The salon was indeed easy to find. Inside, it was modern, white, and gleaming, with impressive banks of hair products along the walls and giant mirrors hanging above new chairs and sinks. It was also surprisingly empty. Perhaps this was not a time when many other people were free to visit a salon.
A young woman in a brilliantly white uniform greeted her, but her command of English seemed limited to such standards as “hello”, “okay”, and “yes”.
Jen attempted to explain what she wanted in the traditional fashion of those who know themselves to be confronting a language barrier: by speaking louder and more slowly. “Highlights.” She held one of hers up. “I want to have my highlights touched up.” Again she held up one of the blondish locks of hair.
The young woman nodded. “Okay. Yes. Fine, fine.”
Wanting to be doubly sure, Jen sought out a large photo book in which models with a variety of hairstyles and colors could be seen. She paged through it until she found one with blonde highlights. She held the book out to the young woman and indicated the highlights. “Highlights. Can you do that? Mine are growing out. The roots are dark.” She indicated the roots.
More nodding. “Yes, yes, yes.” The young woman led her back to one of the stations. Jen closed her eyes and relished the relaxing sensation of a professional working on her hair.
“Jen,” objected Katie in a sleepy voice. “It’s late here. I have to be at work in a few hours.”
“I can’t believe I did this to myself,” Jen wailed.
“Did what to yourself? Are you okay?” concern began to overcome sleepiness in Katie’s voice.
“I’m blonde!” The adjective was drawn out into something very near a cry.
“What?”
“I’m blonde.”
“This I have to see,” Katie said, now sounding fully awake. “I’m heading to the computer. Call me up on Skype.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No, but if you call and wake me up on a work night to tell me you’re blonde, the least you can do is let me see. Come on, log in.”
The relief of sharing the misfortune was greater than her annoyance at Katie’s attitude. Jen raised the lid of her laptop and logged in to Skype, still holding the phone to her ear.
Katie’s image came up bleary-eyed and tousled, wearing an old tank top. “Wow,” she said. “You really are blonde. I didn’t know you could be that blonde.”
“I’m not supposed to be. I was trying to have my highlights touched up and—and this happened.”
Her hair was not quite platinum, but it was very close. Not even a streak of brown remained.
“Did you try to do it yourself or something?”
“No, I went to a salon. It was a nice salon. I don’t know . . . Maybe she thought I wanted all my hair the color of the highlights. Or maybe Chinese hair takes much stronger bleach. Or . . . What am I going to do?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of cute. It might grow on you.”
“It doesn’t grow blonde on me, and I don’t want it to.”
“Can’t you just have it dyed brown? Or how about red?” She mimed thoughtfulness. “I could see you red.”
“Shut up!” Jen considered but shook her head. “There’s no time. I have a big meeting in less than two hours. The senior vice president of Procurement flew out to sign contracts, and I have to meet with him. Getting the highlights touched up was a last-minute idea, so I’d look more professional. Besides, now I’m terrified to go into a Chinese salon again. What might they do next time?”
“Dye it black,” Katie suggested, giggling.
Jen snapped her laptop closed, cutting off the video connection.
“All right, all right. I’m sorry,” said Katie over the phone. “Look, does this guy you’re meeting with know that you’re not blonde? Just play it cool.”
“I met him once before, at the main office. I suppose maybe he doesn’t remember me, but . . . No. Anyone can remember that I’m not blonde. I’ll look silly.”
“Just brazen it out,” Katie advised. “Don’t think about your hair. And really, if you don’t know it was an accident, it looks kind of good. You always impress people.”
Aspire had taken a penthouse hospitality suite in the hotel for the two days of meetings with Trade Winds—a venue designed specifically for such business-entertainment purposes, featuring a conference room, dining room, and several large open rooms with scattered seating and panoramic window views. Jen went up slightly before the appointed time in order to see that the hotel staff had everything ready. The largest of the panoramic sitting rooms had been selected for the meeting, and two young women, each wearing a uniform that consisted of a mandarin-collared variant of the “little black dress”, stood ready with an elaborate tea service to provide refreshments.
