Tim Clissold

I was disappointed in this book. It seemed cobbled together. Maybe it should have been relabled as a collection of short stories on China.

I got the impression this is book to dip your toe into the waters of understanding the Middle Kingdom's ways of doing business. The pace was too fast for me to know which information was important to the next chapter.

None of the characters were particularly memorable. For some reason, every character seemed trivial ..... in the conclusion, Tim hoped that he gave us an impression of doing business in China. Perhaps, there is enough Chinese in me yet that I didn't have much of a connection for a Westerner trying to make money in China.… (más)

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 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)… (más)

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, 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.… (más)