My luck with the Chinese seat buddies seem to continue on my way back from Finland. His business card has the name Xavier, but for all intents and purposes, he's a Chinese guy. So we call him Jinzhao (金昭) as it is his real first name.
The first impression I got from him was that he's intense. Waiting for our plane to take off, he was constantly writing stuff on his iPad Air. It was only after the plane was taking off and he had to put the tablet away that I ventured to strike a conversation with him, so as to not disturb his note-taking. At first I thought it was some kind of diary of a journey, but he said it was work-related. Who the hell writes work notes on an iPad anyway, before take-off? And I would think he's got a laptop for this kind of stuff.
Well, guess what, Jinzhao is not only an entrepreneur but a young one: he's just 27 years old, two years younger than me.
When we start off talking, he's not so intense anymore. Actually, not at all. In fact, he's a pretty nice guy. He is a co-founding partner at a trading company, and has just been to Europe with a partner (who sits at an opposite side of the aisle), touring trade shows in Germany and the Netherlands. They supply chemicals for construction insulation etc.
A young entrepreneur! Quite a novelty in general, and especially a stark contrast in China where the majority of families favor the "play-it-safe" route of study, even higher degrees of studying, all the way to university and then to some safe government or state-owned enterprise job for life. Well, not exactly always like this but you'll get the idea.
Jinzhao, however, together with his partners, plan to accrue capital by firstly exporting made-in-China goods, mainly to the Southeast Asian countries, and even the US, where I learned that many of the standards are not as strict as in the EU. After they get enough bankroll, the plan is to start importing high quality specialties, likely now from the strict-standard EU to sell them in the domestic market for those that really value quality products. Actually many mainlanders nowadays feel quite negatively towards the made-in-China quality in many product lines, especially consumer products targeted at infants, but more and more also on the high-tech industry side where precision and craftsmanship is important.
The most interesting part is, although Jinzhao studied international business at school, he's never been studying or working abroad prior to this endeavor. He says that once touted as the successful career option, international trade soon dwindled after the 2008 financial crisis erupted and the number of relevant jobs in China also started to diminish fast. Hence after a few years of dabbling around, he decided to start-up his own fortune. Nothing is perfect, though. Not having any international business exposure meant rocky language barriers. However, "one has to force oneself to learn on the job," he says to me, noting how his command of English is still only at a manageable level. Definitely not a lack of self-doubt here, but a true fearless spirit. Earlier in this Seat Buddy series, we explored a different kind of entrepreneurship, but here it's young energy at work.
When not constantly working on his company, he's also dating his girlfriend, who is "young enough to still be at school but for various reasons is not," whatever that means. But even she is recruited to be part of Jinzhao's cause: they are actually thinking about expanding to retail, and because she is interested in make-ups, she is actually doing on-the-job training at one of the make-up stores. Their plan is for her to tour various make-up retailers to gain experience, and to learn the ins and outs of the trade while Jinzhao negotiates with manufacturers to retail their make-up products.
All in all, pretty exciting stuff and definitely something you don't see every day. I look forward to being continuously surprised and inspired by the Chinese youth.
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