Northeast Opportunity

by Paul Sayers

[ http://teambridge.net/en/library/northeast_opportunity.html ]

When they first heard of a plan to live, work and investigate business potential in Changchun, northeast Asia, the Chinese family were a little surprised. "Where?"

They come from Tianjin, on the tourist route. Tianjin is not far from Beijing, a developed area well used to foreign influence. Some of the world's larger corporations first penetrated there over a hundred years ago.

I think they thought I was another crazy foreigner and had said I was going to live on the Great Wall. They had left that all behind them when they settled a world away in Auckland, New Zealand.

No, I said. It is here. I showed them on the map, waving my chopstick at the developing area somewhere above Beijing and below Russia, between Mongolia and North Korea. Not at all the cosy cultured climate of their new verdant island home.

I felt at the time I had some good reasons to leave that home of mine for some years. And since I've been out I've found more incentives to stay away from the nest a while.

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