Wedding of Wonders – The Blog

For those of you who have not been to China, in my experience it is an amazing place, full of wonderful, extremely nice people who work very hard and take pride in their work… Compared to the US, the level of service is very refreshing. So when I had the opportunity to rent a tuxedo from The Men’s Wear-hurting for $130 (that’s Men’s Warehouse, but the guys I work with like to incorporate the word ‘hurting’ into anything that is not good) or buy one custom-tailored to me for $80. Like any savvy shopper, I chose the best value for my money. Unfortunately there are two problems with ordering a tuxedo from China: the first is that once your tux is finished, it’s still in China; secondly, the people that make your tux speak Chinese, so you need to as well. If you can get past those two obstacles, then it’s a no-brainer.

Let me first say that my Chinese is infantile, so I was not ready to tackle the challenge of explaining to someone in China that I wanted the color ‘charcoal’ (have you ever tried to explain to someone in English what the color ‘charcoal’ is? I still struggle… it’s gray, but it’s kind of black, but not really… you know what I mean). Fortunately I have two connections that are making all of this possible: when I was in Shanghai I found a wonderful clothing shop managed by Luping where I bought a bunch of custom suits and shirts – wonderful work; and my amazing friend Zhen from Duke, without whom I would be completely lost in this whole process. While in Shanghai I was incredibly impressed that Luping would work long hours and stay late to make sure we all got exactly what we wanted, then go to her accounting classes at night – this is the kind of business I gladly support (and if anyone wants her contact information I will gladly provide it).

So when it came time to choose the groomsmen’s outfits for the special day, I knew just who to call. After quite a few Skype conversations, emails, pictures and an enormous amount of Zhen’s help, finally we came to an understanding of sizes, colors and specifications. Luping was extremely patient with my email that she kindly referred to as a “very bad Chinese email” (I’m not being facetious! That really is kind! …Trust me, it’s a terrible work of written communication). But alas, we have closed the communication gap and the tuxes are underway! I’ll let you know how they arrive!

At risk of sounding like Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat (a far-too-long book that was about 10 years late on the concept of globalization), I do find it quite amazing that an individual in the US can order directly from a manufacturer in China and receive better products than much more expensive, locally sold ones. But I suppose that’s why I’m in business school, because that kind of thing is interesting. Katie has had her fair share of ordering from China as well and I must say, we’ve both been very impressed.

So thank you again for following-along our blog; I promise it will get MUCH more exciting as we head off on our journey around the world (I know, I didn’t update The Trip page yet). But until then we’ve still got a few tricks up our sleeve – so stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 18:25 and is filed under China, Mike, Planning, Style. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.