"Dear Consul General"

Today I find myself back in an old fashioned business: I'm writing letters. Of course I will still use my computer to write them, but for a moment I had forgotten there is outside still a world that has no clue about Facebook, Twitter and gathering information online.

At the end of last week we suddenly got a range of emergency assignments for speakers for a European delegation that was due this week. Yesterday, I went to one of the speeches and was able to ask them why they approached us so late. I learned from the diplomat involved that he got the information from another consulate in Shanghai we worked with. How else would he have been able to hear about us?

He was of course right and today I have started to write letters to the trade offices and consulates in Shanghai we are not yet working with, to send it by mail with a nice brochure. First we take on Shanghai, because from my contacts I understand they they are swamped with trade missions and visiting business delegations without having enough resources to cope. In the rest of China the pressure does not seem that high. But when it works, we might include them too.