Heavy Manufacturing
Our second working day in Wuhan; today we were driven into the outskirts of town to visit our second customer – a heavy manufacturing company, producing hydraulic pile drivers, pressing and manufacturing machinery.
A guided tour through the manufacturing floor gave us a good impression of the process and the product. It was a quiet interesting experience being at an actual heavy manufacturing company and seeing the production process; especially with all of us having an IT or IT-related background, where work tends to be virtually and the final product can hardly be touched).
During the following meeting the chairman and his executive team gave us an overview of the company, its history and its challenges – – thus giving us the input to define what in detail to deliver. After a fruitful discussion we got invited to what they called a simple business lunch and which turned out to be a full banquet with 20+ dishes in the restaurant of a nearby hotel.
That simple lunch was an interesting experience. All following standard rules – from the seating (most senior member of the delegation right-hand of the host, the next senior member – here me – on the left side of the host, etc.), to toasting and the order the food was served. The food itself was superb, a wide selection with all sorts of flavors; also Deepak – our vegetarian teammate – was taken care of with many proper vegetarian dishes to choose from. Overall an amazing and highly appreciated experience.
After lunch we moved back to the office to close our meeting, basically summarizing the points identified and making sure we get a common understanding on what we will work on – a big thanks to Elaine, Theresa (our two interns) and Lesley (our DOT contact) for their help in interpretation.
Lost in Translation
We learned how it can go without interpretation yesterday evening. Eight of us went for dinner into a small local family-run restaurant; everyone was friendly and it was a nice place – the menu of course in Chinese and no one in the house to speak English. To not confuse them totally, we decided to all eat vegetarian, so we told them “wǒmen bù chī ròu” (“we do not eat meat”). We a) ended up with enough dishes to feed 15 people and b) 60% of the food included meat. Nevertheless – the food was good, the owner friendly, the place clean – so we will be back tonight – just with a note from our interpreters stating what exactly we are looking for … will post tomorrow if that worked 😉