Dr. Mark Nan Tu

The Manjushri Bodhisattva – the Buddha of Wisdom.
The White Tsanbala or The God of Wealth

I also watched a National Geographic documentary called Mr. Everest. The story is about a group of mountaineers climbing the world’s highest peak. It showed various scene of Tibet. For me, Tibet is a very remarkable; a very mysterious and very beautiful place. What is Tibet really like? I decide to visit Tibet and see everything through my own eyes.

In October 2005, during the National Day holiday, I booked a flight to Tibet and spend 10 unforgettable days there. Here is my personal account of the trip.

I booked the trip in Beijing. It is called the freeman trip. It means that the itinerary was designed by us. Our travel agent would take car of all the traveling details such as booking of the airplane, accommodation, buying entrance tickets to the tourist spots, local tour guides, and transportations and even provide us with a driver. The total cost for the 10-day trip, over 10,000 RMB (including tips, meals, etc) is considered expensive comparing with the Chinese standard. I also donated some incense money to a Tibetan temple.

Tibetan style funiture

Here is a letter that I send to my friends about the oppotunities in China.

Hello All:

I am very glad to hear that you guys had a wonderful time in CA. I went to ShenZhen, Zhuhai, Guangzhou to witness the latest capitalism in China during the summer vacation. I then went to Kunming, Dali, LiJiang, Chendu and Xian for a half mouth back packing tour.

I agree with Ping that the chance for an IT guy to get rich in the silicon valley is rather slim. I also believe that the future belongs to China. Along the way in my journey into the south and west of China, I have met many Chinese people including businessmen, school teachers, street vendors, government officials. I can tell you one thing, China is booming with energy and all the people are busy doing something. With the correct government policy, this country is moving ahead at the extraordinary speed. As the old saying, when the tide goes up, it lifts all the boats. So, I will stay here to ride with the wave.

I recently read articles on Business2.0 and BusinessWeek. They have stories on how the American entrepreneurs are making it in China. Good articles with stories from real life. China is not full of gold on the street waiting for us to pick, but with persistence and hard-working, it offers countless possibilities.

The larger trends in China are:
1: The rise of the middle class. The family who has an apartment or a house, a car, enough food, enjoys traveling twice a year sometimes outside of the country. This class will demand products and services that we have never seem before. Have you noticed that China has huge amount of message paroles, restraints, travel agents, car dealers, outdoor stores, English training centers. All these services are designed for the rising middle class. With the buying power in China as 1 to 5, the middle class is defined as whom the household income is over 20,000 USD including the gray income.

2: The heavy foreign direct investment flooding into the country. With the political stability of the country and the internal problems slowly been worked-out, investment in China is going to look very attractive. Many of the investment opportunists that I personally looked at have 20% or more returns of investment. Compare this with average 10% in the US or much less in the rest of the world, China is looking more and more attractive. 10 years ago, China is a land for opportunists, now with the law and order in place? it will be the land for interferers and businessmen.

3: The dominance in the manufacturing and soon in the research and development area. If you go to Guangdong, ShenZhen and look at how the Chinese work in their factories, you will understand why this world is going to bow to the Chinese price. Small or big, with the labor cost nearly zero, the factories are using almost all the western style management such as Kanban, JIT, and quality control. One of the small workshop owners told me he is thinking of flatting me the management chain so that his front line worker can communicate with him directly. This is business process reengineering, folks. Foxconn (the world biggest OEM supplier is sending hundreds if not thousands engineers and middle level management to schools like Tsinghua to be trained with western management techniques.
Intel, IBM, Siemens, Microsoft have all set up research facilities in China. Yes, it is true, that the Chinese trained researchers are not as good as US trained ones. But they get 1/5 of the salary and are 1/2 as good. Most importantly, they work 12 hours / day. They absorb every bit of creativity and methodology from the US trained researchers. When the country is getting rich and can allocate more resource into research and development, it is going to compete with the US in many areas.

