Home Perspectives Song Shiqiang Making My Way in Huaqiangbei: The Five Arts of Ingratiation

Making My Way in Huaqiangbei: The Five Arts of Ingratiation

2026-10-27 932

The New Year is coming and the social calendar has filled up. These past few days I have been going back to Huaqiangbei again and again to drink and talk nonsense with old friends, and the conversation turned to how Old Song here made such a splash in Huaqiangbei a few years back. In those days I collected a good many honours: three years running, in 2012, 2013 and 2014, I was named Huaqiangbei's best teller of jokes, Huaqiangbei's most formidable street-stall economist, and Huaqiangbei's most popular popular-science writer among middle-aged women. Everyone insisted that I share the secret, so I shall draw on my eighty-odd years of life experience and set out what I know about working a circle of people.

When you first step into a new circle you are eager to talk to everyone, but many people are shy and unsure of themselves. Some are afraid of saying the wrong thing and giving offence; some worry that they are not up to the mark, that their views are not clever enough, and that they will make fools of themselves. Brother Bo, a vice-president of LCSC, likens it to a young girl waiting for her boyfriend: she is afraid he will not turn up, and afraid that he will turn up and misbehave — a painful dilemma. Old Song of Kinghelm here became popular with the shopkeepers of Huaqiangbei, and with the women of the second-hand trade, in a very short time, so there must be a method to it, a set of tricks. I shall set them out today in the hope that my modest contribution may inspire others to share their own insights.

Making My Way in Huaqiangbei: The Five Arts of Ingratiation

To win people over, I have reduced it all to one word: ingratiation. First, ingratiating yourself with power; second, with money; third, with popular taste; fourth, with the crowd; fifth, with yourself. Get these five clear in your head and put them into practice, and is there any circle you cannot work?

1. Courting power

Let us start with the basics. We are citizens of this country, and it does no harm to keep a little faith in the place we live in. In the past few decades my own life has changed beyond recognition, at a pace of development that had not been seen for thousands of years. Here in Huaqiangbei we have a glass of wine every day, shopkeepers to joke with and karaoke to sing; that is already not bad at all. Where society falls short, give it a little understanding and a little room. None of us is especially noble; we all have to be improved, refined and raised up a step at a time. Look for what is good in the country we live in and in the way it is run; complain a little less, and put a little more fairness and positive energy into circulation.

Then there is the considerable power wielded by group owners these days; beside the old production-team leader, a group owner counts as a senior official. If somebody offends him he moves one little finger and throws them out of the group, and then there is no singing and no drinking, and what a gloomy business that is. Take the owner of the Huaqiangbei Electronics Fun group, the big man in black from Anda Technology in Singapore, Jason Fan — him you must not offend at all. Nobody is allowed to complain that he keeps posting advertisements for "Anda, international sourcing specialists"; when the bill comes we must pretend to fight over it, and on no account slip off to the washroom at that moment. If Brother Jason ever discovered the truth and started throwing people out of the group, we would lose touch with all these beautiful shopkeepers, and that would be a poor bargain. Once I told him that all the young beauties in the group were his, and that he could leave the middle-aged ladies to the rest of us brothers. He was so moved that he stood up across the coffee table to shake my hand, nearly knocked over the cups, and swept the tabletop with the shirttail he had pulled out of his belt. "A true friend, brother. I shall stop selling advertising — all the work I put into the Fun group was for exactly this. You are the only one who understands me. If the chance comes I shall have you promoted to the twenty-eighth deputy owner of Electronics Fun," he said, shaking my hand hard and meaning every word.

