Category Archives: China

KFC and Pizza Hut are kicking McDonald’s ass in China.

They’re everywhere. And locals tell me the food is excellent and they’re positioned as premium brands.

I’m a big fan of Western fast food chains in China and other Eastern countries. The whole line about McDonald’s ruining local cuisine or culture is such horseshit.

McDonald’s and its ilk give the locals choice. If the locals didn’t like the food, they wouldn’t eat there and McDonald’s wouldn’t be there. So a Chinese person wants a break from noodles? Big deal — give him a burger! It doesn’t make the noodles any less real. So a Parisan doesn’t want to sit in a cafe for two hours for lunch? Big deal — give her something fast! (McDonald’s in Paris, btw, is one of their biggest success stories.)

People who sit at home in the States and say McDonald’s in all these countries takes something away from the local feel haven’t traveled. I never eat McDonald’s at home — I think it’s vile. But abroad I eat there all the time. It’s a nice break from the local fare. And I’m damn glad I have that choice.

Everywhere in China there have been too many employees.

There’s probably two dozen security guards outside this apartment complex I’m staying in.

Each restaurant has way too many wait-staff.

At the Shanghai museum there were three security guards for each room.

There are as many taxi cabs as in New York City plus tons of bicycles and some cars. My understanding is the government flooded the market with taxi drivers to curb some unemployment, but they really overdid it since I haven’t had to wait more than 25 seconds of a taxi.

The overstaffing problem affects business culture too: instead of focusing on productivity or quality of each employee, you just hire more people since labor is so cheap. The Chinese solution to problems is often, “throw more bodies at it.” The American approach is, “Let’s re-engineer our business processes to optimize our business.” 🙂

In Chinese restaurants all food is served family-style (dishes in the middle that each person takes from).

In general, I am not a fan of family style set-ups because it turns the meal into a collective exercise of eating instead of individual responsibility of a plate. I prefer to know that one plate is mine and I can eat it. In a family style set-up, you’re constantly gauging how much you are eating versus others. You also have to serve little bits of food onto your own plate before eating. Finally, every time there is one last dumpling or one last piece of bread, it sits for there 10 minutes, no one wanting to take the last piece.

At dinner tonight I did reap a benefit of family style, as will be the case when you are dining with small eaters (if you’re hungry) or big eaters (if you’re not hungry). If you don’t worry about perception, you can dominate a family style set up by consuming much more food than you would have if you had just a single plate. A family style setup avoids one of my great agonies when eating with other people at a restaurant. I finish my plate. They nibble at their plate. Still half a plate of food. Waiter comes by. “Are you done?” “Yes”. Waiter takes plate. I think to myself: Would it have been rude to have asked if I could have finished plate of food? Would it have hurt the person to at least offer it to me? ‘Why yes, Joe, I’d love to finish off your burrito. Not only that, I’d love to wash it down with that full glass of water you haven’t touched.’

Given the high cost of failure of the meal, I’d rather not leave it to chance, no matter how compelling the small-eater-family-style set-up can be. Stick with individual plates. If you’re dining with me and choose the restaurant, please don’t pick a family style place, and please don’t choose a do-it-yourself speciality place, either (unless it’s Swiss fondue!).

Suzhou is a medium sized city 1.5 hrs by car from Shanghai. It’s a popular tourist spot for people who like gardens since there are many beautiful gardens / temples scattered throughout the city. And like everywhere else in China, Suzhou has much real estate development, in particular Irvine, CA-like industrial parks.

Suzhou is a good city but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a real garden buff. My visit was great because I had a contact there — someone who works for a company which helps Western businesses assess the China market and then helps them get set up in China if they do want to a) manufacture in China (easier), or b) sell to the Chinese market (harder). I had a good dinner with him and then we went over to one of his friends’ house, an Australian ex-pat, and watched Game 1 of the World Series. Most English speaking people in China, I’ve found, illegally pirate in Philippine TV which offers broader sports and news channels than the Chinese state media.

There were a few other ex-pats there and I wondered what the typical friend distribution is for an ex-pat. 50/50 ex-pat friends and local friends? 75/25? All ex-pats tell me they have local friends, but I suspect it’s skewed farther to the ex-pat side than sometimes say. The reason is no matter how fluent in Chinese you are, this is still a homogenous society that’s suspicious of their own people, let alone foreigners. The kind of social bonding that occurs when, say, watching a World Series baseball game, is a different can of worms than simply getting along with someone in the office. A social life is probably the most difficult for an ex-pat: you don’t want to be one of those foreigners who’s in on a sweet ex-pat package and hangs out with other foreigners all the time, because then you lose local culture and contacts, and why are you in China for the first place? On the other hand, let’s face it, you’re working really hard all day long to figure out what’s happening around you, trying to process a different language, and so forth, and on the weekends you want to take a break.

I expect to do an extended stint of overseas study and/or work, and this will be a consideration.

Of course you can always solve the social life challenge the way most ex-pats do, which is just be a workaholic!