CCTV's Underpants, a Beijng Landmark

China Daily reported in 2010 that Beijing’s population had reached twenty-two million people. (Eight to nine million of these are “non-permanent residents.”) City planners hope to cap Beijing’s size at eighteen million, but that seems implausible—how do you shrink a city that’s already a magnet for every ambitious person in a country of 1.3 billion?

Beijing sprawls across 6,489.5 sq miles, which means, according to Wikipedia, that its land area is slightly larger than the country of Montenegro. The Beijing Visitors Bureau says the city has more than 60,000 official taxis and 130,000 drivers, and that doesn’t count the thousands of black taxis, which I avoid.

Yesterday, two colleagues and I visited a potential golf course site northwest of Beijing, just off the Jingping Expressway near Beijing’s main airport. We hailed a taxi on the street in front of our hotel at mid-day, in the Sanlitun district—what locals call the diplomatic quarter, where the foreign embassies are clustered. We drove 70 kilometers to an area called Pinggu, and the driver—who by coincidence was from Pinggu– waited for us while we spent an hour and a half touring the site. The area was typical of rural Beijing–lots of greenhouses dotting the landscape, all constructed in a simple style: brick walls oriented east and west, with a solid wall on the north and pipes arcing from north to south as scaffolding for sheets of plastic facing into the southern sun. Reed mats are rolled onto the roofs when the greenhouses need to catch the sun, and unrolled at night over the plastic to hold the heat in. It’s a simple but efficient system that helps feed the colossus.

The site we visited was bounded on two sides by a small river or drainage way, with dikes on either side to handle the occasional spring flood. Our guides told us that over the last twenty years stormwater had never crested even to the base of the dikes.  There was a plant nursery in the center of the site, and crews were planting trees along a berm on the main highway running north along the east side of the property.

We rolled back into Beijing on the cusp of rush hour, and the driver managed the ebb and flow of cars, trucks and buses with calm confidence. Being a passenger in the front seat of a Beijing taxi requires some practice, so you’re not in a constant state of panic when the driver turns directly into oncoming traffic to make a left turn, or bears down on a bike or pedestrian caught in the crosswalk.   Somehow it all works out….most of the time.

Traffic was thickening as we passed the underpants, the famous CCTV tower designed by Rem Koolhaas. A pink Ferrari blew past us on the shoulder, its high growl audible over the traffic noise. We were about a block from our hotel when it was clear that we could save twenty minutes and a few RBM (the Yuan, or the people’s money) if we just got out on a side street and hoofed the final few hundred meters.

As we walked to the hotel, we discussed the follow-up letters we needed to write to the potential client we’d just met, planning the rest of our day. Then I discovered that my phone was not in any of the abundance of pockets in my jacket or pants. I was slapping my chest and thighs hoping to feel the blunt rectangle of my I-phone when the sinking feeling hit me—that phone was gone. I had a receipt from the taxi—a 150 kilometer round trip and a 90 minute wait had cost us 530 RMB, or about 85 dollars. (Beijing taxi drivers don’t expect a tip.)

Our Chinese colleague, Vivian Zhou, dialed the phone number on the receipt and managed to get the taxi driver’s mobile number. She called him, and he not only confirmed that the next passenger he picked up, who he described to Vivian as a middle-aged lady, had taken the phone when she got out, but that he was parked in front of the building where he had dropped her. Kirk Miles, my business partner, suggested we call the phone number, but Vivian didn’t think that was a good idea. “That phone’s worth 5,000 RMB in China,” she said. “Let’s go meet the cab driver and try to find her.”  Besides, Vivian’s China Mobile phone wasn’t set up for calls to the USA.  Besides, Vivian said, she was sure the lady was taking the phone.

So with a certain urgency we hailed another cab, and within ten minutes were pulling up in front of an office tower near the Kerry Center, one of Beijing’s premier hotel and shopping areas. Our taxi driver was parked in front of the building.  He went to park his taxi so he could come and help us identify the lady. Then Vivian’s phone rang—and it was the lady with my phone, trying to find me! She had already called the other numbers in the recent calls queue—my wife and my sister-in-law back in Oregon, both of whom were sleeping and ignored the calls. As I was pointing to a dark-haired middle aged lady coming out of the building, mouthing “is that her?”, Vivian was shushing me. “It’s the lady,” she said sotto voce.

Just then the taxi driver came up, and Vivian explained what had happened. With a stuttering of “xie xies” I handed him 300 RMB, which Vivian said was too much for his help, but I would have felt ashamed after what he did had it been any less.

I was going to get my phone back! I was astonished that it had been so easy. We went into the office tower, rode the elevator to the 11th floor, and met Ms. Ma, the honorable lady who had found the phone. She was the CEO of a talent agency and television production company whose clients performed on CCTV, where she had previously worked as an executive producer for a “Chinese Idol” program called “Star Avenue.” Vivian knew this program and a number of the actors and actresses whose pictures were on display. We tried to offer Ms. Ma some reward but she refused.

After we took some pictures and exchanged name cards, we took our leave. But I wanted to give Ms. Ma something, so we went to the shopping center and got a little gift package of scented candles and incense, and I found a card and had Vivian translate a flowery thank-you note, expressing my gratitude and telling Ms. Ma that I hoped every time she smelled the fragrance she would remember the good deed she had done. Vivian kept confessing that she felt bad that she thought the lady was going to steal the phone.  “I feel guilty,” she said.  When we gave Ms. Ma her gift she looked pleased but was not sentimental.  She served us tea at her desk, and was clearly keeping long hours.  “Look at that cot,” Kirk said, pointing to an alcove adjacent to her office.  “She probably sleeps here when she’s working late.”

Despite appearances, Beijing works. The chaos hides a deeper order, built on the honesty of the people and deep cultural layers stressing honor. We’re going to send the taxi company a fancy letter telling its bosses how much we appreciated what the driver did. Vivian said maybe he will get a gold star for his taxi. He deserves it.  And I will now ride Beijing taxis with a greater faith than ever in the skills of the huge fleet’s legions of drivers.

A twenty-five inch Travelpro MaxLite 2 Expandable Spinner

Willie Nelson’s anthem keeps cycling through my brain as I wrap up my preparations for the Golf Road Warriors’ trip to Palm Springs next week, February 21-27.  “I just can’t wait to get on the road again!”  

