Now Shares a Complex

Driving down the east third ring road in 1998 I’d have been on my way to work at Motorola.  I’d been fortunate enough to meet the founder’s son and chairman of the board, Bob Galvin, at a gathering at my graduate school.  He introduced me to someone who introduced me to someone and before I knew it I had a contract to work over in Beijing.  Grateful, I wrote to him from Beijing, to thank him and remind him of what he already knew, that Motorola was very, very popular in China. 

Not long after I started, Motorola bought a prime piece of real estate a few hundred yards due east from Guo Mao.  Ericsson was the prime competitor in those days and there was growing concern about a pesky upstart known as Nokia.  I can recall not knowing any better and wondering if perhaps they were a Japanese company.

Today I left my home and told my driver I was heading to the Motorola Tower.  It is no longer down there at Guo Mao.  Nor is the old complex in the purple bamboo garden area, Zizhuyuan, still a Motorola building.  Rather, there is a tower, with the familiar logo atop down in Wang Jing.  This Moto now shares a complex with Nokia reinforcing the feeling of a time gone by.  I told my driver to use Gao Bai Lu and we promptly filed in to exceptional traffic on this, the short cut, suggesting an accident or . . . of course. There was an event on at the New Convention Center.

My driver had a plan.  We’ll use the tunnel off by . . .  “Sure. Whatever’s fastest.”  But soon it was clear that the death-traffic was only for those who wanted to turn left.  We headed right and the flow resumed to something like normal so I made a call and forgot about it.  Deep within this call, I’d completely forgotten about my driver’s earlier suggestion.  He gestured to it hurriedly as we approached an exit I’d otherwise never use and I automatically told him to forget it and keep going forward.  He pointed out to me as we went further that this would have been a much better plan.  Sure enough we slowed to a crawl at Da Shanzi the way traffic does not matter which way you’re driving and sat there or fifteen minutes.

Inside the Motorola building I considered a big, festive mural that seemed a period piece of what cool had meant for the Moto marketing department and their effort to condense this and translate this and Sioncize and sell it to the Chinese staff.   A guitar player with shades and an afro was wailing in ecstasy at the head of a crowd.  To his right a woman was blowing a sax.  This is what your mobile future will be like!  The sign on the mural suggested that this was from the APAC kickoff of 2007.

Friday, 2/17/17