There's gold in shrimp embryos

Many years ago, I went into a Chinese restaurant and it was obvious that English was not the proprietor’s first language. On the menu, there was a soup made with the small dried shrimp that the Chinese uses for flavouring. In Chinese, the dried shrimp had two characters. The first was shrimp. The second was the character for child, son, or a diminutive for little, in the way “tiny” is used in “Tiny Tim” or “little” in “Little John”.

In English, the dried shrimp appeared on the menu as “shrimp embryo”, which sounded extremely unappetizing.


Cultural faux pas
When you cross cultural lines, the risk of cultural faux pas grow. What works well in one culture doesn’t work in another. The instance of the shrimp embryos is a perfect example of how to fail in business when crossing cultural lines.

Today, China is growing in leaps and bounds. She is striving to assert itself economically and political as a regional and world power. Part of that initiative is to assert itself culturally as well. Asia Times reports that:

For several years now, Beijing has battled to reverse its "cultural deficit", where it imports 10 times more books than it exports. Now one of the world's largest economies and trading powers, China has spearheaded a cultural counteroffensive in a belief that cultural industry is the next step in its transformation from global upstart to superstar.

As part of this attempt to raise the country's cultural profile abroad Beijing has invested in hundreds of Confucian institutes that are teaching Mandarin around the world and launching new foreign-language media outlets.

The Asia Times article went on to detail incidents at the Frankfurt book fair that derailed the Middle Kingdom’s initiative.


Cultural offensive, version 1.0
The instance of the Frankfurt book fair can be best described as cultural offensive, version 1.0. No doubt they will get better as they unveil 2.0 and 3.0. There are also other instances of Chinese private cultural initiatives to penetrate the West. Nevertheless, the risk of labeling something as a shrimp embryo remains high.


An enormous opportunity
China is obviously embarking on a long-term strategy to make the world more aware of China’s culture and to erase its cultural trade deficit. Anyone who can bridge the two cultures and understand the crossover effect is staring at a long-term business opportunity of enormous proportions.

Consider what has been done in the United States alone in ethnically focused markets. In 2000, Robert Johnson became the first US Black billionaire when he sold Black Entertainment Television (BET) to Viacom for US$4b. In 2006, Univision, the Hispanic media conglomerate, was sold for US$12.6b.

What if someone were to harness the crossover effect of the Chinese market with the North American market?

There’s gold in them thar shrimp embryos!