DAY 3
After a nice western dinner the evening before, it was off to bed early with a big day planned ahead on Saturday which was the second day of the China Golf Show. Sleep is tough enough when travelling 6000 miles but add a time zone change of 9 and it is easy to get off balance. No sooner had I fallen asleep and the phone rang with people wanting to make appointments for Saturday. One must be careful when using a cell phone overseas. Call and data charges can add up quickly so I usually opt to use Blackberry Instant Messenger as my only source of communication. That is why people tend to call hotel rooms to make appointments.
After a 10 PM call I had to get up at 2 AM to conduct some business back in the USA with a web meeting. By 3 AM I was trying to fall back asleep before a final departure from the bed at 6 AM. Such is the life when attending conferences overseas.
Meetings never stop at a conference like the China Golf Show. People like your undivided time and they set up appointments to meet at specific locations to conduct their business. It is a very effective way of doing business and you get a lot accomplished without interruption.
Since my mission in China was to make contacts with a variety of businesses and people I spent most of the 7 hour day in meetings. Many of the meetings were with equipment companies as well as architects and builders that are doing business in China. There were a few distributors of seed, fertilizer and pesticides that had displays and I spoke with some of them as well.
Now I will try to give a picture of what the China Golf Show through my writing. Upon entering the convention center the show looked very similar to a smaller GIS. The larger booths were right in the front and they contained products and representatives from Toro, Jacobsen, John Deere and Baroness. Additional companies that most American superintendents would recognize included, Bernhard & Co., Foley, etc. A large display area for irrigation included names like RainBird and Hunter as well as the Toro display in their booth alongside of their equipment. EZ Go, Club Car and Yamaha were prominent but I was surprised to see at least 6 other golf car manufacturers at the show.
While I mentioned the big equipment companies there were quite a few Chinese companies that had some similar looking products to the Big 3 companies. I understand that the term used for this is reverse engineering and would be frowned upon in the USA.
I was able to sit in on a few educational sessions on Saturday and really enjoyed one by Ken Siems, CGCS. Ken is working on a new project and came to Beijing via Loch Lomond and previous stints in Europe and Canada. He did a wonderful job of describing the vision for Loch Lomond and putting together a sustainable environmental plan.
Giving a talk at the China Golf Show can be a bit different than most any place anyone has ever spoken before. The stage and chairs are on a portion of the main convention floor. There is little, if any, separation from the hustle and bustle of the tradeshow floor. While you are speaking there are announcements being made over the public address system as well as background noise from many of the booths on the consumer side of the show. Presentations were approximately 40 minutes in length. For all English speaking presenters there was a translation into Mandarin so a 40 minute talk became a 20 minute talk to cover the translation. Talks were done by script so that the translator could follow the exact wording. So, as I said it is quite a challenge to present in this manner and yesterday’s presentation by Rhett Evans and today’s with Ken Siems was outstanding.
One of the contacts that I made today was with several professors from a nearby university in Beijing. They manage the Green Environmental Center in the College of Resources & Environmental Sciences at China Agricultural University. Dr. Lin and Dr. Yu described their program to me and also shared that they had testing for soil, water, and tissue analysis along with testing materials for green construction and topdressing. It is nice to know that there are valuable professional resources available to the many projects underway in China.
While the day is not over it was a full one. Tomorrow is the last day of the show so there is much work to do for everyone that has made the long journey over to China. Local businesses are anxious to market their products and services and really work the trade show to the max. Networking is huge for the Chinese people and everyone carries a stack of business cards with them. Sharing of business cards is a very formal presentation in which you hand your card, using both hands, to the recipient. He or she, in turn, does the same with their card. It is common and proper to send a note to all who exchange cards with you. I guess I will be busy the next few days as I have gone through about 150 cards already and I still have 300 left. My experience from visiting Asia in the 1990’s taught me that lesson.
Bruce Williams, CGCS, is a GCI contributing editor.