chinese like to hear about statistics whether its about industries, countries, cities, companies. Make sure to include a couple of statistics about your topic or company in your presentation.

4. Broaden the content – Reduce your home country examples

Unless the presentation is based on your city or country or regions market then your presentation would be improved if you broaden the content with some examples from China, Asia and other parts of the world other than your home country. Constantly, presenting examples solely from your home city or country can be dull and only shows that your ideas can be implemented where you live but you need to prove that they can transfer to other countries and cultures.  Adding world example to your presentation will make you come across as more widely knowledgeable about the presentation topic and your industry.

5.  Loose the jargon and your local terms

When presenting to largely Chinese audience who most likely will not speak English your presentation will be translated by one or two translators depending on the length of your presentation. My advice would be to go through your presentation and remove the acronyms, jargon and phrases as the will not be well translated and loose meaning.

As a rule if you didn’t use the word in the last 10-20 years remove it. This applies to phrases such as value-added, facilitation, thinking outside the box, leverage, skill-sets, proactive, synergy,  mission critical, low hanging fruit, touch base, and any term that your industry has formulated in the last 5 years. Also loose analogies or references to your home countries sports.

6. Tricky terms – get the message across

In some cases, you may be presenting a product, topic or technology that is newly conceived or being introduced to China. To make sure that you get the right message across; check the terms and/or concept with the translators prior to presenting and get them to retell you what they think you mean when you’ve finished explaining it to them. This will avoid the message being lost or misunderstood.

7. Duplicate topic information

Check via the website or through the organisers on who is presenting and what they are presenting and do some research on what they have presented in the past or what their company is about. Often I have been to conferences which are about one topic and have 20-40% of the presenters are repeating the same content.

8. Be ready to cut content

Two reasons for this – one you may have similar content to other presenters usually its the introduction or background information on your the conference theme rather than flick through it at the speed of light and say “will skip this because other presenters have covered this” just delete the slide/s during a break. Another reason you may need to cut content is due to a key note speakergoing  over time and the organisers then cut following presenters time.

Its that time of year in China where large torrential rains pound the southern and eastern areas of China. Hundreds of millimetres of rain can fail in a matter of days and bring cities to a stand still and wash away crops in an instant. However, Chinese people are very resilient and carry on through and rebuild there cities and towns very quickly.

However, it always amazes me when rain hits Shanghai, the streets empty, taxis are scarce. People in the big cities hate rain and rarely go out unless its for work or a major event and when it stops raining for a couple of hours the streets fill up and supermarkets and food markets fill up just as quickly as people dash to get their everyday goods. I have seen this on numerous occasions during the years I have lived in China and last night when I went to my local supermarket it stuck me that the supermarket was full of people who where trying to avoid the rain.

What I love about China and business in China is there is never a dull day. Business occurs 24/7 and doesn’t stop with over 1.3 billion people business occurs in offices, coffee shops, tea houses, farm fields, online via e-commerce, QQ, microsites, micropayments – the monetary sums are in the billions or just a few fen but it constantly moving and changing the landscape and way I look at China everyday – you think you know something or where a company is heading and then it skyrockets, plummets, falls apart or decides to do one of the biggest IPO’s in history. The business and its news cycle in China is never ending as China is now an economic superpower that influences every market, anyone who doesn’t agree has never been to China or has been asleep for the last three years. To use a paraphrase the parlance of the market if China catches a cold the rest of the world will have pneumonia!

I will try reporting on a daily basis what I see as I often think that I read so much about China and share with so few people also I would like to actually start using this as a way of curating my thoughts about China. Am I going to cover everything? no…the market is too big but I will be looking at the major stuff and then anything I think maybe sliding through without notice from the mainstream media. I’ll try explain some of the companies but most of the time will be linking to wiki’s corporate websites or other resources for further reading.

So here it goes…….

Qingdao/Tsingdao Billboard at Yangshupu Road

This billboard reminds me of the Guinness & Heineken ads that used humourous lines.

China was only acutely affected by the Global Financial Crisis but the market has over grown some market sectors such as residential and  high end hotels this is due to the Expo and also some of the 2009 stimulus money entering the development market. Currently the government is increasing the use of financial instruments and tools to cool the residential market. Also recently over the last week or so the Shanghai stock exchange is correcting not due to the Greece and Euro issues but the market got to hot to fast with P/E ratios and share prices rising too quickly so a correction was imminent. So the China market is somewhat decoupled from the rest of the world.

The Chinese stock market is often one of the only investment outlets for people to place their cash and as property was going off and the government was making it increasingly harder to invest in property, money went into the stock market too quickly now the market is correcting people are moving to gold as a safe haven.  So where to from here is the question on many people’s minds as money starts pouring into gold?

Well my guess is that Chinese can only invest so much in gold and the stock market and the investors will start to move towards domestic consumption but will continue to move more money offshore to cheap property in the USA and Europe hoping that the price of property will rise over the next few years quicker than the yuan appreciates.

Domestic consumption will be fueled by creating new retail centres. Although commercial office space will continue to flow along but the supply is currently too high for the requirements of many cities however, retail has lagged with retail mostly only developed as street front shopping with stores usually only 20-50 square metres therefore more energy will be heading towards developing retail shopping centres with anchor department stores.

Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Beijing are currently already catered for with many retail centres areas with a wide variety of configurations. Therefore, developers are now shifting focus to cities such Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi, Ningbo, Qingdao, Tianjin, Xiamen and other Tier 2 & 3 cities along the coast as retail demand is growing fast with brands already having distribution and logistics networks along the coastline of China.

