Mandarin Mashup June 22, 2012
- Courting the Chinese Buyer - Wall Street Journal
By LAUREN A. E. SCHUKER
A new wave of buyers from China is snapping up luxury properties across the U.S., injecting billions of dollars into the country's residential real-estate market. Lauren Schuker has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Erhard Pfieffer.
A new wave of buyers from China is snapping up luxury properties across the U.S., injecting billions of dollars into the country's residential-real-estate market.
The industry is scrambling to court the new buyers. Some developers of new projects are installing wok kitchens, following feng shui principles and putting lucky numbers on choice units; others are packaging property sales with government programs designed to encourage foreign investment. Real-estate agencies are flying representatives to China, and hiring Mandarin-speaking agents.
In Los Angeles, New York and even Miami, buyers mostly from China—and some are from Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea—are radically altering the landscape. Last month, a Chinese couple paid $34.5 million for a Versailles-style mansion on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, Calif. A year earlier, a Hong Kong businessman paid around $28 million for a nearby estate. Over the last six months in New York, several full-floor apartments in a new Manhattan high-rise called One57, each with a price tag of roughly $50 million, have gone into contract with Chinese buyers, according to two people close to the situation.
Photos
Courtesy of Fortune InternationalLate last year, Fang Yi Liu, a businessman from Shanghai, snapped up 17 apartments for a total of $14 million in the Artech, a modern glass building resembling a cruise ship that overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway near Miami.
In a nod to Asian buyers, the building put many of its most luxurious full-floor apartments on the 80th through 88th floors—a clever way to appeal to the Chinese belief that eight is the luckiest number. Apartment 88 is under contract to a Chinese buyer for around $50 million.
Fifteen buyers from Asia have bought roughly $1 million apartments at New York's 515 E. 72nd St. in the last six months. In downtown Los Angeles, half of recent buyers for the new Ritz-Carlton Residences, which AEG developed, hail from Asia. Some buy in bulk: Late last year, Fang Yi Liu, a businessman from Shanghai, snapped up 17 apartments for a total of $14 million in the Artech, a modern glass building resembling a cruise ship that overlooks the Intracoastal Waterway near Miami.
Interest is surging even in parts of the country China-based buyers weren't traditionally interested in. Richard Zhou, a 41-year-old investment advisor who lives in Shanghai, paid $200,000 for a home in a large golf community in Fort Myers, Fla., last year. He said he bought in the community sight-unseen, trusting his friend who had bought a home there a few months earlier. Mr. Zhou spent two weeks studying the U.S. real-estate market and quickly decided Florida was a good bet because "it was highly impacted from the financial crisis," adding that later in his life he plans to retire there. "Florida is indeed a sunshine state, the weather is really pleasant, and the air quality is very good. Also, the food is safe, too."
Buyers from China and Hong Kong accounted for $9 billion of U.S. home sales in the 12 months ending in March, up 89% from 2010, making them the second-largest group of foreign buyers of homes in the U.S. behind Canadians, according to data released earlier this month by the National Association of Realtors. And many real-estate agents say the those figures are too low, as they track only sales on the multiple-listing service and don't reflect private sales. In addition, the data are based entirely on how real-estate agents classify buyers.
I. Dolly Lenz, a luxury-real-estate broker in New York, estimates that half of her clients now hail from China, more than twice the amount two years ago. Pamela Liebman, chief executive of the Corcoran Group, says that the shopping for luxury properties by China-based buyers has accelerated dramatically since the start of 2012 to record-breaking levels.
Fortune International (3); Getty Images (Chinese paper cutting); iStockphoto (hat)Foreign-investor interest in the American real-estate market began during the housing crisis, when plummeting property prices turned the U.S. into an attractive target for buyers around the world. The yuan has continued to rise—more than 7% against the dollar since June 2010—as has the number of China's wealthiest individuals. Meanwhile, in an effort to deflate China's housing bubble, the government has placed restrictions on multiple real-estate purchases and recently began to require more equity for mortgage loans.
"Because it's becoming more restrictive to invest at home and because Europe is so unstable, the U.S. property market is becoming incredibly attractive to the Chinese," says Patrick O'Neill, whose eponymous company in Hong Kong helps Asian investors buy real estate in the U.S. "America offers low interest rates, discounted prices and a safe harbor for their money."
