More Monopoly Money, Please

It’s a damn good thing that I live in a city where the accepted legal tender is basically Monopoly money, because finance gives me the heebie jeebies. It always has. My pre-adolescent lemonade stands went bankrupt, the last time I balanced a checkbook was during a particularly awesome round of hacky-sack, and the merest whiff of an Excel spreadsheet gives me explosive diarrhea.

I have long suspected that this has something to do with my general aversion to math. I could never quite wrap my head around the idea that there was only one answer to any given equation. “Why does everything have to be so black and white with you?” I would ask my arithmetic teacher as she methodically tore up my exam results into teeny little squares and sprinkled the confetti over my desk. “Whatever happened to shades of grey?”

You remember those questions: A train leaves Kunming traveling north at 30 miles an hour. At the same time, a train leaves Beijing traveling south at 60 miles an hour. In which city will they meet? My answer: Twelve, but only if a merry band of slapstick kung-fu train robbers don’t stage a holdup, only to be thwarted by Jackie Chan’s wacky hijinks. In which case, the answer is 47. Duh.

I graduated high school just fine, but out in the real world, where power is consolidated in the hands of small-minded cubicle dwellers whose secretest fantasies involve the newest version of QuickBooks Pro and a calculator with a ball-gag over its LCD, people seem less accommodating. Somebody needs to explain to the bank tellers of Earth that Jackie Chan has everything to do with my overdrawn account, thankyouverymuch.

For someone like me, the thought of opening a business is almost laughable. I’ve always assumed that I would be forever relegated to the ranks of kooky creative types who eat their breakfast with disposable chopsticks because they can’t be bothered to wash any one of the 35 forks that have been sitting in the sink since Christmas.

So last week, when I caught myself getting excited about the possibilities of opening up an agricultural co-operative in Yunnan raising caterpillars that grow mushrooms on their heads (seriously, Google ‘caterpillar fungus’), I had to wonder if something hadn’t changed. And then I had to take a psychological field trip to the bathroom where I gazed at my suspiciously adult complexion and slapped myself back into economic immaturity. But even that little bit of well-timed self abuse couldn’t completely cure the bug.

Beijing’s all-pervasive entrepreneurial spirit is more than just catchy, it’s downright viral. And no wonder. Back home, your totally original business idea has already been done by someone with more starting cash, more know-how, and more pheromone-laced hair gel than you could ever hope to have. But in a land where few business owners are interested in catering to the niche markets, an increasing numbers of shiftless slackers are discovering that their weird hobbies have real money-making potential. Goodbye pointless banjo pick collection, hello Beijing’s first ever bluegrass music emporium.

What’s even more rad is that, as far as China’s concerned, all those blasé, So-Ten-Years-Ago fads that were outrageously popular back in the day haven’t even happened yet. The Magic Eight Ball. The South Beach Diet. Count Chocula. What you have here is a veritable blueprint for economic success. A little targeted tweaking and a little cultural whitewash, and your tired old concepts become the next hot thing. The Magic Ba Ball. The Nan Hai Diet. Comrade Chocula. I mean, have you ever had those daydreams where you travel back in time already knowing which companies are going to boom, and you drop like, a hundred bucks on stock and then you come back and cash them all in? Exactly.

Anyway, I thought to myself, if Ana Sophie of sexybeijing.tv can parlay a pair of cat eye glasses, a penchant for sex talk and a video camera into one of the hottest internet TV stations this side of Korea, then I can round up my nephew’s defunct pog collection and Mcguyver myself some extra spending cash. It’s like an entire country made of pure, unprocessed eBay, with quasi-unique, golden opportunities lurking in every storage balcony.

“Why, Kendra,” you say, “that sounds just like the American Dreamâ„¢!” Why yes, yes it does. And the notion that it’s now Made in China is enough to make me wanna wash some forks.

Anyway, since the caterpillar farm thingie, a whole army of synapses that have enjoyed a blissful twenty-five year grace period have suddenly begun firing on overdrive. Mundane trips to the xiaomaibu have morphed into spontaneous brainstorming sessions on the logistics of opening a chain of foreigner-geared convenience stores. I’d call them LaoWai Bu. They’d have slurpees.

Oh, and then there’s my surefire restaurant concept, Ching Chong’s Ping Pong Fing Fong: American Style Chinese Cuisine, serving all your hometown USA classics. Don’t miss our low fat chow main, orange factory-farmed chicken and Mandarin-speaking Western staff. Now with fortune cookies and real Chinese take-out boxes!

No? How about Insta-Cool English: a slang training school for the emerging middle class, where hipster aspirants will get a crash-course in essential phrases for over-privileged youth, including “I have that on vinyl” and “McMeat is McMurder”.

You saw it here first.