Todd Williams made his first appearance with the slightly antic vigor one sees in someone who is attempting to overcome severe jet lag by sheer force of will.
“Great venue here,” he observed. “The view . . . Don’t do things halfway. Is the tallest building in the world somewhere here in China now? No, no. I guess not. Dubai or something. Still . . .” He trailed off for a moment, extreme tiredness showing through for a moment, then shook himself. “Right. So, what’s the plan? They’re due shortly. Is it paper signing and business first, then dinner and getting-to-know-you kind of things?”
“I’ve lined things up to go a little bit more Chinese-style, so we’ll start with a tea service, and typically that initial conversation is fairly social. Then we have a tour of one of the factories and dinner. So today is primarily social. Tomorrow morning is the business session, starting at nine in the morning. Then dinner again in the evening to close things up.”
“Socialize first, then business, then socialize again. Got it. Glad I’ve got an old China hand to guide me through this. You seem to know all about it.”
The Trade Winds delegation arrived exactly on time. It was led by the husband and wife who owned the company, along with the chief of sales and Eddy, their account manager. A half dozen other men and women, whose functions within the company were never made clear, followed in their wake to round out the party.
Tea was served, hands were shaken. Todd showed a video produced by the Aspire Brands communications department, which sought to express the overall brand character and culture of Aspire—complete with buzzword-bedecked executive sound bites, a pounding soundtrack, and plenty of wildly camera-angled runway footage relating to Aspire’s fashion brands.
One of the owners of Trade Winds, who insisted that people could call her Amy, stood up and gave a brief speech of thanks. She handed out glossy brochures that showed the Trade Winds and Aspire Brands logos intertwined, with a background collage that included images of a factory floor more glistening than any that Jen had seen, the Great Wall of China, and the Guangzhou skyline.
She and her husband, Amy explained, thought of Aspire Brands as part of their family. They were grateful for Aspire’s business and were proud of their partnership. Her husband gave a slight bow of agreement and said something sufficiently unintelligible as to make it unclear whether it was intended to be in English or Cantonese. Amy then produced a camera and insisted that her assistant document the event: Amy and her husband flanking Todd; Amy planting a matronly kiss on Todd’s cheek; Amy, her husband, Todd, Eddy, and Jen all arm in arm; finally, everyone was ordered to crowd into the frame, and one of the young women from the hotel staff was asked to take the picture.
Once this photographic ritual was completed, Amy and her husband led the group down the elevators to a small fleet of waiting Mercedes-Benzes to drive to the factory.
The factory was owned by a heavyset, middle-aged man who went, inexplicably, by the name of Uncle. It was his factory that had, on Jen’s initial tour, provided her with production samples that were visually perfect but reduced in size such that laptops did not fit into them.
Uncle greeted them at the factory gate. Jen immediately noticed that
a large “Joint Venture” sign had been mounted above the gates, showing the names of Uncle’s company and Trade Winds and that of Aspire Brands as well, for good measure. Todd seemed impressed by this detail.
After greeting them with a brief speech on how pleased he was to be working with Trade Winds and Aspire Brands, and how his greatest priorities were product quality and providing good conditions for his workers, Uncle called in an assistant with a bottle of whisky and a tray of glasses and proposed a toast.
The tour itself was fairly brief. Jen’s more practiced eye noticed that while the workers were all busy with Courier bags, one side of the factory was busily removing piping from the bags while the other half of the factory was taking these denuded bags and sewing the piping back on again. Todd, however, did not seem to absorb this detail, and since these were doubtless the undersize bags that did not fit Aspire’s spec anyway, Jen felt no need to bring it up either.
“This place is so clean!” Todd marveled. “Look at the white uniforms and new sewing machines. I’m glad we’re partnering with someone top-notch.”