Di Meng, a native of Changchun who lives in Beijing, is currently attending the University of Southern California. The 23-year-old says the volatility of the Chinese government and, consequently, its economy, pushed him to invest in real estate overseas. Not keen to rent student housing, he recently paid around $800,000 for a Ritz-Carlton condo in downtown Los Angeles. "Compared to China, the United States is relatively stable," he says. "China has a purchase limit policy because the Chinese government tried to control and cool down the housing market in China, so if you've already bought a home in China, they do not support you to buy another."
In the last six months, 10 to 15 pricey units in One57, a glitzy new high-rise being built in midtown Manhattan, went into contract with wealthy Chinese buyers. When completed, the building—which features a Park Hyatt below the condo units—will be New York's tallest residential building. HNA Group, one of China's largest conglomerates that recently bought several commercial properties in New York, signed contracts for two full-floor apartments and two half-floor units in One57, according to a person close to the situation. On West 57th Street across from Carnegie Hall, overlooking Central Park, the building is slated to open in 2013.
Real-estate agents typically divide buyers into four distinct groups: the super-wealthy buying properties upward of $15 million for personal use; those buying homes for a few million dollars, also for personal use; those purchasing investment properties, usually in the $1 million to $2 million range, to lease out; and those buying in bulk, as a commercial strategy.
Steven Loh, a businessman from Singapore who runs a real-estate advisory group called Silkrouteasia Capital Partners, is a bulk buyer. He recently purchased six apartments in Los Angeles's Ritz-Carlton Residences for about $1 million each and is also facilitating a $60 million transaction with several overseas investors to buy more than 50 condos in another Los Angeles development.
Mr. Loh says he wanted to get a jump on the market before property values rise. He isn't worried about Americans—he thinks it will be other Asian-based buyers and businesses who drive up prices, so he is courting them now to invest in the deals he's striking. "I believe there is a strong desire among Asian high-net-worth individuals to allocate, say, 10% to 25% of their wealth to U.S. assets," he says. "Asians have a high propensity and love for acquiring good quality real estate."
One57: (l-r) Marchmade; Extell; Lambert Ranch: Christopher Mayer Photography (3); iStockphoto (2)Some U.S. real-estate agents say that the current property craze reminds them of the real-estate shopping spree by the Japanese in the 1980s, a phenomenon that died with the collapse of Japan's economy. Unlike those days, buyers now tend to be a little more cautious, trying to avoid paying above market value and obsessively calculating rates of return. In addition, while borrowing drove many of the Japanese investments in prior decades, Chinese buyers tend to pay in cash.
Like many investors from Asian countries, buyers from China mostly want new construction. At Lambert Ranch, a gated development so new in Irvine, Calif., that the leaves on the palm trees haven't yet unfurled, buyers are lining up to buy homes asking between $900,000 to $1.5 million, says Mei Zhou, a Mandarin-speaking real-estate agent in Irvine who uses Skype to communicate with her clients in Asia. About 50% of Lambert's buyers so far are foreigners from Asia, say people close to the community. The development's first 42 available homes sold out in five weeks.
Real-estate agents say that while Chinese investors primarily target New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, they are beginning to expand into cities in southern Florida as well as outposts such as Seattle and Las Vegas. That's a sea change from a few years ago, when they were "fearful" of Florida, says Steven Lawson, chief executive of Windham China, a Shanghai-based company that helps find Chinese buyers property in the U.S. "There was a false perception in China that Miami is not a supersafe city because a lot of Chinese watch 'CSI: Miami' or 'Miami Vice' on TV."
Over the past year, Mr. Lawson says he sold about eight homes in a large golf community in Fort Myers to Chinese buyers. The houses, which span about 2,500 square feet and come fully decorated, cost less than $250,000—a bargain to Beijing and Shanghai residents used to adding another zero to buy a home of that size.
Real-estate agencies and banks are mobilizing to capitalize on the boom. Mr. O'Neill says demand for his company's semiannual investment seminar, which teaches prequalified buyers in China about how real-estate buying works in the U.S. and is held in ballrooms and private clubs, has doubled over the last six months. Banks in China are ramping up their services in the arena, too, flying in U.S. real-estate agents to sit on panels about how to buy property in the U.S. and showcase trophy properties in New York and Los Angeles in PowerPoint presentations.
Evan Josephn the last six months this building in New York, 515 E. 72nd St. has attracted 15 buyers from Asia.
