December 2004

A scientist friend once told me that Einstein, as he neared the end of his life, had said that man's quest for knowledge was really a search to answer the question, “Is the universe safe?”

Now we all have a different idea of what it means to be safe. For Einstein's, it might have meant being protected from exploding black stars (or is that imploding?). For someone whose universe is perched on a 90 degree rock face, it may mean a good rope. To that expert rock climber, perhaps the thought of taking a 9-5 job in an office qualifies as an even bigger danger.

Within the boundaries of the universe that I inhabit – which is a few galaxies smaller than the one Einstein was talking about – my idea of safety is a lot closer to home. No, I'm not afraid of speaking in front of hundreds, or taking a 20-seater plane from Beijing to Mongolia, or running down alleyways infested with vermin. But I shamelessly admit to being a chicken, of the yellow variety, when I'm confronted with something I have never done –yet must succeed in.

I had the chance to ponder this recently as I sipped my margarita at the bar at Kathleen's 5. How this bar came to be was exactly one of those challenges that had me quaking in my shoes.

The numbers on the blueprint presented by the architect seemed harmless enough. “What a pretty drawing,” I remember thinking as I nodded along hearing about the structures and renovations he would oversee. For the interior he wanted lights and fabric and wrapped columns. For the exterior, there would be glass corridor, a fountain, and a 9-meter bar. “Sound great,” I said.

Five months, my entire life savings, and a high-interest rate loan later, those very same glass structures stood ready, a glass cocoon ready to be transformed. There lies the biggest challenge in my life: I had never managed such a big restaurant before.

Granted I opened my first restaurant in China over eight years ago. But that Kathleen's could seat 80 people and served coffee and sandwiches and took no more than an IOU to my brother to build. This one, the one that is scaring the wits out of me, seats 300.

Not scary enough? Add this to the mix. The Chinese partner, the one who I depended on to negotiate the Chinese side of the business, emmigrates to America during the most crucial time. So it was just moi to look over the contract and guarantee my own protection, without reading a word of Chinese. I tried not to despair until I discovered that the translator I hired, fresh out of college, translated “General Manager” three different ways – on the same page.

Safe, was not how I felt when I sat down one morning and wrote the first installment of, “10 Ways to Commit Suicide.” The top three were:

1. Get a Chinese assistant who doesn't know pinyin to type your Chinese contract.
2. Get your stationery done at a printer who doesn't have any graphics programs other than Chinese Coral Draw.
3. Try to deposit a check into a Chinese bank made out to your Chinese name when you only have identification in your English name.

I was feeling very unsafe. But the best was to come.

How about spending that entire aforementioned savings on a construction team that didn't know the difference between marble and faux marble? Or when the aforementioned bar was built with a shelf for the alcohol sitting on the bar counter? The term “cultural differences” took on a different value – about RMB 60,000 worth – in the cost of redoing it.

And so two months after my Grand Opening Party, still without a permanent front door sign in sight, and clients complaining about the guard downstairs treating them like thieves, my alarms sensor was ringing non-stop.

Like cliff hanger movies where the hero's car is tethering on the edge of an overhang with front wheels clutching thin air and the back wheels struggling to hold still – I was spending my days putting more weight on the side touching the ground. Working overtime was not an option, 14 hour days became the short ones.

My thoughts were full of issues and problems, and not people. Gone were the connections that sustained me in the past. Friends stopped phoning, tired of calls not being returned and emails that went unanswered for weeks. The confines of my universe shrunk to the walls of the restaurant – and granted that the luminous orange glow of the walls made it strikingly beautiful – as confines goes, it was limited.

Fielding issues kept me in this ether, this void where life was defined by number of business calls and agreements signed. Somewhere inside I knew I had gone off the path I set out on, but the road ahead had become blurred, and there was no way to stop. I did not feel safe.

Yet it was in this time of extreme danger, when I found a safety net where I had not looked. While I had cut myself off from friends with busy work, lucky for me, those who cared had kept me in their sights. The Chinese partner came back, like a descending angel, and took over the back office. A brother offered financial help and another offered badly needed advice. Even those who knew me only by reputation came offering aid. Distant friends assumed new roles as supporters and became close. Old and forgotten friends called, checked out my website, and sent words of encouragement and congratulations.

Some of the staff who joined me only a few months earlier rose to the challenge and filled in the gaps where I couldn’t be. I was surrounded by good-will, well-wishers, and supporters that I didn’t know I had. And while the problems were still mine alone; I was no longer the only one in facing them.

The car that was tethering on the edge slowly rolled back until all four wheels were touching the ground.

As I reviewed the life of this restaurant these last few months, I see now that many hands had been ready to steady me as I tethered on the edge. My eyes were simply too fixed on the paperwork, I hadn’t seen the helping hands all around me.

I have often likened what one could achieve in Shanghai as flight. The book I wrote that encourages thriving in this city is called Riding the Dragon. Implicit in the title is the image that the dragon is in flight and we as riders, can bring it to new heights. Shanghai has offered many – me included – such opportunities to fly.

But such flights don't come unaided, as I have recently experienced. When we push off the edge, the ground has to be solid enough to give us bounce – so we reach the needed velocity. The ones standing on sand cannot gain enough power to soar. Those flights are doomed to hover low off the ground.

And so I have come to discover one of the paradoxes of life – that in order to reach new heights, one has to first touch the ground.

What has re-grounded me have been connections to people and the strength they offered. They are the friends and the relationships that sustain. Long after contracts have withered to dust, it is their goodwill and intentions that will be remembered.

And so here's my answer, Mr. Einstein, one hundred years after you asked: “is the universe safe?” In my corner of the galaxy, on the third planet closest to the sun, in a city populated by 20 million, on an area known as People's Square, I’m happy to say it is secure, comfortable, and yes – safe.