Tim Clissold

I doubt I'll read a better business book this year. A cracking tale of a man trying to set up and invest in businesses in China, it reads sometimes like a drama, sometimes a soap opera, sometimes a comedy and sometimes a travelogue. It works on all these levels too. You can't help feel sorry for Clissold as he wrestles with business case situations that would be near impossible to control in the West never mind China, involving fraud, cheating, lying, shooting, rioting and cultural racism. show more The stress almost kills him, but underneath it all there is an affection for this country and all its foibles that allows him to forgive it and its people. He wants to help them to a better life, and believes capitalism is the answer. Money, however, seems to bring out the worst in many people whatever culture they're from, and millions are squandered in every chapter. One of the most amazing cultural depictions therefore, is that of Wall Street, dolling out hundreds of millions on the strength of a presentation or two. This is a sobering picture of what the capitalists are doing with your hard-earned money you put away for your retirement - gambling it on a fashionable whim with about as much information as you could pick up from an edition of Newsweek. I'd thoroughly recommend this book. show less

Now, this is how a memoir should be written, especially on a subject like China. He was charmed by the mystery of China, and moved there on a whim and a prayer. (Actually I felt that his Madam Butterfly reference is fairly correct, because that's almost how China is. )

He moved to Beijing around 1988/89, and tried to learn Mandarin in a Chinese University. He ate cabbage Beijing style, and watched the slow transition of a country's rise from communist country to that of a quasi captialist show more one. As Clissold has said in the book, the Chinese are captialists in heart.

In less than 20 years, China has risen from a super poor country to a quasi economical super power. The burning passion from every Chinese to escape poverty, crime, governmental control, and their attempts at building a brighter future for themselves are all presentd here in this book.

This isn't a sucess story. In fact, this is a story about failures, but the more he "failed", the more he learned about China in a more fundamental way. The last chapter is especially touching. He decided to travel 1000 kms on his bike through some of the poorest regions of Northern China. And how he felt when he went to Pudon in Shanghai. In his own words, "I felt like I've been inside for too long, and when I came out, the sunlight was blinding me."

His parting wisdom is important to all that players effecting China - China will be China, and it will do things on its own pace, in its own way. You can't hope that China will change on your behalf, because it won't. All those people that said that China will eventually see light of reason and play the way everyone plays, well.., read this book.

HIGHLY recommend it. show less

This is an excellent memoir of a financial adventure in China in the early 90s.

As a layman, I can't comment on the wisdom or otherwise of the various undertakings described here, nor of the way in which they were undertaken. But this cautionary tale is told with sufficient clarity and verve to ensure that even I, financial illiterate that I am, came away with a good idea of what had happened, and I immensely enjoyed the freewheeling style of Tim Clissold's telling.

The Chinese are baffling, show more even to those Westerners who have dwelt among them for decades, and are fluent in the language (both linguistic and ethical). I therefore feel a little less guilty myself for finding China so perpetually impenetrable, and so perpetually fascinating.

I guess, though, that as an economic imbecile I probably missed a lot, and that while you don't have to speak Money to enjoy this story, it would probably help. show less

The best part of the book was probably its descriptions of the weather; it seemed like the only part of the book that might not have been lifted from some banker's report. ("In the depths of winter, it could reach forty degrees below and a bottle of beer solidified in minutes.... I noticed that the ice on the pavements wasn't slippery: the extreme cold had hardened it to rock. At times it seemed to me that the air itself had frozen as I saw the smoke from the factory chimney stacks hanging show more in great black funereal wreaths over the city.") But despite these little flourishes, it's certainly the type of book populated mostly by abstractions-- like money and geography-- rather than people.

It wasn't what I was hoping for..... No sudden satori about how to become the outsider who wants to 'understand' rather than 'conquer', no personal insight about what kind of illusions drive you to become the perfect 'expert'-- 'Mr. China'-- in the first place, no deep wisdom, only cliche little quotes from Confucius or whoever, scattered just below the chapter number.

I mean, it's not terribly vile or 'biased' or anything, it's just.... say your older brother or your uncle went to China, and all you got out of him for all that, was essentially little business vignettes, and little flourishes about the weather..... especially if you were given the impression (i.e., the back cover and the preface!) that it was about seeing the truth behind "illusions" that the guy called "Mr. China" has about his life, and how it connects with other lives.

.... That is, one of the little quotes under one of the chapter numbers should probably be, And then Confucius told the disciples, Before signing a contract, always remember to hire a lawyer. Instead of, you know, something probably meant to remind you of Handel's Water Music, or Ravi Shankar, or the last time you had a realization of personal or philosophical truth.

Although it's certainly one of those books you can read when you're in one of life's waiting rooms, and the chance of coming across something that will be genuinely distressing is comparatively small.... And in a sense, I don't know why I bother (with the evaluation)-- maybe it just wasn't meant to be what I wanted. It's not making it onto any shortlist of recommendations for me, but in a 'negative' sense (i.e., because of what it lacks) I don't feel justified in calling it something unconscious, or flawed in some definable sense.

Like any book of middling size, it's a small investment of time and space, and the return on that investment, while nothing to write home about, is adequate, and unlikely to inspire bitter regret.

I would only have cause for bitter regret if *all* of my books were like this.... but, now and then, I suppose that we ought to let those deceptive bankers and lawyers have their turn, and let us know how often it snows in China.

(8/10) show less