I’m not unaccustomed to traveling, but most of my journeys over the last twenty years have been strictly for business.  I’ve flown a couple of million miles, but  I haven’t felt so excited and eager about anything since I was getting ready to play in my first youth league basketball game when I was ten.   I wore my uniform to bed for a week, and dreamed of how high I would jump in my new Converse Chuck Taylor All Star kicks.  

I haven’t actually slept in my AUR shirts, fashioned from EcoSmart fabrics made from recycled plastic bottles, but I thought about it.  I did show the shirts to my next door neighbor, the Happiest Man on Earth, who is a nationally recognized expert in recycling, and he fondled the fabric a bit and pronounced it good.  The shirts are incredibly light, which should allow the old muscles to swing with that graceful tempo that characterizes all–most, some, a few, both–of my best shots.

The golf bag Callaway sent has been loaded with my RAZR irons and hybrids, which I got last summer in Portland after a fitting session with my friend and teacher, Don Otto, and they’re joined now by my new RAZR Fit driver, which Callaway also kindly provided, and which I discovered in two practice outings that I hit almost as well as Phil Mickelson hits his.  The driver looms over the rest of my clubs, which is only fair as it covers the most ground on almost every hole.   It’s the big dog in my bag, and I expect it to do some serious hunting next week.

I'm Packing....

Since I will be checking my own clubs on the flight down, so I will be able to play at my splendid best in Palm Springs, I am also going to be traveling with the wonderful new Travelpro suitcase that is the official luggage of the Golf Road Warriors.   (Most of the rounds I have played on the road over the last couple of decades I’ve used rental clubs, since I never check bags on business trips.   If you’re flying almost every day and the bag gets lost on the first leg, it never catches up.  I once had a bag follow me from Spain to Norway to Ireland and then finally to San Francisco, and I wish I had given it a dairy so it could have told me whether or not it had a good trip.)

The Travelpro bag is a deep, almost iridescent blue, a really classy color that will stand out amidst all the tedious generic black bags coursing around the luggage kiosk.   I am going to be on the road for almost another full week after the Road Warriors wrap up their Palm Springs trip, so I will need to pack for six full days of golf plus another six days of a conference and meetings, which means I have to pack business attire as well as the golf duds.   There’s plenty of room in that A twenty-five inch Travelpro MaxLite 2 Expandable Spinner.

The world’s leading authority on getting ready for a golf road trip is, of course, my colleague, Jeff Wallach, so I have been studying his compendium of golf travel packing tips to make sure I have everything I need.  (Or, alternatively, knowing that Jeff has all the necessary first aid gear and legal drugs for aches and pains, I can plan on mooching off Jeff.)   Jeff has also been getting in my pocket over the last couple of years, somehow breaking 80 with that lunging slap shot he’s perfected while my smooth-as-silk swings are for some mysterious reason sending balls into oblivion.   This is the mystery I expect to solve in Palm Springs.

1. When did your company start to focus on the Chinese golf industry?   Did you focus especially on golf course management and operations?   What kind of problems have you discovered?

JOHN STRAWN:  Hills & Forrest is a golf course architectural firm, so our focus is on designing courses.   We have also formed a joint venture with two Chinese partners, one of which, Cheng Jun Golf, does own and operate courses.    The courses they operate are private membership courses, and have been popular because they have good teaching academies as well as good restaurants in the clubhouse.   The Tianan Club in Beijing, not far from the main airport, is a Cheng Jun course.

Tianan Golf, Beijing

We focused on China because we believe the Chinese golf industry will grow substantially in the years ahead.   But to do so successfully, the China golf industry needs to focus on how it can stimulate demand and attract more players.    Right now, all of China’s golf courses are private membership clubs, with the exception of a few resort courses open for green fee play.   But the concept that is most popular in the USA, the so-called daily fee course, has not made any inroads into China yet.  Most towns and cities in the US own and operate golf courses for their citizens, not expecting them to make a profit but simply to cover operating expenses.  Sometimes they are even subsidized, just as a recreation center or swimming pool would be, but that is rarer these days.    Still, most golf courses in the US manage an operating profit, but the real value of golf courses over the last four decades to developers has been their contribution to real estate values.   Houses on golf courses sell for higher prices than houses without access to golf.  This is partly just because golf provides a beautiful landscape—a kind of garden, with grass and trees and clean air.   The recreational aspect is a bonus.   Golf is also good for a player’s health.  Walking especially is good exercise.   I see many Chinese courses using golf carts, and I don’t think this is a good tendency.   The best courses are walkable, and walking should be encouraged, especially given the availability of caddies in China.

2. According to research institutions, 80% of the golf courses in China don’t make money. Does this research match what you know about China? What is the reason for this situation?

JOHN STRAWN:  To understand this situation, you have to think through what a golf course has to sell.   A golf course owns tee times.  Every day, it has so many available times for people to play golf.   Let’s assume that we want to put groups out at ten minute intervals.  That is six groups of four players every hour, or 24 players per hour.  (This is an optimal spacing—eight minute starts are more common in the US.)   If an average round takes four and one half hours, and the first round goes off at 7 a.m. and the last at 4 p.m., that means the course has 216 tee times to sell that day. (9 hours of starting times X 24 players per hour.)    The maximum revenue yield would be based on “selling” all of those tee times.   That is what well-managed daily fee golf courses do in the US.   They can discount last minute rounds, for example, or offer specials via the internet.   In China, because the courses are not based on daily fees, the operations have to be supported by collecting monthly dues from members.   Fundamental Rule: It costs the same to maintain a course at a proper standard whether anyone plays it or not.  If you are not filling up the tee times, the cost per round to maintain the course goes way up.  At some point, this is not sustainable.

3. What are the attributes for a successful golf course? What kind of business pattern would make a course to be successful?

JOHN STRAWN:  We must first define what our expectations are.   For a members’ course, the measure of success is different from a course based on daily fee play which must make a profit.  Members’ or private courses may measure their success on the prestige of their membership, or on tournament play.  But a daily fee course is strictly a profit-making entity whose success is measured just as any other business measures success—return on investment.   If developers de-couple the golf course from the real estate returns, then the golf course functions more like infrastructure.   It is like having roads and power and water service—it is necessary for the overall success of the project—that is, for selling real estate at good prices—but doesn’t bring in a direct return.   We don’t expect roads and power lines to “make money,” and if we divorce the real estate from the golf operations, and don’t put the golf course on a business basis, it makes no sense to expect the golf course to somehow succeed as a business.

