POWER SALES
"It's not safe for our son!", says my wife, effectively quashing all my arguments in favour of riding our bikes and her e-bike, without helmets on. Surrounded by a thousand electric scooters in the e-bike section of the Auchan retail store in Suzhou, China I stand nonplussed, as my wife expounds at length on her stand that helmets are a necessity.
In China as in many developed countries in Europe, there are dedicated bike lanes on roads as part of a very successful government drive to get people to ride bicycles or electric scooters - e-bikes in the local parlance. Very unlike their European counterparts on the other hand, Chinese bikers are a stoical bunch, who use helmets only as winter-wear and think nothing of sharing their lanes with cars looking for parking spots, other bikers zooming in opposite directions and pedestrians. Such skills are rarely in-born though and my wife had had close shaves enough, in the first two days of her e-biking adventure, to feel the need for some cranial accessorisation.
Of course I am driven only by practical concerns in trying to dissuade her and it helps to get some perspective on the grounds for my reluctance.
The Auchan retail outlet in Suzhou is massive by any standard. With a 149 checkout counters to take care of the teeming thousands who come to indulge in middle class utility shopping orgies every day, its 300+ on-floor customer service representatives navigating the 3000+sq m main deck on roller-blades for efficiency and its incredible breadth of offerings starting from iPods to Bananas, it is a sight to behold, even if you ignore the rest of the decks with their restaurants and shops. Such plenty, coupled with very limited Chinese language skills on our part usually makes shopping for anything more uncommon than the clearly visible wares a challenging experience. Morever, helmets, it seems, are one of those rare commodities that Auchan chose not to push aggressively.
My reservations effectively brushed aside, we move on. It is common in Chinese stores to have middle aged women handle responsibilities that in most Western countries would be the domain of young summer job seekers and Auchan seems to lead from the front in this trend. Getting attention from one such matron proves to be easy. Indians are still a rarity in China and Indians who buy the fluorescent pink version of the scooter my wife had bought two days before must have been rarer still. Evidently she remembers us still and the transaction launches in typical Chinese fashion. Following mutual 'nin hao'-s, my wife starts typing on the Google Translate app on her iPhone while our sales lady bends over the screen.
In China as in many developed countries in Europe, there are dedicated bike lanes on roads as part of a very successful government drive to get people to ride bicycles or electric scooters - e-bikes in the local parlance. Very unlike their European counterparts on the other hand, Chinese bikers are a stoical bunch, who use helmets only as winter-wear and think nothing of sharing their lanes with cars looking for parking spots, other bikers zooming in opposite directions and pedestrians. Such skills are rarely in-born though and my wife had had close shaves enough, in the first two days of her e-biking adventure, to feel the need for some cranial accessorisation.
Of course I am driven only by practical concerns in trying to dissuade her and it helps to get some perspective on the grounds for my reluctance.
The Auchan retail outlet in Suzhou is massive by any standard. With a 149 checkout counters to take care of the teeming thousands who come to indulge in middle class utility shopping orgies every day, its 300+ on-floor customer service representatives navigating the 3000+sq m main deck on roller-blades for efficiency and its incredible breadth of offerings starting from iPods to Bananas, it is a sight to behold, even if you ignore the rest of the decks with their restaurants and shops. Such plenty, coupled with very limited Chinese language skills on our part usually makes shopping for anything more uncommon than the clearly visible wares a challenging experience. Morever, helmets, it seems, are one of those rare commodities that Auchan chose not to push aggressively.
My reservations effectively brushed aside, we move on. It is common in Chinese stores to have middle aged women handle responsibilities that in most Western countries would be the domain of young summer job seekers and Auchan seems to lead from the front in this trend. Getting attention from one such matron proves to be easy. Indians are still a rarity in China and Indians who buy the fluorescent pink version of the scooter my wife had bought two days before must have been rarer still. Evidently she remembers us still and the transaction launches in typical Chinese fashion. Following mutual 'nin hao'-s, my wife starts typing on the Google Translate app on her iPhone while our sales lady bends over the screen.
