Whether you are a long-term China watcher or only having a smattering of interest in the Asian country recently, whether you single-mindedly focus on the Orient powerhouse’s industry and finance or just being curious about this ancient civilization’s life and society, you surely will notice the recent popularity of a local TV series called Narrow Dwellings, a metro melodrama on a topic which has too many stakes and emotions attached to it: housing in a modern Chinese city. Well, it takes a ton of pains to afford a house and mortgage in any world metropolis, but in China, a country with underdeveloped credit reporting and rating system, even if you stretched your whole family’s resources and thought you could manage to lay out a down payment, the work and risk does not stop there -- you need to well safeguard the property transaction process. That is exactly where First Title Real Estate Guaranty and its president Mr. Gene Shi come in to help, at the right time.

As the saying goes, you can judge a man by the company he keeps, and we know that wine is men’s best company, so an application of syllogism can lead us to the conclusion that you can judge a man by the wine he keeps. So what about the men who keep Armagnac as company, the most ancient eaux-de-vie (meaning water of life) in France? In this interview we are grateful to meet Albin Roux, the Brand Ambassador and Area Manager for L.E.D.A, which owns the famous Armagnac brand Château de Laubade. Suave, crisp and stylish, Mr. Roux will impress you profoundly as much as the mellow brandy he represents will do.

You may not hear about PCM, but if you ever dabbled in stock market, you are surely familiar with big names like Sinopec and CNPC. PCM provides the driving force for these companies’ oil operations. Its patented product the Progressive Cavity Pump is used in oil well pumping operations all over the world, under whatever geologic circumstance, withstanding whatever climate and temperature. As driving as his company’s proprietary PCP, Mr. Emmanuel Gros launched the PCP Asia Pacific branch single-handedly in Shanghai in 2002. After seven years’ continual boom, the company now is well-oiled to force through any viscous fluid, any seemingly unpenetrable financial tsunami. 

15 years ago, when a bunch of energetic and ambitious Taiwanese launched Capstone Construction & Development Co. in mainland China, all around them was towering cranes and roaring bulldozers. Now after all these years’ booming construction, when I went inside the roomy office of Mr. Tseng, General Manager of Capstone Construction, I was first greeted by the soaring cranes brandishing proudly outside his big window. 

Our interview this time is with Mr. Bruno Gaffier, who has 6 years working experience in China. Since 2006, Mr. Gaffier became the Asia Pacific Area Director of Moria France which is a successful international ophthalmology company. 

The day Claude R. Jaeck came to our office for the interview, he carried with him a copy of “A Brief History of the Boxer Rebellion”, a book he borrowed from our office several weeks ago and finished reading. The book’s subtitle read: China’s war on Foreigners, 1900. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Middle Kingdom was at war with the western powers and Chinese were out to kill foreigners to vent their fury over European nations swaggering within China. A century later, when Claude came to mainland China to help grow and develop a wide range of businesses, Chinese are fighting to sign up to work with foreign companies. Tides of history change dramatically, but one thing never changes, at all times and in all lands, that is human nature.

Stephanie Hericher is the Food & Beverage Manager responsible for Great China and Japan in Clasquin, an overseas forwarding and logistics company with a history spanning one and a half century. After got a Chinese language diploma at university in France, she has spent 11 years in China. Just like her company’s shipments travel all over China, you can see her footprints in Xinjiang, Sichuan, and nearly every corner of the Middle Kingdom, and beyond that, to Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Online private sales originated in France a few years ago. Frenchman Alexandre Misseri brought the business model to China in 2007 by founding 88BRANDS, the right time when China’s netizen number is skyrocketing and China’s retail markets are prospering, even so now despite of global economic slowdown. We talked with him on a lukewarm Shanghai morning, with his phone keeping ringing. The normal state is busyness for an entrepreneur, the more so for a foreign adventurer in China.