Beijing

"The initial business model was hotel franchising, which is common in the West. We used Ctrip’s marketing power to attract three-star hotels to adopt the Home Inn brand. Though facilities, quality of service and pricing varied, we persevered with the brand. But the hotels had different operators and many hotels displayed two brands. This profit model brought in little income because brand identity was not distinguishable enough Also, financing was not smooth. Neil Shen and I visited numerous venture capital companies in Beijing, but it never resulted in anything. No one…"

"I came to this view as a Canadian who has spent almost equal amounts of time living in the United States and China. To me, these two countries are thrilling, maddening, and, most of all, deeply bizarre. Canada is tidy. I sometimes find myself relaxing as soon as I cross into its borders. Drive around America and China, on the other hand, and you’ll see people and places that are utterly deranged. That’s not a reproach. These two countries are messy in part because they are both engines for global change. Europeans have a sense of optimism only about the past, stuck in their mausoleum economy because they are too sniffy to embrace American or Chinese practices. And the rest of the world is either too mature or too young to match the impact of these two superpowers. It is Americans and Chinese—Silicon Valley, Shenzhen, Wall Street, and Beijing—that will determine what people everywhere will think and what they will buy."