Some developers and real-estate agents are trying to capitalize on government programs that encourage foreigners to invest in the U.S. For example, the EB-5 program makes foreign investors eligible for permanent U.S. residency in exchange for investing at least $500,000 in ventures that create at least 10 jobs in the U.S. Jerry Kaufman, a developer at J. Milton & Associates in Miami, pitches a package to the Chinese where they can invest in an EB-5 approved investment vehicle called the Atlantic American Opportunities Fund in Florida—and then spend more to buy a condo in J. Milton's nearby development, the St. Tropez, in Sunny Isles Beach near Miami. So far, he says, he has signed up 20 Chinese families to invest in the fund and buy units in the condo building, which sell for an average of $700,000.
Mr. Kaufman is currently in negotiations to buy a 100-acre plot of land north of Miami in an effort to create Miami's first Chinatown, a free-trade zone with casinos, restaurants, art galleries, shopping and hotels. "We'd call it New China," he says. Others are taking quicker routes: In the past few months, Corcoran's Ms. Liebman has started regularly sending four of her agents to China, forged partnerships with three real-estate companies there and hired several Mandarin-speaking agents in the U.S.
With options like wok kitchens—a separate space with strong ventilation needed for aromatic cooking—or a guest unit for a grandparent, California's Lambert Ranch was designed from the start with the Asia-based buyer in mind. Robert Hidey, Lambert Ranch's architect, who has designed extensively in China, built the community's main roads on a north-south axis and ensured the homes had south-facing windows—both pillars of good feng shui. In addition to creating multigenerational housing options and wok kitchens, the New Home Co., which developed Lambert Ranch, also buried gold coins on the property in accordance with feng shui principles. To avoid having any addresses starting with the number four, unlucky in China, the development starts its addresses at 50.
In Los Angeles, brokers for the Ritz-Carlton Residences have been inviting buyers in China to stay for two nights free at the hotel as part of the Ritz's broader strategy to appeal to Asian buyers, called the "Pacific Rim Plan." The visit concludes with a Champagne toast in one of the Ritz residences, although guests must pay their own airfare. "All we do now is visit China, Hong Kong and Singapore," says Jim Jacobson, who runs international sales for the Ritz-Carlton Residences. "We've realized that's where our market lies." The Ritz-Carlton Residences range from one-bedroom condos costing around $850,000 to larger ones priced at $2.5 million to penthouses, which top out at $9.3 million.
Others are simply turning to Chinese media to market themselves—and their wares. Jing Chen, a broker for Corcoran in New York, writes a column in Mandarin for a popular Chinese website, Sinovision.net. Last year, she wrote a column about Harlem brownstones gaining in value; eight months later, she sold three of them to Chinese buyers, each for somewhere between $1 million and $2 million apiece.
"The Chinese are like Hollywood celebrities," she says. "Once one Chinese person buys a brownstone, they all want one."
Write to Lauren A.E. Schuker at lauren.schuker@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared June 22, 2012, on page D1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Courting the Chinese Buyer.
- Mandarin-speaking staff, congee breakfasts and no rooms on the fourth floor: How U.S. hotels are cashing in on Chinese tourists - Daily Mail
PUBLISHED: 17:24 EST, 21 June 2012 | UPDATED: 17:24 EST, 21 June 2012
Major hotel brands are bending over backward to cater to the needs of the world's most sought-after traveller: the Chinese tourist.
Now arriving on American shores in unprecedented numbers thanks to a streamlined visa process and a rising Chinese middle class, Chinese tourists are being treated to the comforts of home when they check in at the front desk.
That means hot tea in their rooms, congee for breakfast and Mandarin-speaking hotel employees at their disposal.
Lucrative: U.S. hotel chains are keen to cash in on Chinese tourists, who are now arriving on American shores in unprecedented numbers thanks to a streamlined visa process
Chinese 'welcome programs' at reputable chains like Marriott and Hilton even address delicate cultural differences: No Chinese tour group should be placed on a floor containing the number four, which sounds like the word for death in Mandarin.
'They're very relieved, like finally somebody's doing these things that make sense,' said Robert Armstrong, a sales manager who handles all bookings for incoming Chinese travellers at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
'Finally somebody's catering to them.'
More than a million Chinese visited the U.S. in 2011, contributing more than $5.7billion to the U.S. economy.
