For westerners, there is little that is more incomprehensible than Chinese and it follows naturally that the country itself is veiled to outsiders. Nonetheless, after five years living here, I must say with certain regret that China and her native language are quite mundane. Like most outsiders, I came to China with at least some romantic hangups forged in a blurry amalgamation of kung fu movie lore, bastardized English versions of Confucius' quotes and a generous helping of misinterpreted Daoism. As soon as my Chinese was good enough, I tried to express my interest in "philosophy" to Chinese friends who promptly thanked me for my respect for their culture and chided me for wasting time on bygone ideas. Go to the mall, sing some Karaoke, drink some baijiu (100 proof "white wine") and you've understood this place, they would say, jokingly.

Today, China is a place living primarily in the present. Materialism is king and, despite controlled media, educated people have a good sense of "the way the world works."

Many seasoned businesspeople come to China with more pragmatic dreams than mine and quickly throw up their hands at the various challenges they face. They meet a number of uneducated peasants and decide that the education system has is not up to snuff. They get cheated and decide that honesty is non-existant here and just as they prepare to head home, they pop into a pirated-DVD-store and stock up, while shaking their heads sagely and thinking, "what an impediment to creativity."

The reality is that China has so many people that, while only a tiny percentage, might be well educated, open minded and honest, there are still many of these people. Further, most people have a work ethic that borne of a necessity to compete for everything in a country of ¡°so many mouths.¡± If you don't know where to look or how to speak the language, you will never find these diamond employees in amongst this very rough setting.

I have staid the course in China, while often shaking my head sagely, and partly out of amusement to see what new irony will emerge from Beijing's filthy sprawl. Ultimately, as I went about my humble toils as a web designer, programmer and SEO maverick, I started to meet others who were quite capable of participating in the projects that I was working on for foreign and domestic clients. We began to work as a team to provide high-end China outsourcing for website design clients. The rest is not yet history but we do provide excellent China website outsourcing to clients worldwide.

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