Summer Ends

I have literally gone around the world in the past 85 days. My haphazard journey (excluding some side trips along the way) was:

• San Francisco-Beijing-Shanghai on Air China
  

• Shanghai-Kunming-Hong Kong on China Eastern
  


• Hong Kong-Delhi on Air India
  


• Delhi-Bangalore on Kingfisher Air
  


• Bangalore-Mumbai-Brussels-New York on Jet Airways
  


• New York-Atlanta on Continental
  


• Atlanta-San Francisco probably by car
  

In between all these flights, I saw two of the world’s Wonders at the Great Wall and the Taj Mahal. I camped in the Himalayas and swam in the Arabian Sea. I sat with pilgrims in the mosques of Delhi and the monasteries of Tibet. I ate fine meals at world-class restaurants and subsisted on mystery kebabs from tiny street markets. I traveled by camel in Rajasthan and bicycled through crowded streets in Hangzhou. I saw the ancient town of Lijiang and the modern neon of Pudong. I took a commuter train into the world's largest city and chartered a bus in a village without a single car. I celebrated the Dragon Boat Festival in Shanghai and the Snake Boat Festival in Kerala. I boarded in a tiny village house and stayed in five-star hotels in huge mega-cities. I commuted by rickshaw and rode the world's fastest train. I saw the enormous potential and daunting challenges of doing business in the world’s two largest countries and fastest growing economies.

I'd like to conclude (or at least to slow down my daily pace of postings for a little while) with this somewhat cheesy analogy that came to me while picking through a pile of counterfeit DVDs: Soaring Dragon, Hidden Tiger.

Before the summer began, I believed that pundits were over-exaggerating the China opportunity and that India was underappreciated as a potential market. I thought it would be an order of magnitude easier to work in India than China. I was also more excited about living in India than China. But after 3 months here, it turns out I was exactly wrong. Despite the language difficulty in China, it was probably as easy to work in China as it was to work in India. I loved living in Shanghai, and Bangalore was barely tolerable. And I think the India opportunity/threat is much smaller than I expected, while the Chinese consumer market is an even bigger opportunity than most people think.

China today really gives visitors the feeling that you are seeing a powerful dragon that has just torn loose from its chains and is taking off. It is a bit of a strange beast, and there is definitely the risk that if you stand in the wrong spot, you can get burned by a breath of fire. But at the same time, it's awe-inspiring and powerful. Just walking around, you can feel the energy in the air. The hope, the new prosperity, the confidence in the future that is gripping China today is nearly tangible. China was the greatest and most advanced civilization in the world for most of the past 2,500 years. While no one thinks it will be the smoothest ride, most Chinese believe they will again have the world's greatest civilization in the near future. After catching its energy, ex-pats are doing whatever they can to get hired or extend their stays in Shanghai. Chinese-Americans are returning home to try to ride the wave of new prosperity. This summer, I just tried to hold on to the dragon and hope for the best on the wild ride.

India, on the other hand, is a tough, tough place. It's theoretically one of the biggest and fastest growing economies, but Indian life remains incredibly hard, even for rich Westerners. In the awesome book Maximum City, Seketu Mehta calls India "The Land of the No". This is so true. I received dozens of answers of "No" or "Not possible" in India every day. Sometimes, you can get a glimpse of the power of the Indian economy, like getting a glimpse of a tiger on a jungle safari. It looks sleek and strong. But it is still hard to see all its features through the dense foliage. Its power remains mostly hidden behind the dangerous jungle. Like a tiger hunter faces threats of attack and disease, living and working in India is full of difficult challenges - from power outages to omnipresent poverty to terror. Most ex-pats here just try to survive their stays - few truly enjoy Indian life. India's market potential is still elusive and hard to capture. Maybe some day the Indian tiger will come out of hiding. But that day looks far away.