Your chance to do business in China!

Who wants to do business in China? I have a friend here who wants to sell some silk slipper type shoes overseas and looking for someone to help sell them overseas. Check out the pics of the shoes here and get in contact with me if you’re interested in acting as the middle-man overseas or just in buying some.

The beauty contest

It’s now late May, the temperature is now above 30 every day and still rising fast. I’ve been putting my two weeks back in Hainan to profitable use, and now have a chinese name registered for the company (瑞特梦, rui-te-meng), a fully equipped office and a nice little flat a stone’s throw away. However, this week is a little more relaxed as yet another piece of documentation is required from Jersey and has to run the gamut of legal proceedings and authentication before wending its merry way to China. So I went to the beach for the first time since getting back.

Swimming in that warm crystal blue water would have been reward enough for the week’s annoyances and stress so I was sure I was dreaming when around fifty of the most incredibly stunningly beautiful girls I’d ever seen in my life poured out of a coach and wandered down to the water’s edge where they took up a variety of sexy poses. They were quickly followed by a small troupe of photographers who scurried around taking photo after photo. It slowly dawned on me that I was sat bang smack in the middle of a beauty contest. Sorry, no photos, I guess I was kind of distracted…

After a couple of minutes, the photographers noticed the small gaggle of foreigners on the beach and swarmed across the sands in droves. Our group included a couple of very pretty Slovenian and German girls and it hadn’t seemed to occur to them that we were nothing to do with the event but simple civilian casualties. I wish I’d got a shot of the poor girls’ helpless faces as they clutched their towels to themselves and tried in vain to swat away the photographers.

Earthquake

Just to let everyone know I'm fine - tell the truth I didn't even notice the earthquake here! Not so for my friend who went to visit her mum in hospital a few days ago. Right now all the patients are lying or sitting on the grass outside the hospital with no money even to eat.. they left everything in the hospital. I hope help gets to them soon.

Got to Hainan!

Phew, got there at last. It's 8:30am here and with the sun blazing down it's already uncomfortably hot - aaah that's more like it ;-).

Hong Kong... AGAIN

I reached Hong Kong safe and sound (for the 5th time). They've told me my baggage has been transferred to the shenzhen ferry though I'm a little skeptical as I haven't seen it since Heathrow... fingers crossed! A small pile of Boeing 747s marked with Oasis colours are parked forlornly outside. So, yeah luckily I caught the very last flight from Hong Kong to London but had to buy the return leg again with BA.
Following the progress of the olympic torch it looks like it's arriving in Haikou at the same time as me. I guess it'll be the first and last time I get greeted by screaming crowds at the airport.

Starting a business in China

Ever thought about registering your own business in China? Think again. I just spent the last month (with help from my darling little sister in London) running round taking one document from one place to another, filling out forms, posting them off to random places, tearing my hair out and generally treading the eggshells down the narrow path of beaurocracy. No fewer than seven different multiply-signed and sealed documents are necessary and some of them need to go through four different organizations for certification before they even reach China. Ow. But I'm nearly there.


Finally (with one day to go before returning to China) I get the confirmation that the last translation has been finished and I only need to get a business address in China before the registration procedure can officially... begin!

To tell the truth, I'm nowhere near 100% sure that I have the right documents. After all, who knows what they should be? Let me give you an example. One document I need (according to the head of the trade and industry bureau of haikou city) is a "proof of existance of the foreign company", which must be provided by the chinese embassy in the revelant jurisdiction, in this case, Jersey. Anyone seeing any problems yet? Yes, all of you living in Jersey will have cried out by now, "But, Jersey has no chinese embassy". Or consulate. Or chamber of commerce or even citizens affair representative. Only a couple of chinese restaurants. And there lies the rub. Do the chinese embassy in London know what I should do? They don't even speak english, though after calling all public lines, not getting through on any of them, then finding their personnel list online, googling their names, obtaining the mobile of one of their really very much non-english speaking guy who I catch in Gatwick aiport returning from china and have to sweet-talk in Chinese to get the direct line to a Mr Zeng in the Trade and Commerce bureau, I manage to get from him that one document that **might** persuade them to issue a document which **might** be the one I need would be a 'Gong zheng'. Ok.... Turning to my handy online chinese legal dictionary, I discover that this is a Notiarization. Eh? What's that? (Law was never my strong point). Again, the internet (Wikipedia) comes to my rescue and I clue myself up on Notiarization, Legalization and Authentication. Acting on an impulse I start ringing people in the states administration randomly until I find someone who knows what they are talking about and that Legalization of Notiarizations (and other documents) are performed by the Lieutenant Governor, through the agency of Immigration (sooo logical)....
I'm stopping here to save you from an unplanned mid-afternoon nap. The point is that I don't think anyone, ever before in history has opened a division of a Jersey company in China. All uncharted waters.