The 100th Anniversary of Hebei University: HBU Moments 

Foreigners in the Eyes of a “Foreigner”

About the Author

Sun Xiaofan, an English major alumnus of grade 1978, was accredited to foreign institutions by foreign trade units in the early days and later settled overseas. As a senior “foreigner”, he is engaged in international trade abroad. Although he has lived abroad for many years, he has a pure heart and deep feelings for his alma mater and alumni.

 Foreigners in the Eyes of a Senior “Foreigner”

Author: Sun Xiaofan

Foreign trade means doing business with foreigners. For the first six years, I did business with foreigners at home, and for the next 30 years, I dealt with locals as a foreigner abroad. I have been with foreigners from all over the world for a long time, and I, a foreigner, also divided them into “various grades and ranks” and had a different understanding of them.

(1) Germans

They have received a good education since childhood. Every German child usually learns one or two literary and physical events from an early age, which will be sustained throughout their life. This is the real all-round development.

They love studying and reading. You can always see them sitting quietly reading books in the subway, plane and hospital waiting room.

They are not luxurious and seldom pursue famous brands, but they pay attention to decency and taste in dressing. They must dress up when going out to keep appointments, go to parties and theatres.

They pay attention to personal hygiene and will clean themselves up before going out. Therefore, whether in winter or summer, you will never smell bad in elevators, buses or public places. Otherwise, it will be considered very rude.

Hard-working, brave, rigorous and earnest in work are all their qualities.

In front of my house, there is a road deduced from the ancient post road, which has a history of hundreds of years. Up to now, the winding carriageway hundreds of years ago is still preserved. The service road is paved by bricks similar to refractory bricks in China. The German standard is updated every 50 years. This five-kilometer service road has just been replaced recently. It was paved by five or six workers on their knees. The foundation is half a meter deep and it takes a year. The upgrading project of Hamburg Airport started from the year I first arrived (1988) and was completed in 2008, which took 20 years. It’s a real century-long plan.

In Germany, whether you are the CEO or an ordinary worker of the company, the mowing of the garden and lawn, the maintenance of the kitchen and bathroom in your home must be done by yourself, and the hostess is generally responsible for buying and cooking food. Unless you have lost your ability to work and have to hire handymen, you will be looked down upon. Of course, replacing water and electricity pipes, changing roof tiles and building houses must be done by workers with professional and technical certificates, unless you are yourself.

Germans have a very strong family concept. The spare time is spent with family, which is inviolable. Paid holidays are unshakable. The annual travel plan and strategy are worked out a year in advance, including air tickets and hotels. Children can live with their parents before the age of 18, and they must move to rent their own houses after the age of 18. Parents will give financial support, but not everything. For example, my neighbor’s child is still in college. Sometimes, in order to show off in an ostentatious manner, he borrows his mother’s car to take his girlfriend out for a ride. He can borrow the car but he must pay for the gas himself. Here, parents don’t have to buy a house or a car when their children get married.

I remember when I was a child in Baoding, when children got into trouble outside, they would be scolded by their neighbors: “you had someone to feed but nobody to take care of...” At that time, this was the worst swearing, which would directly lead to fierce fighting between the two adults.

Another example, my neighbor, the young couple got married a few years ago. The man is a bank manager, he is very busy and dressed quite formally to work every day. The woman is an equestrian coach, and it takes her 40 minutes to ride to work. Later, they gave birth to a daughter, who was brought up by themselves. When the child was a baby, the woman rode to work every day with a car hopper hanging behind her. When she taught equestrian, she put the child into the car hopper and quietly enjoyed the blue sky and white clouds and the fresh air mixed with horse sweat.......

From the time the child was born to now, as long as I am at home, I can see the man playing and happy in the yard with his baby daughter every day. Moreover, the man also personally set up various amusement facilities in the yard for her daughter. He plays with his daughter every day.

German adults raise and take care of children. Germans were educated from an early age to do things in a planned, organized and serious way. Here, except for the emergency treatment, anyone who goes to see a doctor must make an appointment. All kinds of business activities are completely implemented in the plan. If you go to a restaurant here without a reservation, you will probably eat nothing.

