Hong Kong

As it happened, while Hong Kong is the city in which I wanted to spend the most free time, it turned out to be the least. I was on the ground for about 20 hours. Oh well, hope I get to go back.

But it is clearly the most awesome of the four cities I visited. It is simply breaktaking in its scale. Vast numbers of high rise apartment buildings, a skyline that I believe beats out New York, an energy and confidence that is pervasive. The word that came to mind while driving in was “muscularity.” It exudes strength and power. Everything is big and bold. Even the port impresses with row upon row of massive cranes that give you a hint of the amount of commerce that flows through this city.

My only activities were to go into the office for a brainstorm on a challenging public affairs client and then to go to dinner with a number of the staff from the office. Here’s a picture of me with Bernd Buschausen from our Berlin office and Nancy Payne, formerly of the DC office, now general manager in Hong Kong. The picture doesn’t do justice to the amazing view from her corner office.

Nancy took me on a whirlwind shopping tour that allowed me to check that last few items off my list. She clearly knows the system and is a tough negotiator. I not only found what I needed, I’m sure I saved a few bucks with Nancy accompanying me.

Here’s a street shot that I liked. Nothing particularly significant, but seems to capture the scene a bit.

From shopping, we took the famous Star Ferry from Hong Kong to Kowloon.

Dinner was at a place called Hutong. It’s on one of the upper floors in a high rise across the harbor provding a magnificent view of the Hong Kong skyline. Many of the building have neon lights whose only purpose is to show well at night. At 8:00 am every night, they do a laser show, which was somewhat obscured by the low cloud cover. You should click on the picture to get a large view.

The food was “fusion” food and I’m not really sure what food types were “fused.” It all seemed pretty foreign to me. Of course, I mean that in a good way. Fortunately, we had our colleague An Wei to do the ordering. Many courses of mysterious dishes. A lot of good cheer for our final night.

Bipartisanship Lives!

I always remember periodic news stories about Asian legislators coming to blows on the floor of their Houses of Parliament. Guys jumping over chairs with fists flying over some rice subsidy or something. I just assumed that politics is a bit more unrestrained, at least among the democracies, over here.

I don’t know if that ever happened in the Korean parliament, but those images came to mind when we entered the lobby of the hotel after dinner. Madame Doh greeted a man who wandered over very enthusiastically and he returned the expression. Yvonne told me that he was the leader of the opposition party. Then, moments later, another distinguished grey haired man arrived on the scene with the same lively reaction to and from Madame Doh and her husband. Turns out that guy was the head of the ruling party. They all seemed very comfortable together.

So, it looks like they follow the Tip O’Neill, Bob Michel model over here, kick each other’s butt during the day, drink together at night. Here’s a picture. Not sure what the significance was of the fact that Madame Doh stayed out of this picture. She did say at dinner that many of the male legislators chafed at her outspokenness. She clearly didn’t give a shit.

Hello, Hong Kong, I must be going

Sadly, I blew through Hong Kong so quickly, that I didn’t even get to post while on the ground. This is the part of the trip (the end) where blogging become more of a chore. I’m in the Tokyo airport waiting for my flight to LA. So, I’ll try to recap briefly the final hours of the trip.

After our tour of Seoul, I visited the FH office there. A beehive of activity as they prepared for what they expected to be the biggest pitch of the year, a nuclear power company. Too bad they had to host the visiting yankees, while preparing for that event. But they never gave a hint that our visit was an inconvenience. In fact, frankly, they ran us ragged….in a good way. Here’s a picture.

Yvonne arranged dinner with a very influential woman, Madame Doh, the Korean Ambassador for Trourism. We met her and her husband, a famous former congressman, at a Korean restuarant in a hotel where she was attending some major event. Of course, with the horrendous traffic, it took us an hour to get there.

No sooner had we sat down than she launched into her description of the things she was doing as ambassador, asked me about myself and FH and just generally dominated the conversation. Her husband didn’t utter a word during the entire dinner. But she was delightful. Funny, charismatic and very impressive. She’s clearly a powerful force in Korean politics and I was very impressed that Yvonne had this connection.

Here we are after the dinner.

Touring Seoul

The head of our Seoul office, Yvette Park, took us on a driving tour of the city. We saw the “Blue House,” which is the equivalent of our White House. Interestingly, the President’s home and offices are a thirty minute drive from the Parliament. It seems they don’t see each other much.

We visited an old market, with a number of antique shops and art galleries. One of the galleries had the heads of famous people scattered around an alley on springs, kind of wierd. Here we are with the head of George Bush on a pike. Sorry the picture didn’t come out too well, but, trust me, that’s George Bush’s head bouncing around. Right after we took this picture, a women ran up and, in a heavy accent said, “I love George Bush!” and embraced the head. Yvette commented dismissively, “She’s Japanese,” as though knowing that fact would explain her bizarre behavior.

Work?!!

The posts have been coming more slowly because, shockingly, I actually have to do some work on this trip. And, I’ve got to tell you, the Koreans really put you to work. Gawd, I haven’t had a minute to breath. Talk about an Asian Tiger. But, back to Beijing.