China's Grandiose Approach to Golf: Luxury as the Highest Value

4. Golf courses in China depend too much on combining with real estate.   Is this healthy?  What’s the difference between China and other countries in regard to golf and real estate?

JOHN STRAWN:  As we have noted already, golf courses need to attract more play to succeed as stand-alone businesses.   If the only model is the private membership club, this won’t happen.   Some clubs in Europe and the US are what are called “semi-private”—that is, the course has members but also allows outside play.   This is done in some cases in China, also, but the highest status golf courses are still private members’ courses.   This does not have to be the case.   In the US, there are many famous private clubs, but there are also resorts which are prestigious to play and earn substantial profits.  Examples of this would be Pebble Beach, Pinehurst, and perhaps the most important and creative golf development of the last twenty years, Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon.   It has no real estate to sell, only lodging in hotel rooms and villas, and its four courses earn millions each year for its developer.

5. To get out of this dilemma, what should Chinese golf courses do for a positive future?

JOHN STRAWN:  I believe the Chinese golf industry needs to focus on developing a platform for popular golf—that is, inexpensive, accessible public courses.  These can be 9 holes, for example, with a driving range.   Many, many smaller US cities feature 9 hole courses.  Developers and members’ courses should contribute to the development of daily fee, muni-type courses to develop the next generation of golfers.   Cities and towns should look to developing golf courses as public amenities, like parks.  This will also create jobs, and inspire a new generation of Chinese golfers, who can take their place on the world golf stage.

Never too Early to Start

China is already arguably the most important contributor to the world golf economy.  Why?  Because most of the clubs, balls, bags, shirts, hats and shoes are made in China and sold to golfers all over the world.   I don’t know what the dollar volume of the China golf manufacturing is, but surely it is in the billions.   If China wants to encourage domestic consumption of articles made in China, the golf industry is a good place to focus.   There is a potential demand for golf in China that would make it the number one golf country in the world within thirty years.

6. Do you know the details about profits, quantity and the potential developing space of golf courses in China?

JOHN STRAWN:  China has some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, but clearly not all of it is available or appropriate for golf.  Worldwide, we know from surveys that golfers prefer to play on seaside courses.  Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes, St Andrews and the great Scottish links, such as Aberdeen and Turnberry, and  the great Irish courses, such as Ballybunion or Lahinch, are along the sea.  China has an immense coastline, where golf could be developed.   Lake-side courses are also popular.    Core courses must be a key component of China’s long-term golf strategy, along with a focus on public golf.   China must find ways to stimulate demand.   In so-called “developed golf countries,” such as the UK, the USA, and Sweden, about 7% of the people play golf.   That’s roughly 27 million people in the USA, which has about 18,000 golf courses (on only a slightly larger land mass than China.)   China has 1.3 billion people.   If 7% of Chinese people played golf, that would be 91,000,000 golfers—more than twice the total number of golfers in the world today!  Even if only 1% of Chinese people played golf, that would be 13,000,000 golfers.   The rule of thumb is that you need roughly one golf course per 1,500 golfers.   If China reaches a golf participation rate even of 1%, according to this formula it would “need” more than 8,000 golf courses.   So the potential for growth in China is enormous.  What China must do to encourage golf development is to support public golf, and develop and operate golf courses using only the very best sustainable designs and management practices, to assure that the water supply is clean and preserved, and that the environment will benefit from a healthy landscape.   The knowledge of how to do this exists–it just needs to be applied with conviction.

A recent article in China Daily USA reports that only the rich play golf in China.   Chinese golf is certainly elitist, keeping with the Chinese tradition of preserving luxury goods for the emperor and his circle.  That’s part of golf’s attraction to young people, who flood the annual golf shows in Guangzhou and Beijing—they aspire to a lifestyle that includes playing golf.  Membership fees at Chinese golf clubs—and there are no daily fee courses in China, both for economic and cultural reasons— range from 100,000 to 1.7 million Yuan, or in US dollars, between $15,685 and $266,650.  And this in a country with an average per capita income of $4,400, compared to the US’s $46,860.

One avid Chinese golfer, described in the China Daily story as a Beijing businessman who plays golf every day and spends $15,640 annually to support his habit, called golf “green opium,” linking it to another famous addiction introduced to China by the West.   Britain’s opium smuggling from India led to the world’s first drug wars, the 19^th century Opium Wars.   American merchants were also complicit in this trade.   These original narcotraficantes’ ruthless disregard for the Chinese peoples’ well-being was equal to the contempt any Mexican or Colombian drug lord holds for the gringos.

The Original Chinese Golfer? The Ming Emperor Xuande, 15th Century.

Now China’s emperor is called the Premier, and he’s no longer born into the job.  The premier’s courtiers–the inner circle of the ruling Communist party–play golf.  There is a tight link in China, despite its official adherence to communism, between wealth, privilege and political power.   The government’s policies since 2004 have officially circumscribed golf’s development, in order to preserve farm land and water.   But this official moratorium by the State Council was ignored until the summer of 2011, when, as the China Daily article puts it, “11 Chinese ministries collectively ordered new checks on all golf courses to prevent illegal land use and seizure and to ensure no loss of farmland in China.”

Enforcing the moratorium has had a powerful effect on the group of western golf course architects, project managers, course operators and others who have a stake in China’s golf industry.   The collapse of the US real estate market had already vitiated the demand for their services at home.   China is without question the most powerful developing market in golf, and the uncertainty over its future is very worrisome to industry insiders, among whom I include myself.

1493 helped me understand how China’s golf scene fits into larger patterns of Chinese politics and history.   I’ve wondered why, if there really was a moratorium in place since 2004, our clients in the provinces tended to pay it little heed.   It’s partly because China is a culturally complex country, where conflicts between the capital and the provinces are historically endemic.  Local leaders in Fujian province, or in Yunnan or Sichuan or Guangdong, have always tried to trick the big boys in Beijing.