That's up 36per cent from 2010, according to the Department of Commerce. By 2016, that figure is expected to reach 2.6million Chinese.
Catering to the market: Chinese guests at the W hotel in New York's Times Square, can expect hot tea in their rooms
In a striking departure from the traditional Chinese business traveller, a growing number of them are simply coming to America for fun – with lots of cash on hand. (The average Chinese visitor spends more than $6,000 per trip.)
And so hotels are openly competing to win the hearts of the Chinese, who generally travel in large groups and stick to a tight itinerary, often packing multiple cities into a two-week American tour.
What they're looking for is a hotel that makes them feel at ease with their surroundings, said Roy Graff, a travel consultant who educates hotels in proper Chinese culture and hospitality.
That may take the form of slippers and a tea kettle in the hotel room or a Mandarin-speaking employee at the front desk – or all of the above.
'They drink tea. Eastern style, everything cold,' explained Charlie Shao, president of Galaxy Tours, a New York City-based Chinese tour agency, who used to frequently request special amenities for his clients.
'They don't walk inside the room with bare feet.'
It's rare that Shao has to ask hotels for anything anymore. Marriott International, for example, now offers not one but several Chinese breakfasts, depending upon which region of China the traveller hails from: there are salted duck eggs and pickled vegetables for eastern Chinese, for example, and dim sum and sliced pig's liver for the southerners.
Major chains are also training employees to avoid cultural missteps that would offend a Chinese visitor.
Superstition is a big one: Red is considered a lucky colour, along with the number eight, which signifies wealth. The colour white, meanwhile, is frowned upon, not to mention the cursed number four.
Failing to respect the pecking order in a Chinese group is another common blunder by hotels that have limited knowledge of Chinese culture.
'We try to make sure nobody's on a higher floor than their boss,' Armstrong said. 'Even if the boss is on a beautiful suite on the eighth floor, if the assistant is in a standard room on the 38th floor, it doesn't translate.'
'Nobody's on a higher floor than their boss. Even if the boss is in a suite on the eighth floor, and an assistant is in a standard on the 38th floor, it doesn't translate'
As hotels fine-tune Chinese outreach stateside, the race is on to build loyalty within China's borders.
Last year, Starwood Hotels – which has a Chinese 'specialist' at each American hotel – relocated its entire senior leadership team to China for a month.
The Ritz-Carlton rotates general managers and other hotel staff into its Chinese hotels for three-year stints at a time. And both chains are banking on the success of their customer rewards programs, which have been a big hit in China.
'It's important for our leaders to understand what's going on there at a more personal level than just the statistics,' said Clayton Ruebensaal, vice president of marketing for the Ritz.
'Everybody's going after this market because of the sheer volume of luxury customers. At the same time, it's a very crowded landscape.'
In response to the surge in Chinese visitors, the State Department decided earlier this year to spend $22 million on new facilities in several Chinese cities and add about 50 officers to process visa applications.
Taste of success? Hotels are making sure that Chinese guests can enjoy the same kind of cuisine they are used to at home, while they take in the sights on their U.S. tour
Print charming: Menus are available in Mandarin, should Chinese visitors struggle with the language barrier
And in February, the U.S. government announced that Chinese visitors who had obtained an American visa within the last four years did not have to reapply in person but could apply via courier instead.
As a result, visa interview wait times in China are currently just under a week – compared to last year's average of more than a month.
But some experts say the U.S. still lags far behind other countries, especially in Europe, when it comes to attracting Chinese tourists.
Despite President Barack Obama's recent push to promote tourism, America is woefully ill-prepared to welcome China at an industry-wide level, especially at restaurants and major attractions, said Rich Harrill, director of the Sloan Foundation Travel & Tourism Industry Center at the University of South Carolina.
'We're not as ready as we should be,' Harrill said. 'We don't have the language skills. We have an opportunity to be on the ground floor of something that could be very, very big.'
Today in international tech news: Apple's Siri voice assistant now speaks Mandarin, but don't expect her to banter about -- or even give directions to -- Tiananmen Square. Also: A Chinese man's incarceration and fine set off a debate about the nation's pornography policies; Japan may have made watching YouTube illegal; and Samsung addresses that exploding phone.
In a nod to Chinese consumers, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced earlier this year that its Siri voice assistant will speak Mandarin and Contonese.
