(no subject)
I've been working on a cover story for the China Economic Review about recent signs of meaningful reform in China's capital markets. It's been one helluva steep learning curve for someone whose formal study of economics ended in 1986 after a 2-semester macro-and-micro series at Cal my sophomore year. It was bad enough trying to sound informed and authoratative as I interviewed various economists and analysts for the story in English, but this morning at Galaxy Securities (China's largest securities firm) my already shaky command of financial terminology in English was multiplied by my halting Chinese (here I'm being generous: I don't have this vocab down for shit). Fortunately the senior economist I interviewed there, a guy named Wu Zuyao, cut me all sorts of slack and helped me muddle through terms like 'convertible bonds' and 'derivatives market' and he ended up giving me some terrific insights. Really nice guy.
Life as a freelancer isn't easy, but it sure is fun, and it's perfect for someone with a dilettantish intellect like mine. Since I gave over my life to it in October of 2002, I've waded into telecoms, IT, cotton, energy (oil, coal, natural gas, electric power), commodities, health care, microfinance, US-China trade, macroeconomic policy, automotive, Chinese film, music industry IPR, postgraduate education and occasionally even Zhongnanhai politics.
It's all stuff I should know something about anyway, and in truth my dabblings haven't done much more than prep me for cocktail party small-talk, but along the way I've met some phenomenally intelligent people and I feel like I've got a much firmer grasp on how things actually work here.
On another note, I've discovered another ABC blogger who shares my taste for bad puns: His blog, like mine, is called "The Unbearable Lightness of Beijing." We seem to have some friends in common, too. Check him out: he's a good writer and his observations as a relative newcomer to Beijing are refreshing and insightful to one who, like me, has been here so long that all perspective is lost. It's a pity, then, that I have to kill him.
Life as a freelancer isn't easy, but it sure is fun, and it's perfect for someone with a dilettantish intellect like mine. Since I gave over my life to it in October of 2002, I've waded into telecoms, IT, cotton, energy (oil, coal, natural gas, electric power), commodities, health care, microfinance, US-China trade, macroeconomic policy, automotive, Chinese film, music industry IPR, postgraduate education and occasionally even Zhongnanhai politics.
It's all stuff I should know something about anyway, and in truth my dabblings haven't done much more than prep me for cocktail party small-talk, but along the way I've met some phenomenally intelligent people and I feel like I've got a much firmer grasp on how things actually work here.
On another note, I've discovered another ABC blogger who shares my taste for bad puns: His blog, like mine, is called "The Unbearable Lightness of Beijing." We seem to have some friends in common, too. Check him out: he's a good writer and his observations as a relative newcomer to Beijing are refreshing and insightful to one who, like me, has been here so long that all perspective is lost. It's a pity, then, that I have to kill him.