Two years ago I was riding from the city center of Chengdu toward a site where our client intended to develop a large real estate project with 36 holes of golf.   Chengdu is the capital and most important city in Sichuan province, a region admired throughout China for its natural beauty and cuisine.   Giant pandas are native to the bamboo forests along the mountain slopes in western Sichuan.

As we were driving south, I noticed a complex of buildings that looked sort of like the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, but on an even grander scale.  There were a number of linked buildings nestled within elaborately landscaped grounds, but no evidence of any activity going on in any of them.   I asked our client what these buildings were, and got a wan, wry smile in reply.

Sichuan province, you’ll recall, had a terrible earthquake in the spring of 2008.    The epicenter was about 80 kilometers northwest of Chengdu, but the quake was felt as far away as Beijing.   Schools collapsed, and thousands of children were killed, which led to charges of corruption against the officials in charge of building the classrooms.  More than 70,000 people were killed and millions left homeless.   Premier Wen Jiabao came down from Beijing to assess the damage and assist in guiding the rescue operations.  And here’s where the new building complex comes back into the picture.

This was the new administrative headquarters for the party and the municipal government.  Designed by the French architect Paul Andreu, who also designed the new opera house in Beijing, the complex reportedly cost $180 million.  A new “Technology and Science Enterprising Center” was also part of the complex.  In the context of millions of people left homeless by the earthquake, coupled with intense public criticism over shoddy construction practices having contributed to the loss of life, the big cheeses from Beijing ordered the Sichuanese to get rid of these new buildings.    Local officials announced that they would sell them.   That’s why they were sitting empty a year later.   But according to a BBC report in the spring of this year, the buildings have not been sold.    As Charles Mann demonstrates in 1493, that’s a typical narrative in China.  Orders come down from Beijing, local officials announce their capitulation, and then nothing more happens.

“In the feud- and faction-ridden Ming court,” Mann writes, referring to the period between 1368 and 1644, when China first encountered western traders arriving by sea, “government policies were often accidental by-products of ministerial intrigues, enacted with little regard for their actual effects.”   Echoes of these Ming policies reverberate off the walls today in Zhongnanhai, the Beijing neighborhood where the present government is headquartered.

Mann writes about the wonderfully convoluted trade practices that evolved among Chinese and European merchants, for example, especially the relationship between Fujianese and Spanish traders through the port of Manila in the Philippines.   The emperors wanted a monopoly on trade, just as the current government preserves its monopoly on land.   But the policies prohibiting trade didn’t work for the emperors, and the current land policies have created a giant headache for the central government.

Throughout it all, the qualities that have made China preeminent in so many arenas, whatever the shifts in regimes or policies, shine through.   Our tendency to think of Chinese manufacturers producing products for the global economy as something unique to the post-Mao era is misplaced, as Mann makes clear.   The Chinese in the Philippines were restricted to a ghetto adjacent to Manila called the Parián.  “Parián artisans and merchants…”—most from Fujian province, Mann notes—“sold the Spaniards everything from roof tiles to marble statues of baby Jesus—‘much prettier articles than are made in Spain,’” noted a Spanish clergyman in Manila, “and sometimes so cheap that I am ashamed to mention it.”

Chinese tailors were also making “perfect knockoffs of the latest European styles.”   The Europeans then tried to abolish trade in finished goods, wanting only the cloth—rehearsing disputes that would echo in modern trade agreements.

Mann also describes how the introduction of American crops—particularly the sweet potato, maize, and tobacco—radically transformed the Chinese countryside.  Vast new regions of Sichuan, for example, which is described prior to the end of the 18^th century as a “big, empty place,” were settled.  Just as the potato facilitated a population boom in Ireland, with tragic consequences, the American crops introduced to China instigated a series of transformations that ruptured the Emperor’s control over the provinces.  Forests cleared to grow tobacco, even though the crop was officially prohibited, resulted in shortages of rice and inflated food prices.   Hungry people will fight to survive, and rebellions against imperial authority punctuate China’s history.   China’s current rulers obsess over food security.   There is a direct link between the government’s commitment to low food prices and its complicated attitude toward golf development.

Tulou in Fujian

There isn’t space to review all of Mann’s analysis here, but I recommend that anyone with an interest in China’s economy—and especially people in the golf business—pick up a copy of 1493.   Pay close attention to “Part Two: Pacific Journeys.”   Among the episodes of Chinese history recounted in 1493 is the tale of the Hakka people after the introduction of American crops to China.    The Hakka historically practiced slash and burn agriculture on hilly, marginal land in southern China, occupying parts of Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, and Hainan Provinces.  They lived collectively in large, round, well-defended structures called tulou.   They quickly adopted tobacco as a cash crop, contributing to the crisis described above.  The environmental effects of the deforestation practices following the introduction of tobacco are still in evidence in southern China.

The new Mission Hills golf resort on Hainan Island is one of China’s grandest golf developments, following on the success of the original Mission Hills in Shenzhen.   There are ten new courses designed by Schmidt-Curley, along with villas, hotels and spa.   It’s a grand complex, the equal or better of any golf resort in the world.   And one of the architectural themes at Mission Hills Haikou is a tribute to the tulou.   Guests with a view from the upper floors of the hotel toward the south will see the rounded walls of a large faux-tulou.   Merging an ancient Chinese architectural style with the grandiose amenities of a modern golf resort, Mission Hills’ version of the tulou expresses a typically contemporary Chinese affection for the ancient and enduring leavened with the allure of foreign luxuries.

Charles Mann's "1493" Illuminates the Origins of the Global Economy

Apart from its misleading subtitle, Charles Mann’s  1493.  Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, is a book to celebrate.  (Columbus’ personal contribution to the creation of the new world Mann describes was roughly the same as Johannes Gutenberg’s to the invention of word processing.)    But Mann is using “Columbus” as a kind of synecdoche for the class of European explorers-conquerors-traders who did in fact inaugurate the process of globalization which created the world we now inhabit.

1493 is a bracingly persuasive counter-narrative to the prevailing mythology about the historical significance of the “discovery” of America.  Pious European pioneers subduing the wilderness to plant a city on a hill and all that.   It’s a companion to Mann’s 2005 study of the pre-Columbian world,1491, which examined not merely the civilization of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans but the devastating effects of old world diseases among the people of the new world.

