Three factors motivated me to ask Veronica Truong to start a group blog with me:

• I realized I knew some cool people in Seattle who, like me, were into both public relations and China.
• I noticed a lot of China-related stories in Seattle media that were obviously driven by public relations practitioners, such as the Bing/Baidu partnership and the opening of the Seattle Chinese Garden, which I could blog about.
• I remembered that during his presentation at Puget Sound PRSA’s 2011 Jumpstart event, Scott Meis recommended group blogging as a way to excel in online personal branding for a relatively low time commitment.

We’re hoping that Seattle Guanxi will be not only a blog but a resource, which is why we include suggested events and groups on our site. We are also considering including Seattle area job and volunteer postings related to the blog’s topics.

In my opinion, successful new blogs today rely heavily on community, include video and treat the blog’s site as part of a content ecosystem that also includes Twitter and Facebook. We plan on incorporating all of these into Seattle Guanxi, accomplishing the community part by interviewing and including contributed posts from people who are more influential and popular than us. You will see video through our own vlogging and hopefully video interviews, as well. We also have a @seattleguanxi Twitter handle and Seattle Guanxi Facebook page that we will use within the contexts of those two sites’ own communities.

How is Seattle Guanxi going to be different than this blog, Beijing Duck? Well, in addition to the community features listed above, the content focus is different. Beijing Duck’s content sometimes relates to Seattle because I live here, but that’s really not the point of this blog. I try to write about China, public relations and art regardless of geographic location.

Feel free to comment at http://seattleguanxi.wordpress.com/ or communicate with us on Twitter or Facebook on what you would most like to see out of Seattle Guanxi.

I thoroughly enjoyed:

• The Improvised Shakespeare Company
• MarchFourth Marching Band
• YACHT (music)
• The Trey McIntyre Project (dance)
• Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue
• Dan Savage and Terry Miller: It Gets Better (words and ideas panel)
• Manos: The Hands of Felt by Puppet This
• 1 Reel Film Festival - Frankly Female films: Election Day, Worn, 0507

I didn’t love:

• Why Censorship? Why Revolution? Why Now? (words and ideas panel)
• Kristin Hersh: Paradoxical Undressing (music/monologue one-woman show)
• 1 Reel Film Festival – Frankly Female film: Connect To
• Visual art: The Magic Show, Skaters Gauntlet, Bumber by Number

I wish I saw:

• Spectrum Dance Theater
• Vendetta Red
• Lots of 1 Reel Film Festival: Best of SIFF 2011 Jury Award Winners, Best of SIFF Audience Award Winners, Around the World in 50 Minutes

Image taken without permission from official Bumbershoot site.

Highlights of the news cycle, almost entirely from last Friday, August 12:

• Ai Weiwei’s Google+ profile: +艾未未
• Reuters: Ai Weiwei endured “immense pressure” in detention: source
• Telegraph: Ai Weiwei was subject to ‘immense psychological pressure’ in jail
• TIME Global Spin: A Glimpse into Ai Weiwei’s 81 Days of Detention
• New York Times: Conditions of Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei’s Detention Emerge
• The New Yorker: Ai Weiwei: “We Want to Shame You”
• Wall Street Journal: Ai Weiwei Resumes His Defiance of Beijing
• The Economist: Ai Weiwei: In and out of jail
• Slate: Ai Weiwei Describes “Mental Torture” of Chinese Imprisonment

It is especially interesting to me as a media professional how news sources are all jumping on this news cycle because it’s such a hot story, though it’s difficult to come up with anything new when Ai Weiwei technically can’t do interviews. I’m curious to see which direction this news takes and how Ai Weiwei chooses to continue to speak out publicly through social media, art and banned interviews.

My past Nyhus blog posts:
How to Avoid a Social Media Disaster – Takeaways from PRSA/NIRI Luncheon April 20
Blogging and SEO Resources from Wordcamp Seattle 2011
Nyhus Speaks and Sponsors at PRSA Jumpstart

I’ll make sure to keep calling out my Nyhus posts on this blog, almost all of which fit into this blog’s public relations category.

In my opinion, these criteria make an “about” section easiest to copy and paste:

1. Third person
2. Full sentences
3. 50-100 words and easy to turn into 1-2 paragraphs
4. Free of grammatical errors
5. Clearly explains what you do

Additionally, I love it when someone’s name, title, employer(s), high quality photo, and copy and paste-able bio are all available on his or her LinkedIn profile, and his or her company has a LinkedIn page with a copy and paste-able “about” section. A close second is if all this is easy to find through searching on the company website.