I also see more and more companies looking to invest in new distribution companies to import products from abroad for domestic consumption or partner with existing companies to create new distribution channels. Although there is a big focus in China on luxury brands with numerous stores opening across China and especially in Tier 1 cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. However there is a middle class with increasing wealth that often doesn’t see the value in luxury brands and these consumers are the ones pushing the growth of such retailers as H&M, Zara and car companies such as Buick, VW and Ford. The middle class realise that they can’t afford the BMW’s and Louis Vuitton bags but they can purchase well known good quality foreign brands. I see more and more American & European brands entering the market to fill the gap between the local stores and the High end shopping malls with smaller shopping centers with middle range tenants & product that are fashionable but not overly expensive.

Contact Damian via email damian@damianholmes.com or phone +86 15000919590

Well, I decided to relaunch chinalandscapearchitect.com as two separate blogs – chinese version and an english version. They will cover the same topics and posts with the text translated into Simplified Chinese from English and will be focused on Landscape Architecture. I have done this for two reasons

1.   The chinalandscapearchitect.com (chinese version) (english version)  blog could be more detailed about landscape architecture and China. I want to use chinalandscapearchitect.com as a tool to educate Chinese and English speaking people about Landscape Architecture. The basics and the detailed areas of landscape architecture from design to site management. Often Landscape Architecture blogs are too focused on one specific location or area (eg design, technical, plants,) without offering definitions or ideas that stimulate people to further explore more areas of landscape architecture. Landscape Architecture is my passion and has been seen the age of 10 and I feel that I need to share my knowledge with people so they can further understand Landscape Architecture and what landscape architects do.

2. I can have the freedom on my personal blog (damianholmes.com) to explore topics that relate to everything in  World from business to everyday things. I felt pressure that my personal blog has my name on it and I would have to be solely focused on Landscape and my professional career to promote my business SUSTAIN.DS.

Last week I went to Shenzhen to meet with some potential clients for some urban design and landscape architecture projects. All went well and should hear some news soon. I saw some parts of Shenzhen on my trips to and from the airport and whilst sitting in my hotel room looking over Shenzhen. I lived in Shenzhen for 18 months in 2006-2007 and I with this visit I saw that the city had changed, not greatly(well probably more than most cities in the world) but it still had changed with new elevated train lines and shell like train stations sitting above the road. I also saw large amounts of road works with new flyovers.

So what did I learn about the city and China from the trip?
I actually had a realisation when looking out over Shenzhen that was reinforced by a recent comments by government officials and that realisation is that China is still modernising and still has a long way to go and it’s current level of modernisation cannot be measured by large cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. Although Shenzhen is a young(barely 30 years old) and modern city, it is still modernising and improving especially in the areas of transport, culture, and infrastructure.

During my 5 years of living in China I have had the opportunity to live in Shanghai most of my stay. Shanghai is a city that has remade itself and some of this remaking/modernising was for 2010 Expo and other pieces are part of the city’s 2020 plan. Living in Shanghai can often make you become lost in the new modernised city and forget that the rest of China is still modernising or beginning to plan to modernise. Large areas of China are modernising at a great pace with high-speed rail and new highways linking cities but it is not just these elements that make a modern nation. People’s lives and cities they live in are still in need of modernisation whether this is new roads, housing, parks, greenways or bicycle infrastructure. The other realisation is that there are still many millions of people who will move from rural areas to new cities that have not even been planned yet. For those who live in China, this may seem as obvious, however I think as an urban designer and landscape architect, I have to keep a good macro perspective that large areas of China are still in need of good planning and modernisation. How to best service these areas is through current practices but also education of the new graduates entering the profession from small technical colleges to large research based universities.

Modernising of China is not just designing for existing cities but also developing new design theories and tools for future cities.

View of Bujizhen, Shenzhen from my hotel

View of Shops selling pottery & ceramics

View of Bujizhen, Shenzhen from my hotel

As apart of my setting goals for 2010 I set 5 words – one of which was Simple.

Simple Ideas. Simple Concepts. Simple Processes and Simplify.

Tonight I decided to Simplify my web reading. In 2009, I read too much business news, business trends, social media trends which often was great for small talk but often lead to information overload that really in the end didn’t help move my ideas move forward. I had created too much noise. Most of what I read is via my Google Reader which I open every morning and spend about an hour scanning the information and another hour at night. I use this as a good way to research and gain ideas for my business and sites.

Over the last couple of years I have added newspapers, magazines, blogs, zines and other RSS feeds. However, I realised that I needed to simplify the amount and type of information I was reading. So, I went through each category – business, landscape, architecture, entrepreneur, news, etc and culled each to 2 to 5 sources from 10-20.

How did I do it? Well, I gauged how much I really gained from each source and how useful it was to me last year. Also if I thought that I could get the same content from another one of my sources I culled it. I also  found during 2009 that I often got duplicate information from multiple sources especially US-based newpapers on China or Asia. I also culled a lot of the USA based magazines as some of what I read was useful, but I decided I need to focus more on Asia were I am based.

To concentrate more on Asia and other topics I searched Alltop.com for RSS feeds and added 2 sources maximum to some categories.

I am also Simplifying my social media habits – less twitter/foursquare and more writing ideas down and then thinking of ways of implementing(doing) them.

I also decided recently that I needed to reduce the number of my sites from 5 to 3 and probably soon to be 2 (not including my blog!) so that I can spend more time on my design studio SUSTAIN.DS and World Landscape Architect.

I hope this gives you something to think about and what you will do in 2010. What are you doing in 2010 to simplify your life?
Leave it in the comments section or email me