In the era of paper media and even today, Germans have always maintained a good habit of writing. Everything to be done is recorded. Influenced by this, my daughter is still studying at the age of thirty. The books, exercise books and essays she has read are bound by herself and well preserved. The toys she played with when she was a child were also packed in boxes and put in the storeroom.

Honesty and punctuality are another advantage of Germans. Promises must be fulfilled, and explanations must be given if they cannot be fulfilled. It’s very rude to be unpunctual and late here. It often leaves a very bad impression on the other party and it is not easy to change.

(2) My Jewish Colleague

Among the foreign brokers in our fur industry, Jews account for the vast majority. This tradition can be traced back to the beginning of last century, when they were mainly distributed in the 27th-32nd Street, Seventh Avenue, Manhattan, New York, Leipzig, Harbin and Shanghai. At that time, they were already rich and famous.

In the 1930s, after Nazi Hitler came to power, he was frantically anti-Semitic. At first, Hitler gave the way out. As long as you hand over your property and take away nothing, you can leave Germany and go to any country willing to accept you. Then some clever Jews went across the ocean to North America, Britain and other places, and another 30,000 people came to Shanghai. At that time, only Shanghai, China, opened its doors to Jews, without fortification or visas. Therefore, although these Jewish refugees have brought almost nothing to Shanghai, they can still gain a foothold in the local area by buying a few ornaments, clothes and even dentures with them. They slowly developed again.

However, those Jews who stayed in Germany, Austria and Poland suffered extinction. After the notorious “Crystal Night” on October 9, 1938, they were put into death camps, and most of them were killed miserably. Over the years after the war, Jews have rebuilt their country and accumulated a lot of wealth by virtue of their natural wisdom in doing business, cunning brain, hard-working spirit and thrifty tradition.

From fifty years after the war to the end of last century, the broker profession in the international fur industry has been led by Jews who have keen insight in this industry. Even during the turbulent period of China’s “Cultural Revolution”, Jewish fur merchants were able to do as the Romans do and the fittest survived at the “Canton Fair”. They met our requirements in order to obtain the goods they needed.

What Jews care about is not the process, but the result. After graduation in 1982, my first task was to negotiate a large-scale fur garment export business with two Jews with the section chief. It was a batch of 70,000 pieces of rabbit skin clothing that we handled. The other party was experienced and skillful in negotiation. At first, the two sides talked unsuccessfully in Shijiazhuang for two days, and they left for Dalian. A few days later, we called and asked to meet in Qinhuangdao. We immediately went to Beidaihe.

This time it’s more intense. The other party pressed the price hard, and the terms were harsh, but they’ll not stop until they reached their goals. At the most intense time, our section chief even fucks their ancestors in Chinese. Although the other party can’t understand it, they can tell the bad words from his expression. They also fuck our ancestors in Hebrew. In the end, both sides part on bad terms. They didn’t send us the station

The next day I went back to Shijiazhuang with the section chief. Back in Beijing, we should report to Head Office in Donghuamen according to regulations. As soon as we arrive at the building, we are informed that there’s someone asking for an interview in the negotiation room on the first floor. It turns out that those two people. They sat there smiling and waiting for us for a long time.

Then the deal was negotiated. It may be no discord, no concord. A few years ago, I met one of them at the auction house, and I couldn’t help asking him, “Did you make a lot of money on that batch of clothes?” “Shit！The market has changed, and we don’t sell it out. Now they have been eaten up by insects, leaving their skeletons in the garage.”

At the turn of spring and summer in 1992, I went to America alone. This time, I was entrusted by domestic customers to order a large number of wild skins. My role has changed this time. I am a buyer, and it is awesome! It feels very good.

As soon as I arrived, I was haunted by a large group of suppliers. None of these people can satisfy my huge quantity. Among them, an old Jewish man in Manhattan performed well. He was over 70 years old at that time and was a very experienced agent. He has been tracking me by phone: from Seattle to Mininaplos to New Jersey, and finally he really brought me 7,000 otter skins that had been in stock for many years.

