I come to realise that the people in Hainan tend to be smaller in build as compared to their northern counterparts. They frankly look like Singaporeans and speak a kind of Mandarin that is not as polised as those spoken in Beijing or Shanghai. In fact, they sounded like Malaysian Madarin! As for me, I was mistaken by most people here as either a Korean or a Japanese! Perhaps my dressing and the way I speak made people mistook my true identuty.

Hainan also is home to many minority ethnic Chinese people here not unlike those in Tibet. They wear head scarves and are mostly darker in complexion. They do not seem to own any shops here but work for shop owners who are mostly mainland Chinese owners.

The city is also fithy and if you eat at some small eateries you have to literally close your eyes or else you may not be able to stomach having to look at some rubbish out in the streets and eating food on your table. There are not many rubbish bins and once I have to hold an empty can for about half an hour before I could find a bin to dispose the can. For those staying here, they may be used to living around with filth in their streets but for a clean-environment Singaporean like me, it was difficult to walk out surrounded by waste and rubbish.

For those entreprenuer in nature, Hainan represents a good opprotunity to do some business in the language school area. There are not too many language schools here and this is surprising as they have an influx of tourists here yearly. Perhaps, due to their low income, many could not afford the school fees to take up learning for a second language. If one can pitch the school fees to the low income of the people here, I believe that this is a viable business to consider.

Nevertheless, it is never easy to do business in China. One needs a local partner here before a business license can be issued. Moreover, it is always better for one to be around  if he wants to do business in China. There are too many stories of our people getting conned here.

With a population of seven million people here,  I am sure that even with a one percent of these people keen on taking up language courses, the language school will eventaully take off.

Big cities like Guangchow or Shanghai have too many language schools now and it will be very difficult for one to compete with these big boys. Setting up a language school in a rural part of China makes sense as firstly there is lesser competition and secondly people will want to find out more about such new langauge courses.

People in transition who are keen to explre business opportunities in China can email me for further details. I don’t promise that I can help you alot in setting up shop here but at least I can give you some tips before you start off.

Tomorrow, I will be flying off to Wuhan where I taught during last year and my next reporting could be a few days later.

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