But in a nod to Chinese authorities, Siri apparently has no interest in bantering about Tiananmen Square.
Siri has linguistics limitations when it comes to certain phrases, such as Tiananmen and "6-4," a reference to June 4, the climax of the Chinese army's crackdown during the 1989 protests, according to reports inWantChinaTimes.com and The Wall Street Journal.
Siri, which is generally eager to dish out directions, apparently won't even tell people how to get to Tiananmen Square, located in Beijing.
The original, English-language Siri also has some taboo topics. Last December, for instance, it was noted that Siri was apparently unwilling to entertain certain questions about abortion, including how to get to an abortion clinic.
The root of Siri's unwillingness to discuss Tiananmen is unclear, according to the reports. While the Mandarin-speaking Siri may indeed have been programmed to stonewall questions about Tiananmen, it's also possible that the service -- which retrieves information from the Internet -- is simply running up against the Great Firewall of China when it searches for an answer.
Chinese Man Set Off 'Porn Firestorm'
A Chinese man who was sentenced to jail for possessing pornography on his computer has cast a spotlight on China's strict porn policies, according to Bloomberg.
The story, as Bloomberg tell it, is pretty bizarre: The man in question, known as "Mr. Gu," accidentally posted to an Internet message board a picture of a man seated atop a police car, wielding a machete. Police were curious about the origins of the picture, so they detained Gu and his computer.
Upon inspecting Gu's computer, authorities came across pornographic images. Chinese law on pornography states that anyone "who produces, transports, duplicated, sells or lends pornographic materials" will be jailed for no less than 10 days and fined 3,000 yuan, or about US$470.
The law is meant to be clear-cut, but Gu's case introduced a twist: He hadn't, in fact, distributed any pornographic materials. They were, Gu argued, for personal use.
All the same, he was sentenced to 15 days in jail and fined the 3,000 yuan.
Gu petitioned the local government after being released but got nowhere, so he started a blog chronicling his experiences. And the blog blew up. It trended on Sina Weibo -- which is similar to Twitter -- and was covered by some of China's eminent newspapers.
Earlier this week, the uproar prompted authorities to refund Gu's fine. They also gave him money for his trouble -- apparently to the tune of thousands of yuan.
The article did not say what happened to Gu's computer.
Japanese Copyright Revision Complicates YouTube
The Japanese House of Representative revised the country's copyright law this week in a way that could drastically limit citizens' access to YouTube, according to Mashable.com, which cited a Japanese-language report.
The revision, which also affects the Japanese YouTube equivalent Nico Nico Douga, makes illegally downloading copyrighted videos publishable by up to two years in prison or a fine of up to 2 million Yen (roughly $25,000 dollars). The country revised its copyright laws in 2010 to make downloading pirated content illegal, but penalties had not been stipulated until now.
This affects YouTube because, according to Mashable, every time a user watches a video on YouTube, their "computer stores a temporary download file in the browser cache" on the hard drive. This technical intricacy could make countless people subject to the prosecution under the new law, according to Mashable.
Samsung Burning for Answers
Samsung announced an investigation into the case of a Galaxy S III theat recently caught fire, according to a post on the company's blog.
The owner of the flaming phone wrote about the incident Wednesday on an Irish message board, claiming that while he was driving, the phone emitted a white flame, sparks and a bang.
- At US hotels, Chinese treated to comforts of home - AP - msnbc.com
NEW YORK — Major hotel brands are bending over backward to cater to the needs of the world's most sought-after traveler: the Chinese tourist.
Now arriving on American shores in unprecedented numbers thanks to a streamlined visa process and a rising Chinese middle class, Chinese tourists are being treated to the comforts of home when they check in at the front desk. That means hot tea in their rooms, congee for breakfast and Mandarin-speaking hotel employees at their disposal.
Chinese "welcome programs" at reputable chains like Marriott and Hilton even address delicate cultural differences: No Chinese tour group should be placed on a floor containing the number four, which sounds like the word for death in Mandarin.
"They're very relieved, like finally somebody's doing these things that make sense," said Robert Armstrong, a sales manager who handles all bookings for incoming Chinese travelers at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. "Finally somebody's catering to them."
More than a million Chinese visited the U.S. in 2011, contributing more than $5.7 billion to the U.S. economy. That's up 36 percent from 2010, according to the Department of Commerce. By 2016, that figure is expected to reach 2.6 million Chinese.