Summarizing a generation’s worth of scholarship on the complex effects of the mingling of the “old” and “new” worlds, 1493 carries on this line of enquiry by illuminating the political, cultural and biological ramifications of what Mann refers to as the “homogenocene”—the resurrection of Pangaea, the supercontinent, connected this time not by the slow grinding power of geology but by the sinews of commerce.

1493 is inspired by the work of Alfred Crosby, whose studies of the deeper biological effects of what he called the “Columbian exchange” were greeted with a yawn when he started publishing in the early 1970s, but whose brilliance and originality soon after would not only command respect among scholars but inspire a whole new field of enquiry—the meta-history of the environment.   1493, combining original reporting and research by Mann with a survey of the scholarship Crosby’s work stimulated, examines how the European encounter with the Americas, as well as its corollary, the yoking of Europe and the Americas with the continents of Asia and Africa, the latter through the cruel vector of slavery, profoundly altered the whole world.

Many Oregonians have vacationed in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, sunbathing and swimming along the Playa la Ropa.   What they may not know is that this “beach of the clothes” is named for the silk garments which washed ashore when a galleon bringing goods from Asia was wrecked by a storm.   Mann visits Manila to recount the complicated history of this trade between China and the west, fueled by gold and silver from the new world (mined and transported by African slaves), transshipped through Mexico on its way to Madrid, hauled across the Pacific between Manila and Acapulco on ships manned by polyglot crews.

Food crops from the new world were especially influential in the creation of the global economy, a story never told better than in 1493.   Everyone knows how important the Andean potato was to European agriculture—and the indispensible tomato to Italian cuisine.   The mid-19^th century Irish famine, its effects still felt, is likewise a well rehearsed tale whose lineaments are incomprehensible without some knowledge of the biology of the Columbian exchange.   And given its grim effects—modern Ireland’s population is still smaller than its 19^th century peak—one might assume that the Columbian exchange was deleterious.   Mann persuasively argues the opposite.

“Transplanting the potato to Europe and the sweet potato to China created catastrophic social and environmental problems,” Mann acknowledges.   “But it also kept millions of Europeans and Chinese from malnutrition and famine.  The huge benefits of moving species outweigh the huge harms.”

Even in the shadow of the most glamorous shops in Beijing, vendors grilling sweet potatoes add spice to street life, especially on cold winter days.

Astonishing facts accumulate throughout 1493.  Japanese samurai guarded silver shipments between Acapulco and Veracruz in the 17^thcentury.  The samurai were exempted from the racial laws prohibiting non-Spaniards from carrying weapons so they could “wield their katanas andtantos,” as Mann writes, to fend off bandits.    By the mid-18^th century, the militias guarding Mexico’s Pacific coast against British raiders were “a force of morenos, pardos…”—that is mixed-race Afro-Indians and Afro-Europeans, categorized by the colonizers in a hapless attempt to name every possible combination of genetic admixture over multiple generations—“…Spaniards and chinos, the latter mostly Filipinos and Fujianese.”

1493’s focus on Africans in the new world is its greatest contribution.   At the time Great Britain’s American colonies declared their independence almost three hundred years after Columbus’ landfall, more African immigrants had arrived in the new world than Europeans.    Most did not come voluntarily, of course, but once they arrived they collectively shaped (or escaped) the culture of the eclectic new societies they found themselves in.

They mingled with the native peoples, and with the Europeans—culturally, sexually, linguistically.  New world societies are so distinctive from European societies in part because of the African influence flowing through America’s cultures.  Americans have been reluctant to acknowledge this truth, in part because of the depth of American racism.   But writers, from Mark Twain to Ralph Ellison to William Styron to James Baldwin, have understood that America became as much an African as a European place, and Mann does more to illuminate why that is so that any popular historian before him has ever managed.

1493 is rich in detail, analytically expansive and impossible to summarize.  Reading Mann’s accounts of Africans forging bonds with native peoples throughout the Americas, for example, I thought about the Ramapough Mountain people in New Jersey, a so-called remnant population of mixed African-Indian-European heritage whose community has been destroyed by toxic dumping from a Ford Motor Company assembly plant.   (HBO aired a documentary about this history called “Mann v Ford,” although the plaintiff was not connected to Charles Mann.)   Reading 1493 showed a link between Henry Ford’s epic failed attempt to build an Amazonian rubber empire in the 1920s with the Ramapough’s futile battle two generations latter for justice in America.

1493 deserves a prominent place among that very rare class of books which can make a difference in how we see the world, although it is neither a polemic nor a work of advocacy.   Thoughtful, learned, and respectful of its subject matter, 1493 is a splendid achievement.

Tim Boyle Tiptoes into the Frying Pan

Civic minded, generous and modest, Tim Boyle has always combined business acumen with civic responsibility.   I am happy to call Tim a friend.  So when I heard that he had bought a golf course, during the worst downturn in the golf business since the Great Depression, I had to ask him: “Tim—you’re a smart guy.  What in the world were you thinking?”

Tim, as I expected him to, laughed.  He originally was part of a small ownership group which acquired Gearhart after the previous owners went bust about a dozen years ago.  (The Boyles have a house nearby.)   A couple of the shareholders made unsuccessful attempts to run the restaurant side of the business, Tim said, before bailing out.  Tim recruited his friend Mike McMenamin of the McMenamins brewery, restaurant and hospitality chain, to take over, and  McMenamins continues to run the food and beverage at Gearhart.  “There’s nothing like a cold pint of Hammerhead Ale in the Pot Bunker room to top off your golfing experience,” Tim says, previewing the marketing theme for the new and improved Gearhart, coming your way soon.

Like a lot of golf course proprietors, the family which had run Gearhart Golf Links for many years went sideways when it got too ambitious.  The town of Gearhart is a prosperous seaside community, but Oregonians with money have a habit of keeping it in their pockets (or least not showing off and keeping their consumption inconspicuous), so no one in Gearhart had any interest at all in a fancy golf course designed to impress strangers.   This is not Donald Trump’s world.

After a fire burned down Gearhart’s modest clubhouse, the previous owners erected a fancy new one and spent a lot of money to renovate the course, which made the whole operation tougher and more expensive to run, which is pretty much the standard golf ownership formula for disaster.  Once a course starts losing money, it cuts costs by skimping on maintenance, which makes the course less attractive, which reduces demand, and thus the wheel of misfortune rolls on toward insolvency along the gloomy trajectory of failure.