Strong examples, which I found through LinkedIn searching:

From Liz Herbert’s LinkedIn profile:

“Liz, who is based in Cambridge, Mass., serves Sourcing & Vendor Management professionals. Her key research areas include software-as-a-service (SaaS) and ERP implementation with a focus on SAP and Oracle implementation. In the SaaS space, Liz helps clients evaluate the SaaS model, including SaaS pricing and licensing; best practices for contract negotiation, benefits, and tradeoffs of SaaS deployment; and strategies and considerations for maximizing the value of SaaS investments. In the ERP implementation space, Liz helps clients understand the ERP implementation provider landscape as well as best practices for provider selection, RFPs for implementation projects, and provider governance models.”

[The only thing I would change is "Sourcing & Vendor Management" to "sourcing and vendor management."]

From Forrester Research’s LinkedIn page:

“Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 19 key roles at major companies providing proprietary research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 27 years, Forrester has been making IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit www.forrester.com.”

Additionally, I discovered today a blog post on the importance of bios and tips for writing good ones, The Resume is Dead, The Bio is King. I commented on it because I’m having trouble deciding on where to post my copy and paste-able bio and where to keep my content first person and customized to the social network. As an interim fix, I added my copy and paste-able bio to the top of this blog’s About Beth page and kept the detailed about second I developed based on Bob Dunn‘s excellent advice in his Wordcamp Seattle presentation below the new bio. The standardization of my bio online is a lot less important that that of a popular company spokesperson, though.

What trends and problems have you encountered in copying and pasting bios and “about” sections or writing your own? Do you agree with my criteria for copy and paste-able? Do you have any thoughts on how I can improve my copy and paste-able bio? Let me know in the comments.

“Learning about Internet culture is like learning a new language. Immersion is the most important approach – but immersion in cyberspace has its seductive side. There is always something new: there are new developments related to the Internet, whether technological, social, cultural, or political. Studying the Internet did indeed feel like shooting a moving target. …To be sure, the Internet changes daily. But that does not mean what happened yesterday is meaningless today, for every little development in the past becomes part of the present. …Seen in this way, no research of the Internet can be outdated.”

I love this excerpt from a social media studies lens for two reasons, first because it addresses the idea that books on the Internet (and therefore social media) are pointless because both are changing so quickly, and second because the “always something new” factor is a major challenge I see in credibility of people who work or consult in social media. I have yet to decide if I ever want to make the commitment to constantly pay attention to what’s new online, which I view as a necessary step in social media professionals’ taking me seriously as an industry peer.

What’s my background in this area? I spent my second of two consecutive years in China teaching in Beijing Geely University’s Foreign Languages College and at a branch of New Oriental Elite Kids. Geely University is an expensive, pretty new but large university on the rural outskirts of Beijing for students who did not get into prestigious public universities. New Oriental Elite Kids is an expensive academy for students aged 4-18 to take small classes and private lessons outside of their regular schooling. New Oriental is an international language education chain famous within China. I took these two jobs to provide me with income, stability and an extra year of Beijing life while I got my public relations career together.

Some of my Geely University students, coworkers and I on a field trip to the Forbidden City.

A lot of this series’ content may sound negative because I want to warn of China’s high percentage of sketchy English education employers and attitudes toward work and education that most Americans I know disagree with. That said, I loved living in Beijing, my teaching memories from there are mostly positive, and I endorse teaching English through a good employer as a means to first-hand China access. Please note that China varies quite a bit by region and city, so my experience in Beijing may not directly translate to what you can expect in other cities. China’s cost of living and inflation are also increasing rapidly, so my advice from nearly a year ago may be out of date.

First, I’d like to point out a few great online resources:

• U.S. Embassy guide to teaching English in China
• Popular, useful English-language sites specific to Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu: The Beijinger, Shanghaiist, GoChengdoo
• My Tips for Students on Finding Post-Grad Jobs Abroad series
• My blog’s China category
• For my Facebook friends, my notes from June 2008 to June 2010

The following are typical qualifications of English teachers at full-time, reliable employers in Beijing:

• Citizen of an English-speaking country
• Bachelor’s degree, not in a major related to teaching or Chinese
• Passport and diploma copies confirming the above two
• No Chinese language ability
• 0-1 years teaching experience, including tutoring
• Usually you must be from the United States or United Kingdom and be Caucasian due to accent and racial discrimination. However, Geely University hires non-Caucasian teachers.
• Geely University also hires teachers who are not from English-speaking countries but are completely fluent in English through a lifetime in English-language immersion education. This is the exception, though.

