Mr. China [antikvár]

Mr. China The idea of China has always exerted a pull on the adventurous type. There is a kind of entrepreneurial Westerner who just can't resist it: red flags, a biUion bicycles and the largest untapped market on earth. What more could they want? After the first few visits, they start to feel more in tune and experience the first stirrings of a fatal ambition: the secret hope of becoming the 'Mr China' of their time, the zhongguo tong or 'Old China Hand' with the inside track in the Middle Kingdom, In the end, they all want to be Mr China. They want to be like Marco Polo roaming China as the emissary of the Kublai Khan. Or the first pioneering mill owners lolling about in the opium dens in Shanghai, dreaming of the fortune to be made if every Chinese would add an inch to his shirttails. Kissinger must have felt like Mr China as he schemed against Russia with Zhou Enlai; Edgar Snow may have been the same as he stood on the Gateway of Heavenly Peace with Chairman Mao. And of the countless businessmen who come to China with high hopes of the 'billion three market', how many long to become the ultimate China Hand, the only outsider, the first and only laowai to crack China? But in the end, it's an illusion.