The new improved clubhouse....where the troubles began.

“Over time,” Boyle said, “I bought some of the partners out and by last year owned about 40%.  In the fall of 2010 we decided to buy the rest.    Now it’s a family enterprise again.  My son, Joe, and my daughter, Molly, are my partners in our new family business.”

The younger Boyles are both excellent golfers, but Joe is a recent dad with limited free time, so his handicap is percolating upwards.   Molly played at the University of Washington—she’s a real stick.  Tim plays better, too, than he lets on; he’s a twelve handicap but broke 80 recently, he confessed, at Nanea Golf Club, the Big Island course in Hawaii that Oregon resident David Kidd designed for moguls Charles Schwab and George Roberts.  Boyle says Nanea is his favorite course, although another Kidd creation, Bandon Dunes, is a strong local contender.

Gearhart has a lot to recommend it, starting with its history.  It’s the oldest golf course in Oregon, and perhaps on the entire west coast.   It’s not really a links (it has tons of trees and it’s tight, two un-linkslike qualities,) but it is near the coast and its soils drain well.  Originally only three greens worth of  golf, Gearhart steadily accreted holes until it reached a full 18 sometime around WW I.    Chandler Egan, the great amateur champion who lived in Medford and during the Twenties designed Eastmoreland, Oswego Lake, Tualatin and Riverside in Boyle’s hometown (as well as laying out an extensive renovation for Waverley Country Club, where Boyle is a member), reportedly assisted in the design of the final 18 hole routing at Gearhart over the decade before his death in 1935.   Boyle said he’s going to see if there are any archives which might help establish the course’s provenance.

“We’re going to approach this in two phases,” Boyle says.  “First we want to get the course’s curb appeal restored.  We’ve already remodeled the restrooms.   We want to put the course on a solid financial footing.”

The  Boyles have hired Greenway Golf from California to put in place a plan to resurrect Gearhart, starting with improved operations.  The team is working with a well-known local consulting agronomist, Forrest Goodling, to improve turf quality.   Boyle wants Gearhart to attract players looking for a straightforward and tranquil place to play.

David Jacobsen of Portland’s well-known golfing family, himself a great amateur for many years and also a member at Waverley, is a good friend of Boyle’s and an advisor on Gearhart.   “David told me we should make Gearhart the place where you have your best round of the summer,” Tim says.

I have heard David espouse this view before, and it has always made sense to me.  The daily fee courses around Portland that are always full and crank out a maximum (if perhaps not optimal) number of rounds each year are the ones which allow medium and high handicappers to score well and not lose a lot of balls.  If a player gets really good, David says, he can head down to PGA West for some comeuppance.  But in the meanwhile, if golf hopes to attract new players and desist from discouraging its current devotees, it has to offer some opportunities for beginners and hackers to experience some success.   Boyle intends to put Jacobsen’s formula to the test.

The 18th at Gearhart Golf Links, Oregon

Phase 2 is still a bit formless, Tim says, and will depend on the pace and execution of Phase 1.  “Phase 1 is really just to make sure we’re not embarrassing ourselves.  Perhaps we’ll do some lodging somewhere down the road,” Boyle says.  “We’ll market around the history of the course.”

Given Boyle’s track record, I am sure he will achieve his goals for Gearhart, with help from Joe and Molly and the team of consultants they’ve brought aboard to assist them.  I’ve played Gearhart enough to know it can be fun and friendly and exactly the kind of golf course that can meet David Jacobsen’s low expectations.  And that’s not a slam, it’s a compliment.

You can’t build a great retail brand without having the kind of x-ray vision that can peer into the consumer’s heart.   When someone with the marketing acuity and wisdom of Tim Boyle lays down a bet on golf, no matter how modest, it’s a hopeful sign for the future of the industry.

For more on Gearhart from The A Position, see http://jeffwallach.com/golf/1378/gearhart-golf-links

Aaron Baddeley Wins at Riviera with Help from Dale Lynch

Australian Aaron Baddeley won the Northern Trust Open at Riviera in Las Angeles today, his first victory on the PGA Tour since 2007.   A world away, in New Delhi, India, S. S. P. Chowrasia won the Avantha Masters for his second European Tour victory, following a triumph at the Indian Masters three years ago.   Baddeley held off an early challenge from Fred Couples and a late run by Vijay Singh to win by two shots, while Chowresia won by a single stroke after Englishman Robert Coles bogeyed the last to drop out of a tie for first.   Chowrasia’s final round featured seven birdies and a late double bogey that would have led to a playoff had Coles not faltered on 18.

Natural Swing Guru Dale Lynch

Dale Lynch is the link to Chowrasia, through another one of his players, Arjun Atwal, the first Indian golfer ever to win on the PGA Tour.   Last year, readers of The A Position were introduced first to Lynch, who had recently relocated to the USA, opening a teaching academy at The Cliffs in South Carolina.    They were taken along as Lynch helped Atwal recover from injuries and relearn a swing that he could execute without pain.   Atwal, who was also profiled in The A Position after his Wyndham win last year, learned to play at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club in Kolkatta, where his family were members. 

Chowrasia Wins India's Avantha Masters

It is also great to see golf personalities who were not particularly well-known when first profiled in The A Position now playing a stronger and stronger role in golf’s wider world.   Lynch’s success with Baddeley, who learned his swing from Lynch as a boy in Australia before straying, the prodigal golfer now returned, will surely attract interest from other aspiring pros.  And if Chowrasia continues to succeed, he may someday join Atwal on the larger stage.   Just as India’s economic growth has made it a rival to China, India’s golf culture, while much older then China’s but for the time being eclipsed by China’s dramatic growth and its extraordinary projects, such as the two Mission Hills (Shenzhen and Haikou), surely India and China will some day each take center stage in world golf.  It would not surprise me if a 21st century rivalry develops in imitation of the US-European Ryder Cup featuring national teams from India and China.

Famous Foreigner Forrest, Founder of the Ping Dynasty

Steve is a thoughtful and thorough person, and he’s been making a serious effort to learn some Mandarin.  Our first Chinese employee, Jackson Van, tries to help him, but Steve, like every laowai, stumbles over the demanding complexities of tone and puzzles over how tonal shifts undetectable to a non-native speakers ear can lead to dramatic shifts in meaning.

