Government Dinner in Shanghai

Went to the AmCham Government Appreciation Dinner tonight. It is a nice affair but for the speeches which are entirely too long. They start with the AmCham president, next to the General Consul, then the US Ambassador to China, then we had a special guest speaker, former Secretary of Commerce Evans, and finally the Mayor of Shanghai.

Former Secretary Evans figured everyone came to hear his thoughts on life and launched into a 30 minute presentation that was truly painful. It read as if he was running for office: "15 years ago when I first came to China, I met Mrs. Ming and her two blind sons. I have kept up with them and let me tell you..." He is a sharp man with quite a presence - he looks like a Secretary; however, brevity was the name of the game with that many speakers, and he wasn't.

The best speaker was the Shanghai Mayor - given that he presides over a city of 24 million, he may very well be the most accomplished in the bunch. He was funny and he had facts. They probably weren't accurate, but they sounded good.

Our office bought a table this year and invited a number of clients. Good fun folks one and all. The surprise of the evening was a former high school classmate of my colleague's who moved here 14 years ago. She married a Chinese man, has two children and a business. Fantastic gal. I liked her immediately.

Toward the end of the evening the subject turned to politics. But for my colleague, I'd stand out like a sore thumb. Expats are notoriously liberal - they watch CNN, MSNBC and read the International Herald Tribune (NYTimes). They hate Bush, think Jimmy Carter and Larry King deserve multiple UN positions, and think Iraq is only about oil. They pine over days that never were - those good ole' days. Would that be the days when Jimmy Carter was abandoning the Shah of Iran, when he handed over the Panama Canal, the days of Day XX of America Held Hostage or the days of double digit inflation?

My colleague's friend volunteered to move back to the states if the presidential race came down to Obama and Thompson. Why? Because I'm tired of this crap. What crap? You know, all the crap. Huh?

If you are threatening to move back to the US in order to cast a vote against someone, you need to be able to articulate why. I'm not down playing this gal's intelligence. She is bright, has her own business, and I'm sure has an intellect that far exceeds mine. Yet the anti-Bush, anti-Republican rage was not explicable.

I'm not sold on Thompson. I know very little about him. But I don't want Hillary-care and Obama's bomb Pakistan (not to mention his voting record) make Hillary look moderate and capable.