Final Numbers and Thoughts

Days in China: 45
Cities Visited: 11
Courses Played: 13
Favorite Course: Clearwater Bay / Spring City Mountain Course
Best City: Beijing
Favorite Golf Experience: Sinking a 30-foot putt for birdie on the hardest hole of the Mountain Course
Favorite non-golf Experience: Having a four-hour dinner with eight young Chinese people I met in their apartment
Best Historical Site: Terra-Cotta Warriors


I'm back in New York after a month and a half in China, and the trip went smoother and was more interesting that I could have ever imagined. Besides my food poisoning and subsequent visit to a Chinese hospital and the fact that it rained everyday i was in Lijiang, I didn't run into any other problems and the weather was amazing. I was even luckier considering that while I was in China the country was going through the worst flooding in over a decade, and a few of the cities I visited experienced record rainfall and flooding after I left. Before the trip I was aiming for 10-15 rounds of golf in China, and if it were not for the food poisoning and bad rain in Lijiang I would have gotten 15 rounds in, but if I had altered my itinerary just a little bit there's a possibility that I would not have even reached 10 rounds.

In addition to the rounds of golf, my informal interviews and conversations with people involved in the golf industry were fascinating. I was able to speak with a major developer, caddies, businessmen who have picked up the game and take it very seriously, hackers who have no clue what they're doing on the course and people who work at courses on the business side of golf. A lot of these conversations happened by chance, like when I decided to take the company shuttle home in Chongqing because the course couldn't find an affordable cab for me. These conversations were just as informative (if not more so) than my actual rounds, and I wish that I had more opportunities for these types of conversations. However, on most days I arrived at the course and found it almost empty, so the starter didn't pair me with any Chinese people. Part of the reason is because there's so little volume at the courses that I can play alone, and part of it was that Chinese people don't like to play during the middle of the summer, when the heat index in some cities was over 110 degrees. I think that had I done this trip in the springtime I would have been able to speak more with locals, but I only have summer break, so I had no choice.

In terms of some of the non-golf aspects, Beijing continues to amaze me and it was great to return there. After coming home from Beijing, New York seems calm. New York is quieter and less hectic to me. If there's one thing that I don't miss about Beijing and other Chinese cities though, it's how nerve-racking walking around and riding in cars is. None of the cars obey traffic laws - my cabs ran red lights, drove on the shoulder of the road, drove for over ten minutes on the side reserved for opposite traffic when it was empty, passed on a double line, and did not give the right of way to pedestrians even when it was their light. In terms of new cities that I visited on this trip, Xi'an was probably my favorite. The Terra-Cotta Warriors were great, as was walking the city wall. I wouldn't spend time outside the old city walls, but inside there are some great sites, restaurants and a lot of activity in the streets.

Before this trip I had no clue how pronounced the differences between the dialects in China are. I knew that Cantonese and Mandarin are totally different, but I figured I could get around Sichuan without any issues. I was amazed at how different Beijing Mandarin and Sichuanese are. One day I asked a lady for directions in Chinese and the lady said, "wo ting bu dong" or "I don't understand." It was pretty frustrating for me in Sichuan because of this, but even in Xi'an and cities in other provinces there were some notable differences in their dialect. Some people even asked me if I lived in Beijing because I had a Beijing accent. That's another reason why I was so happy to get to Beijing, where communicating was so much easier.

Circling back to golf, what did I learn about golf in China and how it reflects Chinese cultural values? The thing that really stuck with me was my conversation in Chongqing on the company bus with a lady who worked in HR at the golf course I played. She told me she felt that Chinese people played golf because they saw it as being tied to development and wanted to do what they could to help their country develop. I was really impressed with the awareness that it would take for someone to make this calculation as well as how this showed how much they care about their country. Another sentiment I got from a handful of people was the feeling that when Chinese people have money and the economy is good, they should spend it, enjoy life and funnel money back in to the economy. China is known as a very frugal country, where citizens same most of their money. People who analyze the Chinese economy say that domestic spending needs to increase for real development to occur and to balance their economy. So it was interesting to see this other side of the mentality of Chinese people. Then, the most prevalent thought was that golf is good for business. Chinese businessmen rely so much on "guanxi" or personal relationships to so business, and golf is a part of building up that "guanxi." All of these examples to me underlie the pragmatism of Chinese people.

What is holding golf back in China? Access. So many of the courses are too expensive for the average Chinese person. I can't imagine hitting balls at a driving range for years on end before actually playing 18 holes, but that is what some people do. As I said in another post, equipment and balls are also so expensive. In order for golf to really take hold in China, there need to be more courses like Longgang in Shenzhen, where the greens fees are artificially low thanks to the local government. That was the only course I saw that was packed with players, and it still was a really nice course. I think that China needs to move away from the expensive Jack Nicklaus courses and others like that which are built for only the richest Chinese and foreigners like Koreans, Japanese and Westerners. They need to address the issue of access and cultivate knowledgeable professionals, cheaper courses (even if they're not top-notch) and maybe a program like The First Tee to spread golf. I wonder how much golf will suffer in China when their economy goes through a tough phase.

The calligraphy I got made in Beijing - On the right is says "summer 2010 golf in China" and then all of the cities I visited are listed using traditional characters

For anyone who loves golf and is interested in China, bring your clubs. You can get deals you can't get anywhere else for the quality of the courses and you can meet some great people along the way. China's best asset is its people, and spending time talking to them about golf or anything else is a great experience.