Andy Choy's Non Sequitur

A friend of a friend is thinking about moving to China for work and wanted to get my thoughts on the subject. While I've only been here a short while, I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about the subject and have spoken to a number of people who have relocated here "permanently" (whatever that means for my generation -- more on this later). My advice? Be prepared to be the next Alex Cabrera or Tuffy Rhodes.

Who?

Exactly.

Alex Cabrera is probably the best baseball player and a household name in Japan over the past few years. Here's some more information about him. I'd post a link to the wikipedia site but for some reason, I have a very hard time connecting to wikipedia from China. Tuffy Rhodes was another great player in Japan who is relatively unknown in the U.S.

While China definitely has a great deal of opportunity for ambitious and young people (click here and here to read my posts about this topic), it's still not the U.S. Even if you hit 55 home runs a year in a foreign country, people will still question whether you can hit a Major League curveball. My advice for people who want to come to China would be:

• Do it in lieu of paying your dues in the minor leagues. Think post-analyst, pre-business school.
• Do it if you're not getting playing time (or the monetary contract you're looking for) in the U.S.
• DEFINITELY do it if you're a Sino-phile and are planning on emigrating to China. If you fall into this category, I'd move here ASAP. Shanghai right now seems to have the same buzz as the Bay Area in the late 90s, Moscow in the mid 90s, or Prague in the early 90s. By the way, if anyone happens to know someone who has lived in all three of those places during those times, I'd like to meet him/her.

Personally, I believe China has a long way to go before it becomes the center of the business world (if in fact it ever does). And even if it does, China doesn't pass the second of litmus tests for places I want to live. First, I refuse to live in a place where owning a windshield scraper is required. And second, I will only live in a place I'd want my children to grow up in. For all the bad things about the U.S. (e.g. the Religious Right and Limousine Liberals), it's still the ONLY society as far as I'm concerned that is based on the personal freedom and belief in the individual.