STRIKING A TONE The first time I was taught any Chinese was on a field trip to the Tomb of Patriarchs [in Hebron]. It was down to a friend I spent a year abroad in Jerusalem with; he was Chinese-American. I was dragging him around Israel [where Midler's parents are from]. He went through the rote recitation of the four tones and I figured my musical background would give me a head start.
Unlike some people, I started studying Chinese history and language before I came to Asia. This was in 1989 and 1990 but let's put it this way; when I was in college, nobody at that time was thinking, 'I'm going to invest years of my life [studying Chinese] with the possibility of economic return.' I was just interested in the culture, in the history. Today, the typical college student comes with dreams of entrepreneurship but in 1990, the outlook wasn't as positive because Tiananmen had just happened and people were thinking that it might be taking us back to the drawing board.
DODGING DISASTER I picked up my bags and moved to Taiwan without having seen the place and I stayed for four years. I did a number of things; I was a journalist reporting on hi-tech companies, which was a very interesting window into the 'Asian economic miracle'. From there, I went to business school at the University of Pennsylvania, where I continued to study Chinese - it was still an unpopular subject. The decision [to leave Taiwan] was controversial since it was at the height of the boom; the Taiwan stock exchange index had just passed 10,000 points; there were pictures of people in the media uncorking champagne; and the mood was one of elation. But that spring, the Asian economic crisis hit.
ACTION FIGURE After I graduated, I did a small stint in private equity in Chengdu and realised after a few short months that I wanted to be where it was all happening, which was southern China. So I went there, again without any idea of what I wanted to do, and luckily for me there were importers streaming in that needed help. All you had to do in those days was sit in the lobby of a hotel and strike up a conversation with importers; it was an enormous centre of commerce.
[Once] I was in a hotel lobby, someone asked what I do and I said, 'Outsource supply-chain management'. He said, 'I don't get what that means.' I told him, 'Well, you know how when something goes wrong you call and try to yell at the factory? I do that for you.' He then asked for my card; I guess I bridged the communication gap.
MR FIX-IT A lot of people were trying to get things done at arm's length and yet you would have issues that only someone on the ground could look into, like a factory that simply would not call you back. My clients tended to call me very late in the game, often after things had gone badly. Calls tended to come late at night - their time - because they were at their wits' end. You'd fix a few things and the company would realise that there was some value in having someone like that on the ground to bridge linguistic, cultural and time-zone chasms. People think manufacturing is a dry science but personal relationships have [a big] effect on how things get made and brought over to the West.