For those baffled by the above, note that this smartphone application is Google's answer to the confusion that has plagued us since the first monkeys decided it wasn't cool to agree on terminology. In China, we were completely dependent on it for survival. In fact, as the app that helped avoid bloodshed at the critical time of my daughter's birth in a Suzhou hospital, it has my lifelong admiration.
Google lives up to our expectations on this occasion as usual and the lady indicates she understands. She also seems genuinely saddened and it looks like that Auchan could be on the verge of disappointing us, or at least my wife, for the first time since our arrival here.
Chinese sales persons are a breed apart though - and be it due to the fact that we were foreigners or otherwise, we find that they are tenacious and helpful to a fault. I have a paper mulching, toy railway set maker, to attest to this. On that occasion I was trying to buy a baseball cap.
She hollers (its the only way I can describe her highly effective but acoustically damaging utterance) to her mates, explaining to them the urgency of our need. This leads to a huddle of sales women as they ponder on possible solutions.
Eventually a stocky, stony faced lady takes the lead. She points grimly to the middle distance, possibly to some other location where these helmets could be found. She then mimes riding a bike and raises a hairless brow in mute askance.
We have been in Suzhou for at least a month now, and have been realising just how wrong we were to think that Neanderthals were limited in their options to communicate, having had no spoken language. Miming with a known context can be so effective that in this case, as in other prior ones, I know she's trying to see if we had a scooter to ride to this other place.
We have been in Suzhou for at least a month now, and have been realising just how wrong we were to think that Neanderthals were limited in their options to communicate, having had no spoken language. Miming with a known context can be so effective that in this case, as in other prior ones, I know she's trying to see if we had a scooter to ride to this other place.
Some more typing on my wife's phone conveys to her our situation and she realises we are scooter-less. I'm sure that she could not share our concern for safety. After all we've all seen enough young mothers riding these scooters on these same streets clutching newborns between their legs. She seems frustrated.
Then abruptly making up her mind, she grabs a new scooter from the line-up behind her, drives up to us and motions for my wife to sit on the pillion seat. We know what she means instantly -
"Come with me and I will drive you to the other place".
But the thought of driving off into the unknown with someone we barely know seems as difficult for my wife as it is for me. The problem is that this woman has no intention of giving us an option. With a grunt and a deft motion of the bike, she gets my wife on-board and is off and disappearing down the ramp from the store onto the throbbing street below, while I'm still composing an effective gesture of protest.
I have the ambulance, fire department, police and the locally approved locksmith's office (It makes sense that this office happens to warrant a mention in the category of emergency services, but its the first time I've seen such categorisation) phone numbers on my speed dial. But a vocabulary of approximately a dozen words of Putong Hua, the nationally mandated dialect of Mandarin, I think, will not get me very far.
Then abruptly making up her mind, she grabs a new scooter from the line-up behind her, drives up to us and motions for my wife to sit on the pillion seat. We know what she means instantly -
"Come with me and I will drive you to the other place".
But the thought of driving off into the unknown with someone we barely know seems as difficult for my wife as it is for me. The problem is that this woman has no intention of giving us an option. With a grunt and a deft motion of the bike, she gets my wife on-board and is off and disappearing down the ramp from the store onto the throbbing street below, while I'm still composing an effective gesture of protest.
I have the ambulance, fire department, police and the locally approved locksmith's office (It makes sense that this office happens to warrant a mention in the category of emergency services, but its the first time I've seen such categorisation) phone numbers on my speed dial. But a vocabulary of approximately a dozen words of Putong Hua, the nationally mandated dialect of Mandarin, I think, will not get me very far.
Like India, there are numerous dialectic variations on the root Mandarin language within the different ethnic branches in China. Communism served to unify and simplify things considerably over the past 50 decades, to the point where we can get pretty much everyone on the streets to read the written or printed word. But Suzhou is an industrial park - a government designated free-er trade, business zone where people from all over the world and China have congregated to contribute to the Chinese boom and every second person speaks either a different language or dialect. Here Indian accented Putong Hua, would be a very tough sell.
