had introduced her to the project. It seemed that she had established a strong position in the new markets out there. She’d been one of the first movers in the carbon space and had a network of contacts in the ministries in Beijing. But Mina found her to be erratic; after making the initial introductions and running a brief auction for the factory, she seemed to lose interest. She would disappear for long periods without leaving contact details and then suddenly burst back on the scene without warning. Now it looked as though she’d gone down to Shanghai on business but no one could find her.
‘She just sent a message telling us to speak to the Chinese party directly,’ Mina continued, ‘and now her mobile is off. I’ve been calling her office, but they can’t find her, either. I can’t believe it! We’re paying Cordelia a ton of money and she just disappears right when we need her. I heard some Japanese buyers are visiting the factory in a few days; they might even be there already,’ she groaned. ‘If we lose this deal, I’m stuffed!’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘so we just need to slow everything down, put everything on hold. Try to freeze things where they are now and buy some time till we get out to Quzhou.’
We talked it through for a few minutes and figured that we should send a message out to the factory immediately. If we told Wang we were coming to visit him in a few days, it might stop him from making any final decision to go with one of the other buyers. But it was nighttime in China so we couldn’t just call him. I figured the best thing to do was type out a message in Chinese and fax it over. That way, Wang would find it first thing in the morning. So we trooped upstairs into one of the attic offices. It was crammed with people squinting into computer screens, with electric fans on each desk trying to blow the heat out of the tiny windows.
Mina introduced me to her boss, a pale, wiry New Yorker who tugged at an unruly mop of black hair as he talked about Wang. ‘There’s a standard way of doing these deals,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve done it a hundred times at Merrill. Just stick to the term sheet, keep the lawyers on a tight leash, and the deal’ll get done. The Chinese just don’t seem to get it!’ he said.
‘I’m not sure it works quite like that over there,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ he replied blankly. ‘It does everywhere else.’
I sat down at Mina’s desk and pulled over a computer but there was no Chinese software to write up a letter. It wouldn’t look right just to send a handwritten message and anyway I hadn’t brought a dictionary. I was stumped. I suggested sending a draft in English to Cordelia’s translator but there was no way Mina was going to agree to that.
‘She’s hopeless!’ Mina said. ‘Last time she dealt directly with Wang, it took a week to sort out the mistranslations.’
‘Okay, so I’ll write it in English but use Chinese-style sentence structures,’ I explained. ‘I’ve done it plenty of times before; that way the translator knows exactly how to put it into Mandarin and we’d be sure that a clear message gets through to Wang by the morning. We don’t have a minute to lose.’
Mina was sceptical but there didn’t seem to be much alternative, so I started typing and two minutes later handed her a piece of paper.
‘I know this looks a bit odd, but it’ll go straight across into Chinese, no problem. The translator won’t be confused by it. Just put it on company letterhead, get your CEO to sign it, and send it over to Beijing. The translator can add in the Chinese in these gaps and you can get her to fax both versions down to the factory first thing in the morning. It’ll be fine.’
‘Er … perhaps you should explain this to Winchester,’ she said after reading the note. ‘I don’t think he’d sign this for me.’
She took me down to Winchester’s office and left me outside the door. I knocked hesitantly and a voice from inside barked, ‘Come!’ Inside, there was a couple of worn leather-backed chairs arranged around a fireplace, with a table strewn with teacups and a plate of half-eaten scones. On the sideboard, a decanter and some glasses stood on a tray next to a couple of old sherry bottles, and over the mantelpiece there was a photograph with rows of men in uniform graduating from Sandhurst.
‘I hear Mina called you in for a recce,’ said a tall man, folding up a copy of the Daily Telegraph and rising stiffly from the desk. Behind him, a set of French windows opened out onto the garden and the breeze ruffled a few papers on the desk. On the wall, there was a large map of Eastern Europe, a sign, perhaps, that the Cold War was still in full swing in Mayfair. ‘Jolly good,’ he continued. ‘Jolly good. Tiresome business, this – the old girl seems a bit down on her chinstraps so it’s good to have you on board. There’s a lot hanging on this mission, you know.’ He paused and looked at me more closely. ‘In mufti today are we?’ he said, raising his eyebrows and peering at my clothing as if over a set of imaginary spectacles.
‘Er, well sort of,’ I replied weakly, scratching the stubble on my chin and trying to cover the holes in my trousers. ‘Let’s just see what they want first, shall we?’ I said, trying to sound more cheerful. I handed over the letter.
Respected Chief Engineer Wang: Hello!
My side, at the day in front of now, received your valuable side’s telephone and felt ten-out-of-ten happy. We straight through believe, through twin sides’ effort and sincerity, our project fixedly will succeed. Now, if your side, amongst a hundred busy things, pulls out a length of time, my side shall grasp fully empowered representative Project Director Mina and send her respectfully to visit your valuable factory for friendly negotiations on top of the spirit of mutual benefit and equality also. According to my side’s arrangement, Project Director Mina arrives at Hangzhou at the day behind tomorrow. Ask valuable side to confirm that arranging.
Ten thousand things just as you please!
Delivered from,
Winchester
Winchester didn’t get much beyond the bit about ‘receiving your valuable side’s telephone and feeling ten-out-of-ten happy’ before he swelled to a purplish hue, and I found myself abruptly dismissed from the room. I heard later that as soon as I left, he called Mina over an intercom and exploded. At first he refused to sign the letter, ranting that it looked as though it had been written by a six-year-old and demanding to know how she could have contemplated asking such a dishevelled-looking halfwit to represent the company in China. But eventually peace returned to the offices; the letter was rearranged into a more recognizable form, Winchester signed it, and it was sent over to Beijing. Wang replied the next morning. By the following evening, only a few months after arriving back in England, I found myself on a plane out to Hong Kong.
UP IN THE SKY THERE IS PARADISE, BUT DOWN ON THE EARTH WE HAVE HANGZHOU fn1
—from Illustrious Words to Instruct the World, by Feng Menglong, c. AD 1620
As I threw a few things together for the trip out to China, I knew that I was dealing with an explosive mixture. On one side, Winchester seemed nervous and volatile.
