Gong xi fa cai - from Dongxiang City (it means wishing you wealth and success).
It's that time of year - Chinese New Year and I'm in China for the celebrations and family get togethers and weddings (lots of).
Last week I was telling you about the Year of the Rooster and some of the traditional happenings. You can read it here.
Every year all Chinese people go home, often back to rural villages. Sleepy rural villages spring to life and old friends are united and fireworks set off to celebrate, rice wine toasts and games of mahjong.
It's a chance to show off your successful year, and wish each other much success for the coming year. A few years ago the only car in the village here was my wife's VW Polo (and we was so posh), this year there is almost nowhere to park, and there are BMW's and Merc's - we are old news :)
The nearby city of Dongxiang has transformed from a sleepy provincial city into a lively metro with stunning parks, lakes, shopping centres and posh apartment complexes. This year a wave of new funky restaurants, have opened. The style is vintage semi industrial designs, with old TV's and typewriters for decor and ultra modern order systems. You can often order from an app on your smartphone.
We went out for dinner the other night, and failed to find a restaurant that had a table spare. All the funky places were packed out, all the old canteen style were closed for family celebrations.
When I first came here, there was only one place in town you could actually buy a coffee, wine was unheard of. Now Starbucks is a main brand and wine bars (selling Australian wine) are common.
The benefits of globalization to China are manifestly good, lifting millions out of poverty and many to a very comfortable middle class.
It seems me in the UK we are turning our backs on globalisation just at the point where it is our turn to benefit, what do these asian folk all want. Anything as long at is European, todays CNY gifts are Danish biscuits, Belgian chocolate, Spanish ham.. Everyone speaks or wants to speak english, they all would love to go to London.
I wonder if the CNY shindig is a major factor in China success, no-one wants to go home looking poorer than last year. If you can't flash a bit of cash at new year you lose face big time. Plus it's a great exchange of ideas and knowledge. What business is good, where the best jobs are etc. So they will head out soon refreshed and motivated (armed with new ideas) to work every hour night and day all year, so they can come home next year driving a new car and crying "gong xi fa cai".
Anyway, tomorrow is a wedding day, my wife's son is getting married. Should be interesting, I'll report next week.
After the wedding I'm off to Kuala Lumpur and onward to Bali.. so it's all go.
Meanwhile back in Sheffield, it's a container a day time of year, this week containers from Indonesia and China arrived. We are restocking as quickly as possible.
I know there have been some complaints that we are out of stock of many things. It's not good, but we are actually better stocked than this time last year and fighting hard to refill our warehouses. In January we have doubled our bath bomb making capacity, and shortly will be doubling it again as new equipment is installed. We are doing everything possible, short of turning away new customers.
I'm painfully aware that many of you need stock in order to trade, that stock is your living and excuses don't rub. I know I really do, I used to be a retailer.
With a combination of lavish overtime, extra staff and weekend shifts we have finally got the backlog of orders down to a reasonable time frame. Plus bathbombs - this years hottest line are finally pretty much all in stock. Three China containers and two Indonesian should put swathes of products back in stock.
I trust the Valentines trade is picking up, still time to stock up - check out our deals below.
Take care... and Gong xi fa cai!