2. Courting money

Huaqiangbei is full of people in business, each with a company of their own. A company is an economic entity that exists to make a profit, and money is everyone's aim and wish — otherwise why would we put ourselves through the misery of being bosses? There is a class of people who have grown rich ahead of the rest, and we must keep on good terms with them and pat them on the back now and then, whether or not there is any occasion for it. When I meet Daisy, the wealthy and very beautiful businesswoman of Huaqiangbei — a boss in her own right rather than a boss's wife, a boss with no wife attached, as we sometimes put it — I immediately say, with due humility: "My company, Kinghelm, is twenty years behind your Hongxin Micro. I must learn from you seriously; if the chance comes, I hope you will exploit me. Why not acquire us one of these days?" And when I meet Dr Zhu of Zhongyifa, a man of money and of learning, I say: what a fine feeling your company's name has — "the Chinese people, high in spirits and full of drive" — so much of its era, and so rousing. If you know of any way to make money, tell me quietly; I can introduce you to the beautiful shopkeepers of Huaqiangbei. Dr Zhu was delighted. His small eyes, behind thick lenses, darted from side to side in a single sidelong glance; then he plumped himself down beside me, drank three full glasses of beer with me, and, wagging his head, opened his heart in Hunanese-accented Mandarin: "This lone man has a weakness, and it is a fondness for beauty. Here in Huaqiangbei, you are my good brother."

In truth, what we want to borrow from such people is the way they conduct themselves and do business, the business models worth learning from, and the rich industry resources that stand behind them.

3. Courting popular taste

That is to say, do the things that everybody likes, the things ordinary people are glad to see, with an eye to participation and to experience. These days I have taken to playing the grandfather, because there are far too many people playing the grandson and I cannot compete with them, so I have changed my approach. When I was young I had a great many ideals. The honour of being recognised as a poet, the laurels of a writer, the title of a hero — all of them drifted past before my eyes. As I grew up, the thought of winning glory for my country and of making my name would not leave me: a man gets one life, and even if I could not carve my name into a distant mountain, I would at least fall in harness with my heart still burning. What a pity, then, that the years have gone and my hair has greyed before its time, and I have not a shred of fame to show for it; instead, like Liu Sanbian, the Song poet I admire most, I have carried all my learning up and down the country and turned it into jokes. One thing consoles me: the ambition I had as a child, to be an engineer, I actually achieved. I am now an engineer in Huaqiangbei — domestically produced, genuine, no substitutes, ten times the price if it is a fake, three-month return if it has never been installed.

Back to popular taste. I have always held that the refined is the son or the grandson of the vulgar, that the thoroughly vulgar is the thoroughly refined, and that to put on refinement too hard is to play the son or the grandson. If I speak of "Sunny Spring and White Snow", few will join in; the tune is too high for the crowd. If I speak of Schrödinger's cat, nobody in Huaqiangbei will listen. But say something in the manner of "The Rustic Songs of Xia Li", tell a joke or a story, and the responses come pouring in. The moment I mention the great beauties of the Huaqiangbei circle, Kexin and Xiao Luo, mouths water and spittle flies and everyone is stirred up and rolling up their sleeves. When I tell people about the food of my native Sichuan they love it; a Chaozhou brother came over at once to talk, and took me to eat the rice noodles of his home town. I saved the price of a fast-food meal and gained a friend — what a good thing that is. This too is a technique for engaging with people.

4. Courting the crowd

The electronics circle of Huaqiangbei is a popular, grassroots circle; its people come from all over, and their backgrounds and experience differ enormously. My own trade, for instance, was property, which we shorten to "property affairs" — a phrase with quite another meaning in polite company — until I was talked into crossing over to Beidou (www.bds666.com) modules and Beidou antennas. People's values, their sense of what life is for, and their overall views of the world differ enormously. When they come together, whether or not there is business to be done is a secondary question: first you must get to know one another, first you must find something to talk about, and only with greater familiarity and mutual trust will there be deals and cooperation. In the world of hosting, they call it "never letting the conversation drop" — in business and in working a circle you cannot let things go cold, or there is no pull to the occasion and no heat. Everyone here is an adult, a business person, an entrepreneur: astronomy and geography, the clean and the dirty, the meaty and the mild, business lore and household tips can all go on the table first, and once things have reached a certain point you can talk more deeply. Ideas mingle and views collide, inspiration arrives and the experience is a pleasure; and who knows, a piece of business and a new idea may come out of it, and the next stage of development then follows naturally.