I remember the day when the business was completed was the afternoon of April 30th. Then we visited the World Trade Center and had coffee. At that time, loudspeakers began to broadcast people to leave Manhattan and go home immediately, because black people in Los Angeles in the west were rioting. Then he invited me to his home in Long Island. We ate steak and drank red wine. I went back to Manhattan by myself that night. When I got out of the subway station from Madison Square, I met a group of black people who came up to provoke me. Fortunately, two policemen on horses came in time, and I escaped.

The Jewish spirit of solidarity and unity is well known to the world. Perhaps because Israel, a tiny country, has been killed and bullied for generations, it has quietly become a military and technological power. The famous spy organization Mossad also makes some people in the world turn pale at the mention of fear.

The special forces. More than 40 years ago, Israeli special forces crossed several hostile countries and attacked Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport after a long distance of 4,000 kilometers. The successful rescue of more than 200 hostages has already been recorded in textbooks. And the revenge after the hostage incident in Munich Olympic Village in 1972 was also made into a film. Jews are a nation who must avenge themselves.

Jews all over the world are a big family. Jewish organizations often raise money to help and rescue compatriots living in non-democratic countries. They once removed a Boeing 747 chair and pulled back 1,200 refugees from Africa, setting a world record. Save Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union and help every compatriot who wants to return to Tel Aviv.

This country is too small to need people. Any society with Jews in the world has a synagogue, the Sabbath, and karaite. The Sabbath begins every Friday afternoon when the sun goes down and ends at the same time on Saturday. During this period, you can’t eat, spend money, ride or drink water.

In the summer of 1996, once in Beijing, it happened to be a Saturday, the Sabbath, I accompanied a Jew out of the international hotel opposite Beijing Station and walked along Chang’an Avenue and Nanchizi Avenue to the crooked neck tree in Jingshan Park. Then we crossed the Forbidden City, climbed Tiananmen Gatetower, and walked back to the hotel along Chang’an Street, which lasted for 5 hours. The next day, my feet hurt so much that I couldn’t touch the ground.

I once asked a Jew: “What if the Palestinians call again on Sabbath and Yom Kippur?” He replied that Jews are all soldiers, and they can mobilize men from all over the country to go to the battlefield within 24 hours. Common weapons are sent to individuals to take home.

Jews also have a shortcoming, that is, they are too picky. Many people have lost their lives due to picky! They have been scolded by people all over the world due to picky!

Since I entered the auction house in 1990, I have worked as a broker with a Jewish Englishman named Mike. For 28 years now, we have always been AA. He said that he had studied accounting early and he managed accounts well. The bill he gave me was always accurate to two decimal places. Money means nothing to me in the past. How can I become stingy under his influence? But Mike’s British employees don’t think so. He once said viciously: “Fucking Michael, he would rather let me sleep with his wife than give me a raise.”

Mike is a good man and a model worker. He’s 82 years old today. If it weren’t for bad eyes and cervical vertebra hyperplasia, he wouldn’t have retired. Mike’s father was a Jew who left a building in Zebizi and led his family to England. After the unification of Germany, the German government returned their building in 1995. Mike also suffered the life tragedy of losing young loved ones: the “Lockheed Air Crash” on December 22, 1988, in which his youngest son was on the plane. He was only 24 when he died. Later, the Libya government paid 30 million US dollars to the families of each victim.

There is also a wealthier Jewish magnate in our circle. He was a football star in his early years. He was recruited as son-in-law by a Jewish aristocrat and received a museum in Zurich as a dowry. Once he held an exhibition of world-famous paintings and showed me a beautifully printed catalogue of exhibitions. I thought he gave it to me and I thanked him very much. But he said: “I’ll give you a 50% discount for 200 euros.” I didn’t want to buy it, so I put it down. And I didn’t go to his exhibition because I’m afraid I’ll be stimulated.

The old man is almost ninety this year and has no children. But he comes to the auction every time! He was carrying an ancient manager’s box made in 1950s, with a tie around his neck, either the buttons of his suit jacket were misplaced, or the door of his trousers was wide open. People say that his most complicated thing every day is to get up and dress. Long before the smart phone came out of the world, he had three mobile phones and two landline phones, and the phone rang constantly. Those telephones are connected to the world’s major stock exchange markets, and he is like a supreme commander in strategizing.

These are some of my Jewish colleagues.