Steve’s also tall, and really sticks out in the rural areas where we often go on site visits.  Once in a small village a group of teen-aged girls came squealing up to Steve, begging to have their pictures taken with the giant laowai, so we started calling him Famous Foreigner Forrest. 

We’re in Beijing today, where it’s cold.   Our taxi driver started laughing when we all piled into his little cab–three big foreigners and Jackson.  He nodded toward me and said something while smiling broadly.   I asked Jackson what the cab driver said.  “You have a big nose,” Jackson said.

Steve’s also studying Chinese history and culture, in part so that he won’t commit a major design faux pas.    The art of feng shui is the key to understanding the Chinese approach to landscape design.  It would be a mistake, for example, to have a water fall or stream flowing away from a clubhouse.  Water represents wealth and good chi, so you don’t want it floating away.  We’re trying to avoid making major cultural blunders, although sometimes it’s hard to see past our gigantic noses.

Chinese history is reckoned by its dynasties–the names given to the eras of particular rulers and their descendents.  The Shang and the Zhou and the Qin were among the early dynasties, but the last two ruling houses of China are also the best known in the west: the Ming, from the 14th to the 17th centuries, and the Qing (also known, less euphonically, as the Manchu), which lasted until the last emperor effectively relinquished power in 1912. 

Now that golf is booming in China, Steve suggests that the current age should be known as The Ping Dynasty. 

We think this has a nice ring to it, so in recognition of Steve’s coinage, this posting is, we believe, the official notice of the world’s first written use of the phrase “The Ping Dynasty.”

Saturday at Parco di Roma

Guiseppe Milié, known to all as “Pino,” is an Italian architect who is also the Managing Director of Parco di Roma Golf Club, one of the last new courses built in Italy in the 20^th century.  Designed by the American, P. B. Dye, Parco di Roma is only about eight kilometers as the crow flies from the Vatican.  You can see the dome of St. Peter’s from the 15^th tee.   

The course is routed at the base of a hill on the top of which sits a Norman castle, recently restored by its current owner, the Principessa Sofia Borghese.  Part private residence, part elegant banquet hall, Castello Torcrescenza has been the setting over the last several years for celebrity weddings and splendid state receptions. 

Last summer Silvio Berlusconi, who has reportedly been trying to buy the castle for years from Dona Sofia and her husband, the Marchese Fabrizio Ferarri, finally convinced Dona Sofia—who was described in a recent newspaper article as “a descendent of Pope Paul V,” under whose papacy the Basilica of St. Peter’s was completed—to rent it to him so he could avoid the paparazzi.  It’s a very private setting.   A single gated road provides access to the castle, whose hilltop site was selected for its defensible terrain seven centuries ago.  I was at Parco di Roma right before Berlusconi moved into the castle, and watched teams of burly guys walking around the golf course talking into their shoulders and looking for weaknesses in the security perimeter.

Pino works hard to keep his avid membership at Parco di Roma happy.   The club has 1,400 members, including the bambani, but “no one wants to book a tee time,” Pino says.   “They just want to show up and play.” 

One solution Pino invented takes advantage of the members’ gregarious approach to golf.  Romans love a party, and they’re equally enthusiastic about competitions.   Pino recruited a friend who runs a famous winery to sponsor a competition that combines wine-tasting (or guzzling, depending on your preference)  with Stapleford scoring.

 “On the first tee,” Pino explained, “before you hit your drive you drink three glasses of wine.”   Why three glasses?  “So they have the possibility of drinking 18 glasses before they finish.  I will explain.”

 As an American, my thoughts turned immediately to lawsuits.  As I try to imagine introducing this scheme into the US, all I can see is the image of a clutch of lawyers dancing across a well-manicured lawn tossing handfuls of subpoenas in the air like daisies.  Releases to sign on the first tee.  Designated drivers, and I am not talking about Big Berthas.  Addiction counselors at the turn.  Ah, but this is Rome, which has a couple of millenia of experience with banquets, feasts and Bacchanalia.

“So you play three holes,” Pino continued.  “On the 4^th tee we have another wine table set up.  The glasses are not so big.  You have the possibility now to drink three more glasses.  So let’s say you make 6 on the first hole.  You drink one glass of wine, you now can say you made 5.   Like a Mulligan, only you take it afterwards.  Or say you made bogey on two—you drink one more glass.  Now you made par.  And so on.  With each glass you drink, up to three, you can take off one stroke.”

The competitive objective now is figuring out how to balance the desire to improve your previous scores against the effects of the alcohol on your swing.  Drinking six glasses of wine in forty minutes will have some impact on even the most well conditioned alcoholic…I mean, “golfer.”  After each three hole cluster, players have the chance to drink up to three glasses again, with the same scoring options.  So the sequence is: play three holes, go to the next tee and decide how many strokes you can handle.  Wine awaits on the 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, and 15th tees, with the final slurps available in the clubhouse, at the combination scoring table/tasting room. 

Verification of scores was potentially an issue, but as it turns out, Pino says, nobody focuses very much on the results.  Everyone was eager, however, to get to the buffet, so the kitchen had to be on its game.

 The winery sponsoring the first event was Biondi-Santi.   Here’s what the Italian wine merchants’ webpage says about Biondi-Santi. 

 “Established in 1880, Biondi-Santi was a winery destined for greatness. But it wasn’t until the late-19th century that the estate at “Greppo” made its mark in viticulture history. It was then, in the renowned hills of Montalcino that Ferruccio Biondi-Sante took a clone of the Sangiovese grape, known as Sangiovese Grosso, and produced the first ever Brunello.  Ferruccio’s son Tancredi made the wine famous, officially classifying it as Brunello. Within a decade Biondi-Santi was receiving praise from wine-lovers everywhere. This new classifcation of Tuscan wine forever changed the Italian role in the industry. Today, it is Tancredi’s son Franco Biondi-Santi who runs the estate, producing nearly 70,000 bottles a year. These remarkable Brunellos are best-known for their incredible ability to age. Even 100-year-old Brunello from Biondi-Santi shows remarkably well.”

With proprietor Daniele Tagliaferri at Enoteca Achille: the Biondi-Santi 1891 is on the shelf over my shoulder.

