The Wind Comes from the Sea

With a Chinese employee at a foreign-owned company and an overseas secondee as its dual protagonists, this story focuses on the culture clashes and workplace ups and downs of coastal cities in the 1980s as they opened their eyes to the wider world. As foreign companies entered China, three young people sought their place and future amid this sea-borne "tailwind."

In 1984, to arrange employee placements with foreign businesses, the Shanghai Foreign Enterprise Service Department was officially expanded into the Shanghai Foreign Service Company. The story follows its first group of Chinese hires: a technical expert who left a family business, a gifted graduate fresh out of a prestigious university, and a market vegetable seller who had come from a short-term training course. As they learned to work with Chinese executives sent from Hong Kong and a newly arrived American general manager, they encountered clashes of ideas, differences in management, and culture shock. At the same time, they sought their place and future in this sea-borne "tailwind," helping the three families they left behind escape poverty and hardship and settle down in Shanghai.