In a striking departure from the traditional Chinese business traveler, a growing number of them are simply coming to America for fun — with lots of cash on hand. (The average Chinese visitor spends more than $6,000 per trip.)
And so hotels are openly competing to win the hearts of the Chinese, who generally travel in large groups and stick to a tight itinerary, often packing multiple cities into a two-week American tour. What they're looking for is a hotel that makes them feel at ease with their surroundings, said Roy Graff, a travel consultant who educates hotels in proper Chinese culture and hospitality.
That may take the form of slippers and a tea kettle in the hotel room or a Mandarin-speaking employee at the front desk — or all of the above.
"They drink tea. Eastern style, everything cold," explained Charlie Shao, president of Galaxy Tours, a New York City-based Chinese tour agency, who used to frequently request special amenities for his clients. "They don't walk inside the room with bare feet."
It's rare that Shao has to ask hotels for anything anymore. Marriott International, for example, now offers not one but several Chinese breakfasts, depending upon which region of China the traveler hails from: there are salted duck eggs and pickled vegetables for eastern Chinese, for example, and dim sum and sliced pig's liver for the southerners.
Major chains are also training employees to avoid cultural missteps that would offend a Chinese visitor. Superstition is a big one: Red is considered a lucky color, along with the number eight, which signifies wealth. The color white, meanwhile, is frowned upon, not to mention the cursed number four.
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Failing to respect the pecking order in a Chinese group is another common blunder by hotels that have limited knowledge of Chinese culture.
"We try to make sure nobody's on a higher floor than their boss," Armstrong said. "Even if the boss is on a beautiful suite on the eighth floor, if the assistant is in a standard room on the 38th floor, it doesn't translate."
As hotels fine-tune Chinese outreach stateside, the race is on to build loyalty within China's borders.
Last year, Starwood Hotels — which has a Chinese "specialist" at each American hotel — relocated its entire senior leadership team to China for a month. The Ritz-Carlton rotates general managers and other hotel staff into its Chinese hotels for three-year stints at a time. And both chains are banking on the success of their customer rewards programs, which have been a big hit in China.
"It's important for our leaders to understand what's going on there at a more personal level than just the statistics," said Clayton Ruebensaal, vice president of marketing for the Ritz. "Everybody's going after this market because of the sheer volume of luxury customers. At the same time, it's a very crowded landscape."
In response to the surge in Chinese visitors, the State Department decided earlier this year to spend $22 million on new facilities in several Chinese cities and add about 50 officers to process visa applications. And in February, the U.S. government announced that Chinese visitors who had obtained an American visa within the last four years did not have to reapply in person but could apply via courier instead.
As a result, visa interview wait times in China are currently just under a week — compared to last year's average of more than a month.
But some experts say the U.S. still lags far behind other countries, especially in Europe, when it comes to attracting Chinese tourists. Despite President Barack Obama's recent push to promote tourism, America is woefully ill-prepared to welcome China at an industry-wide level, especially at restaurants and major attractions, said Rich Harrill, director of the Sloan Foundation Travel & Tourism Industry Center at the University of South Carolina.
"We're not as ready as we should be," Harrill said. "We don't have the language skills. We have an opportunity to be on the ground floor of something that could be very, very big."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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- Outstanding free site for streaming music - Chinese or Western Outstanding free site for streaming music - Chinese or Western:
If you are living in China then you must check out QQ Music. It's a free streaming music site that has a lot of Chinese & Western music.
This post is a simple guide on how to use the site with translated screenshots so you can use it even if you don't speak any Chinese.
Or get more Chinese music on StudyMoreChinese
- US hotels begin breaking down great wall between Chinese tourists and the service they want - Washington Post
NEW YORK — Major hotel brands are bending over backward to cater to the needs of the world's most sought-after traveler: the Chinese tourist.
Now arriving on American shores in unprecedented numbers thanks to a streamlined visa process and a rising Chinese middle class, Chinese tourists are being treated to the comforts of home when they check in at the front desk. That means hot tea in their rooms, congee for breakfast and Mandarin-speaking hotel employees at their disposal.
Chinese "welcome programs" at reputable chains like Marriott and Hilton even address delicate cultural differences: No Chinese tour group should be placed on a floor containing the number four, which sounds like the word for death in Mandarin.
