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'Infernal' documents

By Ian J Stones (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-03 13:46

Change is gonna come

The bank's head office was the three-story building just south of the Great Hall of the People on Tian'anmen Square. The lady at the counter said there was no reason why Customs shouldn't accept a check.

As we talked about it, she half-jokingly suggested I pay the Customs duty in small notes so that they would have to take time to count it, and it would teach them a lesson.

I was given neat piles of 1, 2, 5 and 10 yuan notes (there were no 100 yuan notes then). My frustration had built up and, after telling my colleagues all about it, we eventually filled a paper shopping bag from the Friendship Store full of the small notes, screwing up each note individually, fluffing up the volume and randomly messing things up with coins.

We even threw in some US cents and Japanese yen coins for fun. I wrote "649.50 yuan" with a felt pen on the bag in big characters and went back to the Customs office.

The officer again went through the process to calculate the duty and told me the amount. I asked; "Will you accept a check?"

"No."

"Will you accept cash?"

"Yes."

"Here is the cash."

He saw the big bag full of notes and coins, and said, "You must count the cash."

"I've already counted it."

"You must count it in front of me."

"Why?"

"It's a regulation."

"Show me the regulation."

"You can't see it."

"Why not?"

"It's an internal document."

"Then it's nothing to do with foreigners."

"It is."

"Show it to me then."

"No, it's an internal regulation."

"Then it doesn't apply to me."

"It's a regulation."

"Regulations are wangba pigu (a kind of rhyming slang that meant 'turtle's ass')."

He was stony-faced, but others laughed to hear the slang. I left the bag of cash on the counter, sat down and got out a book.

After several minutes, another customs officer, a young man, quietly walked over and said he would handle it. The young guy took ten minutes to sort out the notes, putting them in neat piles, and then three others each counted the money in turn.

After half an hour they had finished the procedures, but they still took their time. When they finally handed me the paperwork, the officer said, "You foreigners are really bad."

"Why?"

"Another foreigner did the same last week, but he did it with one fen coins."

I burst out laughing and said, "Accept checks then." I left, and started to think how to get the filing cabinet to the hotel and - more difficult - how to get it past the front desk.

Lesson No 5: Be careful who you upset - word of your deeds travels. Months later, this episode would come back to haunt me.

'Bad attitude'

When later I wanted to bring in a copy machine, I was told that my name and the story of my "bad attitude" had spread all over Beijing Customs. The lady who told me advised I shouldn't upset anyone if I needed to get help from Customs in future. It was good advice. But nevertheless we were on our way to equipping the office.

At Zhanjiang, Guangdong province in 1984, attempting to find a solution to a tricky technological problem.

We got tired of the run to the telex office, so next my boss said we had to find a way to get a telex machine of our own - even though no companies then had their own machines and the Beijing Hotel refused to let any of us have office equipment in our rooms.

So I went to see an influential lady I knew who I figured would have the right connections; she said it would cost us $500 and a couple of Win brand cigarette lighters (the top brand at the time).

I agreed, and the next thing we knew, a very senior retired general from Hunan province turned up at our office. He was around 75 and spoke with a loud voice; he spent most of the time telling us stories of the Long March and civil war.

Eventually, he said getting the telex would be no problem, he'd go to see the manager of the hotel. In the end it actually took four trips to the manager.

After a few days, the general came back waving chopped approval documents and a handwritten guarantee that we had to sign.

He said the manager had agreed, but if any other foreigner found out we had a telex machine, we'd lose it. We had to guarantee that no one would find out and complain that they wanted one too.

We had a soundproof box with sponge lining specially built to hide the machine in the office, which was still a hotel suite. And for all the help he gave us, the general got just the two cigarette lighters: the lady got the $500.

One evening, when it was our turn to host a "happy hour", a number of friends were sitting in our suite.

I noticed slight vibrations coming from the box, indicating that a telex was coming in, but luckily no one else noticed it. I could hardly contain myself when Dick Glover, the first US China Business Council rep in Beijing said, "Not even Deng Xiaoping could get a telex in the Beijing Hotel," We couldn't risk Dick or anyone else knowing we had it, in case we lost it.

Editor's Note: After 1978 when China threw its door open to the outside world, some brave foreigners came and built pioneering, thriving businesses. Their memories and insights give a glimpse into the extraordinary changes that have happened in China during the past thirty years.

China Business Weekly is authorized by ACA Publishing Ltd to publish excerpts from its latest book My Thirty Years in China: 1978-2008 True-Life Stories of a Changing China.

In this issue, we present an excerpt written by Ian J.Stones. Stones came to China as an exchange student in 1978 and from 1979 onwards he played a pioneering role in a number of different industries, including the oil and gas, aviation, automotive, financial and pharmaceutical sectors.

In fact, Stones had much difficulty in starting his career in 1979 when most of the business procedures were not transparent and 'You can't see the internal documents' was the norm.

But his harsh memories perfectly underscore the dramatic changes brought to the country's business environment by the reform and opening-up policy, although now there is still some room for improvement.

Some minor changes have been made to this excerpt.

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