Dinner is a big banquet at a restaurant throwing together local officials, local business people, F&T managers, and the Flushing group. I sit next to a Chinese man who runs a high-fashion cable TV station seen only in gas stations alongside pumps—an extremely valuable media property, as it turns out, because only the most affluent Chinese own cars. But it's hard to focus on conversation, because people are randomly bolting out of their chairs, running around the tables to other banqueters, thrusting glasses of wine in their faces, and shouting, "Ganbei!" This translates roughly as bottoms up. It is not a suggestion. Failure to drain your glass on cue is a shocking breach of protocol, something along the lines of slapping away a hand offered for a friendly shake. As soon as your emptied glass hits the table, it will be refilled and ready for the next ganbei assault.
This routine sometimes goes to the point of hospitalization for alcohol poisoning for some of the participants. But allowing yourself to become an alcohol-poisoned wretch is not a sign of personal failure or weakness—on the contrary, it is a badge of trustworthiness, conferring what some call the hangover of honor. You are laying bare your true idiot self for your potential partners to evaluate. Even many top executives and influential politicians will hold you at arm's length until they have seen you wrecked. Drunken dinners are not entertainment after a hard day of business meetings. They are the business meetings, at which the key decisions about who will get the deals are forged. What happens during the day is often merely about preliminaries or ironing out details.
Tuesday
Every city, district, and development project in China apparently maintains at least one fabulously detailed scale model of itself with which to impress and educate visitors. The Hexi district in Nanjing is no exception, and we are all trotted up through a new, shiny, towering district-government building of vague purpose so we can see the district's 50-foot-long model. A government official takes us on a light-show-assisted scale tour of the district, which climaxes in the spotlighting of Lee's project, fully realized in the model. Everyone is suitably awed. A small pack of journalists is present, and Meyer is interviewed by a television crew while Lee stands in the background, looking content but watchful. On those occasions when Lee is pressed to speak, he turns the spotlight over to Meyer as quickly as he can. Meyer has loads of brand appeal in China, and Lee enjoys dramatically ticking off Meyer's sterling credentials: He has a Harvard M.B.A. (this always brings impressed nods from the crowd); he was a senior executive with a famous real estate developer (this raises the admiration to murmurs); and he is Jewish (this brings open oohs and aahs—it is widely held in China that Jews are business wizards). Lee often boasts to people how much he pays Meyer, claiming a seven-figure sum that makes Meyer laugh wistfully. "The greater my stature, the greater his," says Meyer.
A fancy bus takes us all a few blocks away to stop at the actual site of Lee's planned project, the one we've just seen in spectacular model form. The reality is considerably less spectacular. It's a vast, weedy, muddy field disturbed only by a few desultory watchmen, a couple of old cars, and a lone tractor. Lee's Flushing project has been in development since 2004, but he estimates it could be another 10 years before it's complete. He thinks he will have this Nanjing development up and running in as little as two years.
That's not an ambitious goal here. A short distance away is the enormous Expo Center, recently built up from a weedy, muddy field in 22 months. In fact, though we are surrounded by high-rises and a sports stadium and the Expo Center, there was virtually nothing but farmland here five years ago. The government simply decided it wanted development here, so there was immediate and steady development on a huge scale. Soon, Nanjing's subway system will be extended to the area, including a station that will be plunked down across from Lee's site, making the parcel an especially valuable one, given how dependent the Chinese are on public transportation.
Lunch is a banquet with Nanjing Deputy Mayor Lu Bing and a large group of city officials. Dinner is another ceremony and banquet, this one with Nanjing Vice Mayor Wang Shouwen. I am seated next to Ray Lei, a charismatic young Chinese fellow who is already a highly successful real estate developer throughout Asia. Lei, who speaks flawless English, tells me that he is Lee's nephew. I later realize he means that Lee is his uncle in the Chinese sense—which is to say, an older family friend or mentor who may well be treated with all the respect and affection of a blood tie. It was Uncle Lee, he explains, who counseled him to develop right in the center of large cities, where the challenges frighten away most potential competition. I ask Lei if he works banquet crowds as manically as his uncle does, and he tells me that he prefers to wine and dine potential contacts individually. "Banquets are expensive and call attention to you," he says. "I like to speak to people one on one; it's much more efficient." I see that Lei is Michael Lee 2.0—a fusion developer with an extensive network of contacts who can also bring sophistication and slickness to the table. In a sense, he is Michael Meyer and Michael Lee rolled into one.