 That last claim is not hyperbolic.  Pino, who knows everyone in Italy, introduced me his friend, Daniele Tagliaferri, who runs a famous Roman wine shop called Enoteco Achille, on Via Parlemento, named for its proximity to the Italian House of Parliament.  Here’s a picture I took recently

When I reminded him of the prices on the great vintage wines we saw at Enoteca Achille, Pino laughed.  “We don’t serve Brunello,” he said.   “We serve a nice rosato”—an Italian rosé.  “Maybe about €48 a bottle.   Light wine compared to the great Brunellos.”

 The prize for winning?  What else, but wine from Biondi-Santi.

“It’s a great competition,” Pino says.  “Even the losers don’t seem too unhappy.  And then afterwards we have a party.”

The China Golf Show in Guangzhou concluded on October 16th after a three day run.  A competing industry event, the Asia Pacific Golf Summit in Bangkok, reduced the number of exhibitors in Guangzhou.  Compared to last spring’s Beijing Golf Show, the Guangzhou event was small and less vibrant, but it nonetheless showcased the qualities that have made China’s golf economy the most dynamic in the world.   

First, a lot of young people attended, drawn by golf’s glamorous status in China.  “Golf” and “glamour” are words not normally yoked in the west, but golf is a “luxury brand” in China, and that gives it cachet.   When westerners speak of golf as an elitist game, they’re not praising it.  But in China, the lust for luxury brands, which drives the huge knock-off market in purses and watches and other consumer goods, also motivates young people to work hard and achieve—old-fashioned virtues whose animating power has diminished in the west. 

Young people in China dream of playing golf because they believe doing so certifies success.   The trajectory is plain: work and study hard, get a good job, buy a house, buy a car, join a golf club.  Given that there are still only 400 or so golf courses in China (and any reliable census is elusive because courses built without official government approval  intentionally fly under the radar), while there are tens of millions of young people focused on getting ahead, the demand curve for golf will continue to point almost straight up. 

There are little signs here and there that the government’s official skepticism of golf development (undermined a bit by the reality that every successful business tycoon and most top government officials play golf) will soon be lifted, a consequence primarily of the legitimacy bestowed on golf as an athletic endeavor by its status as an Olympic sport.  Most people close to the Chinese golf scene believe the day is at hand when golf development will receive the general blessing of the central government, launching a boom that will echo the US golden age of the 1920s, when golf ceased being a novelty and courses were built in thousands of communities across the USA.

No city proclaims China’s rapid ascent as a global economic power over the last three decades louder than Guangzhou’s neighbor, Shenzhen, which is also the epicenter of China’s golf boom.  There are more courses in the Shenzhen-Guangzhou area of Guangdong province than in any other region of China.  The famous Mission Hills complex is here, and many golf course management companies, course builders, and design firms (often under the umbrella of a single company) have headquarters in Shenzhen.   

What’s astonishing about Shenzhen, the closest mainland town to the then British colony of Hong Kong when Deng Xiaoping designated it a “Special Economic Zone” in 1979, is its growth over the last three decades: 30,000 then, and perhaps as many as 18 million now—no one knows for sure.  The city knocks down mountains as it swells across the landscape.  Even natives get lost because Shenzhen constantly refreshes itself.  A magnet for the most ambitious and talented people, modern Shenzhen’s pioneers bequeathed to their descendents a tradition of exhilarating growth.

 It’s less than an hour’s flight from Shenzhen down to Hainan Island, where a boom in officially sanctioned golf course projects is underway.  Tom Weiskopf is doing a course there, as are Coore-Crenshaw, and the ubiquitous Schmidt-Curley, architects of the second Mission Hills, this one in Haikou.  The Hainan version hits the world stage with next week’s Star Trophy, announced last spring as “a ground-breaking Celebrity Pro-Am tournament featuring several of the biggest names in entertainment and sports and the richest individual prize in Asian golf.”

Greg Norman, Annika Sorenstam, and the Ryder Cup captains Colin Montgomery and Corey Pavin are among the twenty professionals competing for a $1.28 “winner-takes-all” prize, along with their pro-am partners and a cluster of Hollywood celebrities.  The Mission Hills’ team has always been great at promoting its projects, and the Star Trophy confirms the Mission Hills Group’s stature as the most innovative and visionary golf development company in Asia.

My favorite guide to modern China is Peter Hessler, who originally came to Sichuan province as a Peace Corps teacher in a village about to disappear under the waters impounded by the Three Gorges Dam.  His memoir of that experience, River Days, earned him a spot as the China correspondent for The New Yorker.  His second book, Oracle Bones, was an anthology of essays, all illuminating and insightful.  I envied his fluency in Chinese, and thought of him as a kind of surrogate for the kinds of questions I would like to be able to ask and the conversations I wish I could have with ordinary Chinese.

Hessler’s most recent book, Country Driving, has a slightly harder edge than his earlier work but the same curiosity and deep empathy are at work.   The book is both grounded in his experience renting a country house in a village north of Beijing, and enlarged by the trips he takes in rental cars around China, particularly a journey along the Great Wall.  He travels far enough west to watch the wall disappear in heaps of sand blown in from the Gobi desert.

Hessler also examines the protocols of smoking, which often involve flaunting a “superior” brand.  In today’s China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, there was a front-page story with the cryptic headline, “Puffing up image as leading lights.”  The story was about the booming Chinese cigar market.  “It’s all part of the new luxury lifestyle,” the paper says, quoting the manager of a five star hotel.  “Nice cars, nice wines and, of course, nice cigars have become a big thing.”

Even the China Daily tries for journalistic balance, appraising the high cost of smoking in China at the same time it’s publishing an article glamorizing smoking cigars.  “China is the world’s biggest consumer of tobacco, with 350 million smokers,” the story reports.  “There are roughly 1 million smoking-related deaths occurring in China every year.  Despite attempts by the Chinese government to build a smoke-free society, as the tobacco companies are all State owned, some provincial authorities rely heavily on the industry as a major source of revenue.  Campaigners argue that this has made smoking more difficult to control.” 

Golf is not the only activity whose very existence in modern China is rich with irony.   It starts at the top, of course, with a government that is both communist and the world’s strongest exponent of capitalism.   Golf has a great future in China, for exactly the same reasons its critics find it suspect in the west: it’s elitist and luxurious and the hobby of the rich.