SP Miller

I have been going to China since 1988 when I grew bored with my graduate school studies and wanted to do something off the beaten path. Until then my interest in China had extended no further than 112th st and Broadway in NYC where the famed Moon Palace restaurant was ( and sadly is no longer). That summer I found a job through the Foreign Experts Bureau in China, bought a one way ticket to Beijing and a few weeks later boarded an Air Canada flight out of San Francisco. I have never felt so homesick as when I got off the plane in Beijing that warm summer night, saw an ocean of strange faces – not all of them smiling – and said to myself “SHIT, what am I doing here !”

Nowadays when I get off a plane in China I feel that I am “home.” China gets in your blood I guess you could say. I have seen all the changes over the years and it is wonderful to feel that I have been a part of those changes, whether it was living in Shanghai for seven years or travelling back and forth from the US to China on business.

The name of my China blog, Mulberry Fields, is inspired by one of my favorite Chinese sayings which describes change. The expression is 沧海桑田 cang hai sang tian which means deep blue seas become mulberry fields and mulberry fields become deep blue seas. In other words change over time is inevitable.

I hope my blog is helpful to those who are doing or want to do business in China but who don’t spend a lot of time there and are trying to understand the culture. If you need help in China, feel free to contact me via The East Asia Company website www.theeastasiaco.com