The surrounding throngs seem to be completely oblivious to our consternation. A buyer in the store seems interested in the speed and style of the sale's woman's vehicle and inquires into the make and model. Life moves on in Auchan, while my son and I try to figure things out.
Its another 10 minutes till I hear back from my wife.
"Where are you Ma?", our son wails beside me. The past minutes have been harrowing for him as they have been for me.
She is safe and whats more, seems to be in raptures over her experience. Apparently she has been whisked away to an open market and they are now in the process of haggling over two adorable helmets. Its less about helmets now and more about the mind-boggling deals to be had all around. I can barely get in a word side-wise as she gushes about t-shirts and footwear deals. When I finally manage to tell her that her purse is with me, its takes several seconds for the news to register.
The surrounding throngs seem to be completely oblivious to our consternation. A buyer in the store seems interested in the speed and style of the sale's woman's vehicle and inquires into the make and model. Life moves on in Auchan, while my son and I try to figure things out.
Its another 10 minutes till I hear back from my wife.
"Where are you Ma?", our son wails beside me. The past minutes have been harrowing for him as they have been for me.
She is safe and whats more, seems to be in raptures over her experience. Apparently she has been whisked away to an open market and they are now in the process of haggling over two adorable helmets. Its less about helmets now and more about the mind-boggling deals to be had all around. I can barely get in a word side-wise as she gushes about t-shirts and footwear deals. When I finally manage to tell her that her purse is with me, its takes several seconds for the news to register.
"What? How am I going to get this stuff then?". Anguish has never been more palpable over the phone. This is good news for me of course. A delay like this can prevent immediate financial bleeding and I have to work hard to convince her of the depth of my sympathy for her. And I think that I've almost averted tragedy when once again Chinese intervention foils my plan.
Nothing gets between a sale, even it is for an unrelated customer, and our determined sales woman. Not only does she help my wife get what seem like good bargains , but she simply puts down her own money to cover for my wife's temporary insolvency. In another 15mins, my wife returns beaming victoriously from behind her impassive benefactor on the scooter, laden with helmets and other miscellaneous purchases.
"This was too good to miss", she says as she dismisses my protestations and pays back the woman from her purse. My wife is effusive in her thanks to the woman and the stone exterior finally cracks as she acknowledges the gratitude. With a final wave and grunt, she heaves the scooter back to its stall and returns to her post.
Her actions have definitely not been without its benefits. The speed of her entire operation and the engagement of foreigners in it all had caught the attention of at least one potential buyer and Auchan would do well to reward such initiative I think.
With our Indian origins and North American history, China has always been something of a mystery to us. But second hand travel stories and Newsweek articles can only do so much to fill that void. We return home today with the spoils of this latest victory but more importantly, an entire new perspective on sales and selling in the new China.
Nothing gets between a sale, even it is for an unrelated customer, and our determined sales woman. Not only does she help my wife get what seem like good bargains , but she simply puts down her own money to cover for my wife's temporary insolvency. In another 15mins, my wife returns beaming victoriously from behind her impassive benefactor on the scooter, laden with helmets and other miscellaneous purchases.
"This was too good to miss", she says as she dismisses my protestations and pays back the woman from her purse. My wife is effusive in her thanks to the woman and the stone exterior finally cracks as she acknowledges the gratitude. With a final wave and grunt, she heaves the scooter back to its stall and returns to her post.
Her actions have definitely not been without its benefits. The speed of her entire operation and the engagement of foreigners in it all had caught the attention of at least one potential buyer and Auchan would do well to reward such initiative I think.
With our Indian origins and North American history, China has always been something of a mystery to us. But second hand travel stories and Newsweek articles can only do so much to fill that void. We return home today with the spoils of this latest victory but more importantly, an entire new perspective on sales and selling in the new China.
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