Return to China, Day 7: Four Meeting Day in Shanghai

Tuesday, March 24

(Image-loving reader; I snapped no photos on this day.  Please use your imagination.)

Today is a four meeting day.  I rise early on the 22nd floor of the Majesty Shanghai Plaza and look into my interior skyrise elevated courtyard of palm trees and marble columns. 

We rendezvous in the lobby at 9:15 AM, and Steven Hong, the Chinese manager for Educatius’ Shanghai branch, whisks his away in his private car.  He’s just come from a stretch in the metropolis of Nanjing doing business for a while, so he’s a bit harried and tired.  

He delivers us to our first presentation in one of thousands of high rises, after navigating the parking labyrinth of the big city.  We stuff into a tight conference room, and the meeting begins.  Clyde and Mark go first, sharing with them their school, FASNY, the French American School of New York.  They are enthusiastic, spirited, and persuasive, though they have extremely high standards and a narrow admission window (11th grade, high English ability).  I follow up with a shorter, more visual presentation, and I’m selling a more inclusive product: 8th-12th grade Boarding with an inclusive disposition to ESL support.  Eyes sparkle as always as I share the story of Maui Preparatory Academy.  It always seems like the agents would like to come as much as the students.  I’m hopeful that these agents will promote my school, but I just never quite know.

We taxi back to the Majesty Shanghai Plaza for a lunch of fish, fried chicken, rice, fatty pork, tofu, and greens.  It’s delicious, though mildly debilitating.

Our second meeting is at the top of another nondescript high-rise, this time in a subsidiary office of an annex for the University of California San Diego.  We walk into a room of some forty people silently working in tight cubicles at a test prep center.  We enter a back conference room and I pitch Maui Prep to five Chinese ladies who silently scribble notes, nod their heads, and betray little emotion.  Will they plug my school in the future?  What will come of this?  It’s hard to say, but I give them materials and contact information, and I share a full description of our program.  We shall see.

I take a rest in the afternoon back at the hotel, writing follow up e-mails and keeping my classes moving back on Maui.

At 6 PM I head to my hotel’s lobby for a meeting I’ve arranged through the Princeton Alumni network with Jing, a bright and articulate woman who shows up in a blazing red coat.  We reminisce on some Princeton memories, and then I share my school with her.  As she is a Chinese woman who studied in the Ivy League, she is exactly what so many Chinese parents want their children to be.  She’s a great listener and inquisitor, and I feel most hopeful that she can help promote the school. Time will tell, as it takes many touches, steady publicity, and proven results to make headway in this new market.

At 7:30 PM I jet off to Shanghai’s most storied Mexican restaurant- Maya Mexican- to take a brief respite from Chinese cuisine, and to meet Janet.  Janet is a go-getting 24 year old Chinese American New Yorker who has spent the previous three years in Shanghai providing tutoring, test prep, and counsel to upwardly and outwardly mobile Chinese families.  In a warmly lit ambience with Chinese-Mexican fusion (duck burritos! mushroom empanadas! kale and eggplant salad!), I pitch Maui Prep, she listens with interest, and agrees to share my school with her colleagues and clients.  She also shares insights about the Chinese market, including that a new trend is for parents, often mothers, to emigrate with their children to boarding schools, a trend which has been facilitated by the recent relaxation of visa restrictions after the Barack Obama-Xi Jinxing summit.  (I also benefited from this rapprochement, as I now carry a ten year, multiple entry visa).  Clyde and Mark soon join us, and we share stories of New York, Shanghai, the idiosyncrasies of the boarding school market, and quality of life advantages for an American expatriate working in China.  

We say good evening to Janet, and taxi home at the end of a four meeting day.  Which of the seeds I’ve planted today will bear fruit? Time will tell. . .