“Top-notch,” assured Uncle. “Very top-notch. Everything top-notch.”
He bragged that his workers had more room and better light at their work stations than those in other factories, and that he had had an Internet cafe and karaoke lounge installed for them.
“Do you have a system for dealing with worker complaints?” Todd asked. “Our customers are very concerned to know that the workers who make our products are treated well.”
Uncle shrugged. “There are never any complaints.”
“Never?”
“Of course not. My workers know there are lots of peasants who would be happy to make as much as they do. No complaints.”
Having shown them the wonders of the factory, Uncle led them into his showroom, where all of the products his factory was capable of producing were on display. Jen briefly wondered if this would cause concern, since a number of these items were, in fact, pirated designs from other, more famous bag designers. On the contrary, however, Todd was very much impressed. He pulled Uncle aside and explained that he had promised to bring his wife a thing or two from the famous pirated merchandise markets. Could Uncle advise him where he could find his wife something that would impress her?
In response to this, Uncle cheerfully loaded Todd down with a half dozen of his best pirated merchandise. What did his wife like? Uncle knew many other factory owners who produced products with the very best brand names. Shoes? Clothes? Watches? Jewelry? What was her size? Todd demurred at this offer but accepted a purse and a wallet to take to his wife. Uncle then provided everyone with another round of whisky and another toast, and the whole group loaded back into the cars (Uncle joining them now as well) and drove off to a restaurant for dinner.
Dinner ran long and concluded with round after round of whisky.
Near the end of the evening, Todd leaned close to Jen—indeed, through some minor accident of balance, found himself leaning on Jen—and explained in what was meant to be a whisper, “There’s a lot of drinking going on around here.”
Jen nodded. Whether through some notion of politeness or due to personal preference, Todd had been alternately accepting rounds from Uncle and Amy’s husband, making him by far the furthest-in of the party.
“Luckily, I have a pretty strong head,” Todd confided. “And most Asians can’t hold a lot of liquor. Or I might find myself getting into trouble.”
“I don’t pretend to be an expert,” Jen advised, “But the factory owners I’ve met over here are all accomplished drinkers.”
“But not quite in my weight class!” Todd countered, giving his gut an appreciative pat. “I’ll be fine.”
Not long after this, a suggestion was made that the group decamp to a karaoke bar. Jen had no desire to sample the delights of Guangzhou karaoke and knew that the primary focuses of such an expedition would be alcohol and karaoke hostesses, so she excused herself. She reminded Todd that they had a nine o’clock meeting the next morning to negotiate purchase orders, but he was bent upon getting the full Chinese business-entertainment experience. Amy was leaving too and offered Jen a ride back to the hotel.
With Todd in China, the usual five o’clock call with Bryn was canceled. Jen allowed herself to sleep in until the seemingly luxurious hour of 6:30. Showered, hair blown out, made up, dressed, she arrived at the hospitality suite twenty minutes before the meeting and availed herself of the coffee and American-style breakfast that had been provided.
At five minutes to nine, Amy arrived, her male staff in tow, though looking a little tired and puffy about the eyes, but her husband not in evidence. Greetings were exchanged. Amy politely enquired whether Todd was perhaps suffering from the time difference. Jen professed ignorance and excused herself for a moment, dialing Todd’s cell number as soon as she cleared the door.
“Whuh?” asked a sleepy voice after several rings.
“It’s nine o’clock, Todd. The Trade Winds team is here. Are you not up?”
Todd let out a burst of profanity that suggested rapidly increasing consciousness. “I must have set the alarm wrong. I’ll be up in ten minutes.”
Jen hung up, reflecting that it was among the insurmountable inequalities between the sexes that a man could somewhat credibly make it from bed to business attire in ten minutes.