With such, I think that the opportunities lie in these areas:
1: Commodity trading with China, like oil, steel, etc. China will import these from the international market
2: Any products and services that are tailored for middle class. A lot of money can be made in media production and distribution which was formally controlled by the central government. A good example of the Super Girl show which was ended last month.
3: International trading. With the opening of China deepen into the western regions, china will import and export services and products that they want and the world also want.

So time is right to get in and start doing something in China. By the way, the digital map services that we discussed during our last summit were sold to Sohu.com for 9 million USD. Not bad.

LaoLongTou Great Wall

???Shanhaiguan Pass, called ??Yuguan in the past, is in ???Hebei province, about 15 km. from ???Qinhuangdao’s city center. A strategic pass in the northeast since antiquity, its present fortress and Wall were built in the fourteenth year (1381) of the ??Hongwu reign during the ??Ming dynasty (1368-1644) by the great general, ??Xu Da. To its northwest lies the ???Yanshan mountain range, and to its east the ??Bohai sea marks the end of land � thus, comes the name ???Shanhaiguan (Pass between Mountain and Water).

Shanhaiguan has 4 gates, of which the most well-known and the most important is the town’s east gate, called ???Zhendongmen. But because poetics and drama stick to the populace more, this gate has since been known as “???????”(The First Pass Under Heaven Gate Tower) or simply the “?????”(The First Pass Gate Tower). This is due to the huge board hanging on the face of the gate tower with the four large characters “?????” written by the Ming calligrapher ??Xiao Xian. The gate walls are 14 meters high and 7 meters thick, and these surround an inner town with a perimeter of 4 kilometers. The Great Wall connects to The First Pass and runs 26 kilometers across the town and up the western hills, and links the ??? Old Dragon Head to the ??Bohai Sea in the east.

???Laolongtou (Old Dragon Head) is about 4 kilometers south of Shanhaiguan. The “Dragon’s Head” refers to the group of structures that converges on the ??Bohai Sea. The most dramatic is the section that enters the water, called �????�(The Stone Fort Entering the Sea). As I stood on the shore observing its profile, “Old Dragon’s Head” I thought: the ancient mythological beast’s long jaw, knotty forehead and scaled neck reveals itself as it slowly submerges and retires to the sea. After tens of thousands of li � from its desert tail end through mostly barren highllands and wastelands, then descending toward east, winding through its rolling green hills and craggy mountains � its quiet head finally reaches into water and urges for the depth of the sea.

The repaired section of the greatwall just outsie ShanHaiGuan

The ruins of the greatwall

The west gate of ShanHaiGuan

The stores in the ShanHaiGuan township

Night shows are getting popular in China in recent years. I have seen some very impressive shows in China in Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Yangshuo, Hangzhou, Qufu and Beijing. Unlike all the other shows, the Beijing night show is mainly designed for first time international visitors and it is the only show which also offers a Chinese dinner.

I watched the show in August, 2005. The casts and the plots are ok. Photography is allowed. f you have not seen any shows in China and are here in Beijing for a short time, have no interests to learn Chinese culture and history and are really bored at night, you may want to see this show. The lighting effects, the flashy costumes and hundreds of young and beautiful dancers on stage will make the price worth it. Skip the dinner though. Get a real local dinner in any of the thousands restaurants in town.

Time: 19:00-21:30 pm
Address: No.1 Dayabao Hutong Dongcheng District Beijing, PR. China
Tel?8008101282 65272814 65272815

?????????????????

I went with the Beijing 4×4 offroader club to BaShang GrassLand over the weekend.

Sea of flowers in the streets of Kunming
Electrical Scooter and fashionable girls

I had lived in Kunming city for several years. I do not dream of returning to the city now as I think this city is more suitable for retiring living. Going out to other cities is better than staying here for young people

If you travel around in China, you will discover that a lot of travel agents offer very low price for their tours. The price is so low that you may wonder if they will loss money on such tours.