"They're very relieved, like finally somebody's doing these things that make sense," said Robert Armstrong, a sales manager who handles all bookings for incoming Chinese travelers at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. "Finally somebody's catering to them."
More than a million Chinese visited the U.S. in 2011, contributing more than $5.7 billion to the U.S. economy. That's up 36 percent from 2010, according to the Department of Commerce. By 2016, that figure is expected to reach 2.6 million Chinese.
In a striking departure from the traditional Chinese business traveler, a growing number of them are simply coming to America for fun — with lots of cash on hand. (The average Chinese visitor spends more than $6,000 per trip.)
And so hotels are openly competing to win the hearts of the Chinese, who generally travel in large groups and stick to a tight itinerary, often packing multiple cities into a two-week American tour. What they're looking for is a hotel that makes them feel at ease with their surroundings, said Roy Graff, a travel consultant who educates hotels in proper Chinese culture and hospitality.
That may take the form of slippers and a tea kettle in the hotel room or a Mandarin-speaking employee at the front desk — or all of the above.
"They drink tea. Eastern style, everything cold," explained Charlie Shao, president of Galaxy Tours, a New York City-based Chinese tour agency, who used to frequently request special amenities for his clients. "They don't walk inside the room with bare feet."
It's rare that Shao has to ask hotels for anything anymore. Marriott International, for example, now offers not one but several Chinese breakfasts, depending upon which region of China the traveler hails from: there are salted duck eggs and pickled vegetables for eastern Chinese, for example, and dim sum and sliced pig's liver for the southerners.
Major chains are also training employees to avoid cultural missteps that would offend a Chinese visitor. Superstition is a big one: Red is considered a lucky color, along with the number eight, which signifies wealth. The color white, meanwhile, is frowned upon, not to mention the cursed number four.
Failing to respect the pecking order in a Chinese group is another common blunder by hotels that have limited knowledge of Chinese culture.
- Mandarin: Emerging communities - SBS
By Andy Park
Diana Ren's customers sometimes gaze down her menu of modernised Shanxi province specialities and say "but I want real Chinese food".
They sit under sleek designer lighting straight out of a cutting-edge Shanghai nightclub.
But gone are the day-glo sweet and sour pork and the stodgy Mongolian lamb that spun around lazy susans across Australia since the Cantonese gold rush of the 1850s.
"We serve fresh handmade noodles, authentic Peking duck and the final stage will be artistic conceptual Chinese cuisine," the entrepreneurial 28-year-old year-old Mrs Ren announces.
Dan's House, Mrs Ren's fledgling restaurant in Sydney's CBD, is one of a new wave of mainland Chinese eateries that not only reflect China's flourishing middle-class, but a significant tipping point in Australian immigration.
For every customer who is challenged by Mrs Ren's departure from what Australians have always called "Chinese", there are just as many who recognise the familiar swish lines of the interior of a neoteric Chinese eatery.
The latest census data shows that for the first time, the numbers of Mandarin-speakers in Australia has overtaken the historically dominant Cantonese.
After the first wave of Cantonese-speaking Chinese came to Victoria in search of gold rush profits in what was then called "New Gold Mountain", the second wave arrived after the Vietnam War.
A relaxation of immigration legislation in the 1970s saw an influx of Cantonese-speaking Hoa from the Saigon region, who were often mistaken for Vietnamese.
The recent rise of the Mandarin-speaker rests largely on the back of increased trade, entrepreneurship and ever-buoyant student numbers.
Ms Ren perfectly embodies this shift toward Mandarin-speakers in Chinese Australia.
Born to a successful merchant family in her native Shanxi province in central China, she came to study a double-business major at the University of New South Wales.
She met her husband there, who is also from mainland China.
With no restaurant experience, but with the financial backing of her father, she set about opening a restaurant near, but no too near, Sydney's predominantly Cantonese Chinatown.
"China developed very fast. All restaurants look similar to my restaurant, it's not like really old-fashioned," Mrs Ren said.
Dan's House looks and feels like the new money that has come to represent the affluent Chinese middle class.
Her business even satisfies the tastes of a her upwardly-mobile and health-savvy patrons, by serving duck that is not flash fried.
There is even sashimi on the menu.
But there is still a lazy susan in the sumptuously decorated VIP dining room.
The huge custom-made marble table imported from China has been modernized with an electric motor.
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