This is the sort of compensation and assistance you could expect or demand with the above qualifications in June 2010 in Beijing:

• A work (Z) visa and foreign expert’s certificate, arranged but not paid for by your employer
• An English-speaking point person at your employer to heavily assist you with navigating initial immigration requirements
• Very basic health insurance to cover major accidents or injuries
• At a university, a free or nearly free on-campus apartment to yourself with subsidized utilities
• At a school other than an academy, two-month long vacations in summer and winter that both pay partial salary, (half in my case, which was paid at the end of the break)
• University working hours: 20 class hours per week during weekdays plus preparation and meetings outside of class
• Academy working hours: 30-40 class hours per week on evenings and weekends plus preparation outside of class and minimal meetings
• Public university pay before taxes: 3,000 RMB per month
• Private university: 7,000 RMB per month
• Academy (no housing included): 11,000 RMB per month or 150 RMB per hour

You should expect lower salaries and levels of competition for jobs outside of Shanghai and Beijing.

Keep in mind when negotiating that in June 2010, in order to have housing, healthcare, and entertainment comparable to what many 22-year-olds with college degrees experience in the U.S., you would have to make at least 9,000 RMB per month or free housing plus 7,000 per month.

Don’t accept a promise to get you a work visa after you enter China. This is difficult to impossible to do within the country. It will also severely limit your further employment options in China if you arrive in the country without one. Also, you should consider it a job offer red flag if an employer offers to drastically increase your pay after a set period of time. This is standard for sketchy jobs that don’t last long but not standard for work in China in general.

You can negotiate better compensation than what I suggested above if you have a certificate or major in teaching, especially in teaching English as a foreign or second language; experience teaching English as a foreign language in a classroom; or a degree higher than a bachelor’s. I don’t think my ability to speak Chinese to my students was as much of an advantage as these other qualifications, but it might have helped in landing me work.

Do you have any questions? For those who have taught English in China and have anything to add, let me know in the comments.

DJ Soda Pop – The Rat City DJ. Great party music.

Dance Belt – How do I always end up mentioning Lady GaGa on my blog? At the most recent roller derby bout, these Capitol Hill dance teachers performed an awesome medley of GaGa music video dance moves.

Massive Monkees – I discovered this hip hop dance crew through America’s Best Dance Crew’s Season 4 and was thrilled to see them at a Storm game.

Massive Monkees in 2009 - image taken from MTV.com without permission

Broccolini is more common than broccoli in Beijing, but you can substitute broccoli. I chose this as the vegetable to blog about because broccoli and eggplant are the two vegetables I didn’t really like eating until I went to China.

Note: I don’t include a wok in this because I’m better at stir-frying in frying pans than woks. If you have questions on how to adapt this recipe to a wok, then ask away in the comments section.

Broccolini I stir-fried in a wok.

Stir-fried broccolini or broccoli:

You’ll need:
broccolini or broccoli
roughly 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
fresh ginger, or chopped prepared ginger in water as opposed to olive oil
fresh garlic, or chopped prepared garlic in water as opposed to olive oil
table salt
water
deep-ish frying pan with lid (or wok)

1. Slice or separate the broccolini or broccoli into long, narrow pieces as shown in the above picture. If you use broccoli, keep much more of the stem attached per piece than you would for most American dishes.
2. If using fresh garlic and ginger, peel then mince by chopping with a knife. Use about 1/2-1 tablespoon per head of broccolini/broccoli depending on how strong you want these flavors. If using prepared garlic and ginger, use 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of each per head.
3. Pour oil into pan then turn on medium-high to heat the oil.
4. Add broccolini/broccoli, garlic and ginger; stir to coat in oil; lightly sprinkle salt over whole pan; add water to pan until ingredients are almost covered; then cover pan for approximately 2 minutes. (The heat will be high enough if the water is boiling before you cover it.)
5. Uncover pan to check to see if broccolini/broccoli is sufficiently cooked. It should not be mushy but soft enough to cut through the center of with a metal spatula. Add water as necessary to keep from burning.
6. If broccolini/broccoli is not yet cooked, repeat steps 4 and 5 in intervals of a minute or less until it is cooked.
7. Once broccolini/broccoli is sufficiently cooked, uncover pan and stir ingredients until most of the water evaporates.
8. Serve immediately on a plate or in a shallow, wide bowl with oil from pan as part of a family-style Chinese meal. Easiest to eat with chopsticks but possible to eat with a fork and knife.

Feel free to comment with questions, rave reviews, or suggestions for improvement.