For example, a day trip to the Stone Forest from Kunming will normally cost around 150RMB which includes the entrance ticket for the Stone Forest, 80 RMB tickets, the transportation back and forth, 50RMB, the lunch, 10 RMB and the tour guide, 10RMB. Some travel agencies dare to quote for only 80 RMB for all the services listed above. It looks like the travel agent is going broke soon. But are they?

Of cause not. There is no free lunch in this world. Travel agencies will try to squeeze money to at least breakeven from the tourists. For example, they will take the tourist too many shopping stops. To be exact, 5 of them in a day and 30 minutes each. That is 2 hours in total. The time that a tourist should spend in visiting places but have to spend in shopping alleys where all the prices are significantly inflated.

The travel agent gets 10 RMB for each visitor they bring to the shops. On top of that, the agency gets 30% or more on all the purchases tourists made in the shops. The shops usually sell things like jade, jewelry, specialty tea, fish oil and other health products. These products have no market value and the margin is extremely high. There is a shop in Yunnan called “Colorful Yunnan.” At first glance, that is a scenic spot. But in reality, it is the largest in Yunnan shop for tourist, specific for foreigners.

Cut a long story short, I have been back to China for a few years and I have been to many places. I went to Xi’an, recently. I took a taxi from the Xi

The following pictures were taken in XiaoWuJi, southeast of the 4th ring road, Beijing, December 2002.

The signs say, hot water car wash, wax, professional auto body metal work, paint work, scratch repair, electrical and gas welding, computerized wheel rotation, air and tire mending.

Hand car wash at work, outside cleaning.

Hand car wash at work, detailing

Hand car wash at work, production line process

Chinese are some of the best entrepreneurs in the world. The car wash business demonstrates how such a business is run in China. Beijing has the largest private car ownership in the country. In winter times, when there is snow, the street becomes very dirty and there are car wash services in almost every corner of Beijing.
The car wash took 20 minutes. There are at times 3 workers working on the car in a production line fashion. Each of them has their special tasks. There is a sprayer, a car detailing person and a wiper (who wipes the car dry). While one worker sprayed water on the car, the other team members performed detailing on other cars.
The business was in demand. For the 20 minutes that I spent there, they cleaned 4 cars. There were many cars waiting in line. The operation had 8 workers. The team can wash about 15 cars each hour. Here is a little P&L for this business.
Here are some of the relevant information. The business opens at 6:00am. The morning customers were mostly Taxi drivers. The business closed at 10:00pm. Workers had 15 minutes/each for breakfast, lunch and dinner break. Food was provided by the employer. They clean about 125 cars / day (also confirmed by the workers). Each car owner pays 10 RMB per wash. They also do air, wheel rotation, scratch repair among many others. The business rented a two room store front which cost 600RMB/month. There are 8 employee who are paid at 10RMB/day/person with no other benefit. Food and housing are provided by the employer at 10RMB/day/person. The equipment rental, water and electricity run about 300RMB/month.
Income:
1250 RMB/day (from car wash), 300 RMB/day (from other add on services)
Total income: 1550 RMB/day
Cost:
Employee: 160 RMB/day
Equipment rental, water and electricity: 10 RMB/day
Rental?20RMB/day
Total: 190RMB/day
Net profit: 1360 RMB/day
Profit Margin: 87.7%
The business was closed when I visited Beijing again in May 2003. The city decided to demolish the storefront. A new residential housing project ???? (ShanSuiWenYuan) is underway.

My former boss in Microsoft is returning to the United States after working in Microsoft Research Asia office in Beijing for 2 years. Headquarter in the United States asked him to write a

My friend Peter is a young and energetic guy from Los Angels. Last January, I was in the United States, he brought me to a few dance clubs. He always seemed to get to talk to the best looking girls and had their phone numbers.