We did have a concluding session for the PA meeting in Beijing that was lightly attended. Mickey Kantor showed up and here you can see him deep in conversation with Paul Johnson.

Then Paul and I boarded a plane for Seoul, Korea. We were scheduled to present to a symposium entitled, “Public Affairs in the Era of Legitimizing Lobbying.” It would seem that lobbying has a bad reputation in Korea. Just a couple of days ago the Prime Minister had to resign because he was playing golf with lobbyists during a paralyzing rail strike. The challenge for our Seoul office is to try to generate public affairs business without getting tainted by the lobbying scandals that are pervasive in the country. We gave a very insightful presentation advising them to stop calling it “lobbying.” Broaden their definition of advocacy and confine lobbying to a smaller piece of larger communications programs. Here are some pix of us speaking to the group.

Paul gave me the hook when I began to drift into “Delay bashing.” Seemed appropriate to me, given the topic. But I recovered with a story about how my mother is schocked that I might associate with lobbyists. The people in the room seemed to identify with that problem.

The presentations seemed to be well received, but the consecutive translation was difficult to get use to. You couldn’t really get a rhythm going because you had to stop periodically to wait for a lengthy, incomprehensible translation to occur. It seemed the translations took longer than it took to make my point.

I wonder what she was saying?

Not that I’m paranoid or anything.

Strike up the Band!

A strange thing happened at the end of the dinner in Beijing. Paul Johnson, apparently moved by the great camraderie the meeting engendered, launched into a song. Here he is belting out the finale of New York, New York, a rendition that was notable more for its enthusiasm than it’s tunefulness.

I should admit that this post is a bit premature. Probably more appropriate for April 1.

The Ambassador

Here I am with a special guest at our dinner after the meeting. I don’t recall his name, but he was the first Chinese ambassador to the U.S. after the opening to China in the 1970’s. He’s 90 years old. When we first got the restaurant, he was sitting with his long time aide de camp, a man of 78 years old. The Ambassador spoke no English, but his aide did a bit. I was fascinated with the man and the things he must have seen during his lifetime. No one else wanted to sit with him. I had a fascinating evening. Not surprisingly, he had met Chairman Mao on a number of occassions. He talked about what it was like to enter Beijing after the liberation in 1949. He was responsible for running a particular area of the city and complained about all the paperwork involved.

I asked him what he did during the Cultural Revolution. Apparently, he had trouble getting with the program. He kept having his written “confessions” kicked back by the party bosses because he wasn’t remorseful enough. It happened 8 times. They finally gave up on him when the Nixon Administration began secretly reaching out to the Chinese government in 1970 and they needed him to work on that project. He was set to go to Poland for some secret meeting with Kissinger and something intervened. I forget what. I just found it stunning to be sitting across the table from someone who knew Mao.

He was at the dinner because he was the local “partner” for Fleishman Hillard when they opened the Beijing office. He also had a great sense of humor. When asked what the secret to long life was, he said, “Eat whatever you want and never exercize.”

Would that I could take his advice.

Here’s the class photo of the fleishman hillard global public affairs leadership meeting. It went well. Mickey Kantor started things off with a smart talk on the issues involved in China/U.S. relations. He was surprisingly firm on the position that the U.S. needs to pressure Taiwan to start the process of reconciliation that will return the island to the jurisdiction of China. We gave a few presentations to ourselves and then brought in some external speakers. The sessions dragged a bit at the end of the day when we had to cope with consecutive translations for the speakers. The PowerPoint slides in Chinese were also a bit hard to follow.

But, we all learned things we didn’t know and that’s always a worthwhile use of time.

The Meeting

I’ve got some good stuff in the can, but I’m having trouble posting pictures. I think the bandwidth disappears here as the day begins.

Today is a travel day, so I hope to be able to post some more when I get to Seoul. Stay tuned.

Catching Up

I dropped off a bit, since I had to stop sightseeing, mostly, and go to work. I spend Monday kicking around the hotel, with a short aborted mission to a shopping area. After 45 minutes in smoggy bumper to bumper traffic to the recommended shop, I was unable to communicate with the clerks. I got back in a cab and spent 45 minutes in bumper to bumper smoggy traffic to get back to the hotel. I then spent the afternoon preparing for the FH meeting, which was to begin with dinner that evening.

Dinner was a lively and delightful affair at a restuarant on an artificial pond. Good food and lot’s of bonding among the FH people from around the world. The picture above is of Paul offering a toast to Li Hong, our host for the meeting. That’s Ed Manning from KP Public Affairs from Sacramento on the left.

High point of the night for me was when I finally got up the nerve to ask Li Hong about Tianneman Square. I’ve been reluctant to bring it up with any of the locals, not knowing whether it was politic. Well, as it happens, Li Hong was one of the demonstrators and he was very willing to discuss his experiences. He marched in two parades on the day of the massacre and knew people who were killed. He’s convinced that history will overcome the governments unwillingness to confront the reality of this event. My esteem for Li Hong soared when I heard this story.