It was, in fact, closer to fifteen minutes later that Todd burst into the hospitality suite, hair damp, suit somewhat wrinkled, as if it had reposed on a chair overnight rather than being hung up, and a large dollop of shaving cream behind one ear. Jen tried to indicate the problem to him, but her look and gesture only caused him to look wildly over his shoulder as if he expected to see someone or something sneaking up behind him.
“Hold still,” Jen ordered. She retrieved a tissue from her purse and removed the shaving cream. “Come on.”
“Thanks,” said Todd, rubbing the now clean spot behind his ear from which Jen had wiped the shaving cream. “Guess it takes a woman’s touch.”
The Trade Winds team was quietly sipping coffee. Jen and Todd each grabbed a cup and led the way into the conference room.
The negotiations that followed were hardly worthy of the name. Amy had a sheaf of notes meticulously documenting all of the changes Jen had required. Each of these became a point of negotiation, with Amy insisting that the changes that were requested would cost more money, and thus required that a higher per-unit cost be passed on to Aspire Brands. Todd was alternating sips of coffee and ice water and seemed to be struggling even to understand the objections Amy raised, much less counter them.
Although it was, in theory, Todd’s responsibility to deal with all cost-related negotiations, Jen became frustrated to see Amy winning every point and at last opened up her own front in the campaign, repeatedly pointing out the ways in which the production samples Trade Winds had provided had failed to match the prototypes they themselves had produced.
Amy was little pleased to find a less pliable person entering the fray but was equal to it. She began to lay out the difficulties faced by Trade Winds and their manufacturing partners at ever greater length, explaining why it was a simple business necessity that they be compensated for meeting such detailed and unreasonable demands. Indeed, she hesitated to state things too bluntly, but if things became too difficult for them, they might simply have to pass on the business entirely. They did not want to do this, for they felt deeply the awkward position it would put Aspire Brands in if their China partner backed out so late in the process. Why, they might not be able to launch the Courier line on time. Trade Winds was mindful of these things, but if they were pushed to the brink, what could they do?
Amy then re-presented her demands, this time as a middle ground between some unthinkably painful concession and Jen’s unreasonably inflexible position. She appealed to Todd to intervene and see that this middle ground that she had selected was ideal, was really the best for all involved. Todd, whose grasp of the situation had not improved
during the flood of verbiage, followed his most basic instincts and aligned himself with the middle. Surely both Amy and Jen should compromise, and it did indeed seem as if the middle ground that Amy described was the best place to meet.
Outmaneuvered on ground not of her own choosing, Jen elected to abandon the field of battle and leave Todd to his fate. She fell silent and allowed Amy to display her ability both to lead Todd to metaphorical water and to make him drink.
The negotiations finally concluded in the midafternoon, and all parties decamped to a restaurant for a celebratory meal.
“Bad luck feeling under the weather for something like this,” Todd confided as he and Jen got into one of the cars. “It’s a good thing Amy was willing to be so reasonable. She seemed eager to meet in the middle on everything.”
Jen refrained from comment and instead asked about the night before.
“I didn’t realize that the Chinese took karaoke so seriously. The bar they took us to was very nice. Like a private club. And they’re all just really into it. I’d thought Amy’s husband was a pretty quiet guy, but he was belting out songs. And there were these girls there who were huge karaoke fans: jumping up and down, and cheering, and hanging on guys like they were pop stars.”
“Those are karaoke hostesses. They’re paid by the bar to act that way.”
Todd looked affronted. “No, I don’t think so. If they worked for the bar, I don’t think they would have been so . . . I mean . . .”
“This isn’t the U.S., Todd. That’s what they’re paid to do. Treat the customers like pop stars.”
“Oh.” Todd lapsed into silence for the rest of the drive as he contemplated this.
Amy’s husband rejoined the group for the celebratory dinner. Whatever ill effects of the evening before might have kept him from the morning’s negotiations, he seemed now in a boisterous temper, though his remarks were primarily delivered in Cantonese, and the other members of his party were not always forthcoming with translations.
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