Three jobs,
in full detail.

The problem

They landed on a Saturday with four suitcases, no mainland phone number, no bank account, and a lease on a flat none of them had stood in. Neither parent spoke Chinese. Their employer had handled the visa and then stopped, which is normal — most employers do the work permit and assume the rest sorts itself out.

What they had actually walked into is the loop that catches nearly everyone: the bank wants a mainland mobile number, the mobile number wants real-name registration, and several counters want the temporary residence registration slip that only the police station issues once you have an address. Attempted in the wrong order, each attempt costs a morning.

What I did

1. SIM card first. A flagship carrier shop, passport, real-name registration — because every step after this verifies against that number. This is the one people leave until last and it is the one that unlocks the rest.

2. Residence registration. Straight to the station covering their address with the landlord’s documents, so the slip existed before anything needed it.

3. Bank account. A large branch, mid-morning midweek, with more paperwork than the list asks for. Personal RMB account, mobile banking activated and tested at the counter before we left.

4. The apartment. Walked the flat with them, photographed every meter reading, appliance and existing scratch, confirmed how the utilities and management fee are actually paid, and got the landlord’s commitments written down rather than nodded at.

5. Payment apps and transport. WeChat Pay and Alipay linked to the new card and tested on a real purchase, metro codes set up, home and the children’s school saved in Chinese in their maps app.

The result

The core of it — number, registration, bank, apps — was done inside the first day. The apartment walkthrough and the practical setup finished the next morning, which is where the forty-eight hours comes from. The forums had told them to expect a week of queuing, and they had budgeted for one parent to lose most of it.

The part that mattered more than the speed: nothing had to be redone later. When you file registration before the bank visit rather than after, and the passport name is entered exactly as it appears in the passport, the paperwork holds for the visa renewal and the school enrolment that follow.

The problem

He wanted a current DJI flagship at the Chinese price, and he was — sensibly — wary. He had read the same stories everyone reads: grey-market units, a box that arrives with a different serial to the listing, a warranty that evaporates the moment it crosses a border, and an agent who goes quiet after the transfer clears.

DJI is headquartered a few metro stops from me, so the sourcing was never the hard part. The hard part was making a transaction verifiable to somebody eight thousand kilometres away who had no reason to trust me yet.

What I did

1. The official listing first. I sent him the DJI store listing and the price before he paid anything, so the number he was agreeing to was one he could see for himself.

2. He paid the goods cost only. Not my fee, not the shipping — just the price on the listing he had already seen.

3. Bought the same day, through the official channel. No market stall, no too-good price. The receipt went to him that day.

4. Photographed sealed, serial verified. Box, seals and serial number photographed before anything was opened, and the serial checked in DJI’s own app so it was a registered unit rather than a number on a sticker.

5. Insured courier, tracking shared at dispatch. My 5% and the shipping settled only at dispatch — after he had the receipt and the photographs in hand.

The result

It reached Berlin in about a week. He had the store receipt before he had paid me anything, and the serial photographs before the box left Shenzhen.

The sequence is the point, and it is the same on every order: you see the listing, you pay the goods cost, I buy and send you the receipt and serials, and only then do my fee and the shipping settle. If I buy under the quoted price, you pay the lower price. The one thing I will not do is quietly absorb the difference.

I also told him before he ordered what the warranty position actually is — most Chinese-market electronics carry a domestic warranty that is awkward to claim from Europe, though DJI is one of the brands that operates international service. That conversation loses some sales. It is still the right conversation.

The problem

A hardware founder was days from signing for a production run. The written quotation was in English, the relationship was cordial, and the supplier had been recommended. What he did not have was anyone in the room who could follow what was being said in Chinese while the English conversation carried on politely on top of it.

What I did

1. Consecutive interpreting, both directions. Not a summary at the end — everything, as it was said, including the parts said sideways.

2. Caught a specification change mid-meeting. A material substitution discussed in Chinese had never appeared in the English quotation. It was not hidden exactly; it simply had not been translated.

3. Held the room on it. We stopped, put the change on the table in both languages, and made them state the cost and tolerance implications out loud.

4. Written notes of what was actually agreed. Sent the same day, in English, including the substitution and its terms.

5. Follow-up correspondence that week. The supplier confirmed the revised specification in writing before anything was signed.

The result

He signed a week later against a specification that matched what the factory intended to build, rather than the one in the original English quotation. Whether the mismatch would have surfaced at sampling or at the end of a production run, I do not know — but it would have surfaced.

This is the ordinary case for interpreting at a supplier meeting. Not dramatic mistranslation: one clause that stayed in the language you do not read.