That is why Old Song of Kinghelm talks nonsense with everyone, deliberately and accidentally, on any occasion or none. I say a little too much and make a few too many mistakes, but I have made some men happy and entertained some women, and in the end everyone is pleased and cheerful, and there is a catfish effect in Huaqiangbei too. That is the value of it. So my popularity has grown steadily, and where there is popularity there is money. In business, building a large mixed circle along an entire industrial ecosystem is both necessary and useful.

5. Courting yourself

That is simply to be full of confidence, to know how to laugh at yourself, and to be able to let things go. Sometimes confidence and self-mockery are tangled up together: see things clearly, live with gusto, and then learn to set them down. Of course, a person without confidence can never laugh at himself. There is a story going round about a famous elderly scientist who, shortly after marrying a much younger woman, appeared in an advertisement for some brand. The scene, they say, went like this: he put out his tongue and made an exaggerated, broad gesture, and announced in ringing tones, "I can." In the next instalment the old gentleman raised a finger, wagged it emphatically, and said with a smile, "I still can." Of course it is only a joke — but for us very greasy middle-aged men, what a noble quality that is. And I think of an old Hong Kong television advertisement for a stomach remedy. A roomful of women selling insurance are exercising at the morning meeting; once the adrenaline and the dopamine are flowing nicely they raise their right fists above their heads, faces flushed red, and shout in rhythm, "The more you work, the more you earn, the more you work, the more you earn." Then they go out in fine spirits and with great enthusiasm to face their customers' doubts, objections and refusals. Selling insurance must be at least as hard as selling ICs in Huaqiangbei. If the women who run businesses in Huaqiangbei can handle that, is there any IC they cannot sell?

Mocking yourself is in fact a good way to lighten the atmosphere and close the distance; it is also a sign of genuine self-confidence. When I boast to people, for instance, I say that my IQ is a solid 250 — and in Chinese, 250 is the number of a fool. Jason of Anda in Singapore promptly says that his weight is 250; Brother Bo of LCSC says he has 250 of essence left; Mr Chang of Ichunt says his business sense is 250. All of it is a superior kind of self-mockery, and in a moment everyone is lively and closer and more familiar. What we talk about is what happens around us and to our own persons; people take it in easily, and they can hold it up against themselves and compare. Everyone has his own particular charm and his own inner world; in the space of his own mind each man is the master, each man is his own king.

I have rambled on at length about the ways of working a circle, and I do not know whether any of it will be of use. It is one man's opinion, one narrow view. You are all welcome to come to Kinghelm for tea and a talk.

This piece is dedicated to the friends in Huaqiangbei who have helped us so selflessly. Thank you, everyone.

Introduction to Mr. Song Shiqiang

Mr. Song Shiqiang is the general manager of both Slkor and Kinghelm. He is a member of the expert pool of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, an expert on the business of Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen, and a columnist and popular-science writer. Song Shiqiang began his career as a front-line technician and has served as the CEO of an internationally listed real estate company. He has wide experience in technical management and business operation, and he combines macroeconomic theory with the practical realities of running a business, leading his companies to rapid growth.

Slkor and Kinghelm, the two companies in which Mr. Song Shiqiang has invested, are headquartered in Shenzhen, China, and both are national high-tech enterprises. The Slkor brand (www.slkoric.com) and the Kinghelm brand (www.kinghelm.net) enjoy international recognition and reputation, and their market share continues to expand. Shenzhen Slkor focuses on the development of new materials, new processes and new products; its technical team comes from Yonsei University in Korea and Tsinghua University, and it was among the first to master silicon carbide MOSFET technology. Slkor has grown from a fabless design house into a comprehensive company covering design and development, manufacturing, total solutions and sales service.

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