October 9th, 2007
The first telephone call
These days you can rarely traverse the length of a town block without seeing a person walking with a cell phone plastered to his or her ear. Everyone in China – from CEO to driver – is busy. On the phone.
Face-to-face meetings are blithely interrupted when a cell phone rings, with not the slightest trace of apology. Your life is in your driver’s hands; all the while his hands are glued to his phone instead of the steering wheel. Even drifting down the little Yulong River on a bamboo raft, our boatman’s burly voice on his phone blasted our peace away.
It wasn’t always like this.
One morning about 20 years ago, in my early Gates to China (trade consultancy) days, Kees and I took the earliest train from Shanghai to Hangzhou to visit a dial caliper factory on behalf of our British client. It was customary in those days for the translator of the factory to greet us at the train station (or airport, as the case would be), but this particular morning, scanning the hustling crowd of bodies in blue Mao suits and black heads all cropped short, we found no familiar face waiting for us.
There must have been puzzled or searching looks on our faces, because it wasn’t long when a pretty young woman I’d guess to be in her early 20s dressed in the same Mao outfit and blunt hair cut as the rest approached us and asked in hesitant English: “Can I help you?”
Kees briefly explained the situation and then said, “Perhaps you can help us find a telephone and call the factory?”
“Of course, I will do my best.”
Luck had it that there was a public phone not too far across the street from the station. Don’t imagine anything like a telephone booth. In those days this meant an old-style black telephone placed on a tiny wood table outside some commercial establishment, in this case a small filthy private eatery, the kind even I think twice to eat in.
She dialed, found the right person to talk to, spoke a few lines, hung up and turned to us to say, “The factory is only a few minutes from here. Someone is coming to pick you up. Please just wait a while.”
We thanked her, with our big western smiles, and then were stunned to hear her reply.
“Please don’t thank me. Today is a very special day for me. You see, today is the first time I ever used a telephone. So I must thank you.”
Whew.
Another time, another reality. But just twenty years ago.
I sometimes still wonder what she is doing today. But whatever it is, I’d bet my last yuan she is carrying a cell phone.