Michael Sinclair was recently interviewed by Sandy Dhuyvetter on NBTA Radio at the National Business Travel Association (NBTA) convention in Los Angeles.
Press the play button below to hear:
Picture of Sandy Dhuyvetter & Michael Sinclair
N.B. On some systems the volume will be off by default. You may need to adjust the volume settings on the player above and/or in your desktop control panel.
New advert for the Beijing Olympics.
ChinaOneCall will be attending the NBTA (National Business Travel Association) convention in Los Angeles from Sunday 27th - Wednesday 30th July 2008.
Come and talk to us at Booth 2923.
Click here for Interactive Floor Plan. (Requires Java)
Xiamen (Amoy)
Xiamen, also known to the West as Amoy, looks out to the Taiwan Strait; many of its old colonial buildings have been carefully restored and its clean, well–kept streets and lively waterfront make it rank as one of the most attractive cities in China.
Xiamen was China’s main port for exporting tea. The Portuguese arrived in the 16th century and followed by the British in the 17th century, and later by the French and the Dutch. Xiamen Port remained closed from the 1750s until August 1841 when a British naval force of 38 ships carrying canons and soldiers forced the port to open. Western powers and Japanese followed soon after to establish consulates and made the island of Gulangyu a foreign enclave. Nowadays，Xiamen port is one of the trunk line ports in the Asia-Pacific region, it ranks the 30th among the world’s top 100.
Amoy in the 1890s
Amoy dialect is the local vernacular and highly similar to Taiwanese or Teochew. As a port used by Europeans for many centuries, Amoy dialect had a major influence on some Chinese translated into English or other European languages. For instance, the words “Amoy” , “tea”, “Ketchup”, ”kowtow”, “cumshaw” and “Japan” all come from the Amoy dialect. If you’re a fan of Kung Fu, the iconic Kung Fu star Bruce Lee’s favourite weapon is “nunchaku”, which also originated from Amoy.
A project named Greetings to the Universe in 55 Different Languages was launched almost two decades ago: one of the purposes was to send a message to extraterrestrials who might find spacecrafts travelling through interstellar space. In addition to pictures and music and sounds from earth, greetings in 55 languages were included. Amoy dialect was one of these. Click Here to hear the greeting in Amoy.
Red Brick House, founded in the 1900s. (Vernacular Dwelling of Min Nan or Southern Fujian)
Family Temple (Founded in the 15th century and restored in 1990s)
Altar in the Family Temple
Protestant Church, Founded in the 1840s and one of the Old Villas (Founded in 1920s).
Chris Horton from GoKunming interviewed me a couple of days ago about chinaONEcall, running a call centre in Kunming and the challenges facing the telephone interpreting industry. The story appeared today.
Tags: asian games, china travel, chinaONEcall, Greg Sinclair, interpreter, kunming, olympic travel, Olympics
Posted in Business Travel, Olympics, chinaONEcall, emergency by Greg, June 5, 2008 2:56 pm | Comments (0)
Following the recent earthquake in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, chinaONEcall is offering free help for victims of the Chinese earthquake, and for anxious family or others needing to contact them or the victims doctors / nurses in the affected area.
Just telephone the service direct within China to 4006 88 66 99 or from overseas to +86 871 805 8503 , quoting “earthquake crisis” and the chinaONEcall team will do their best to help. They operate a 24/7 interpreter service for travellers ( business or leisure ) and are making available their 15 strong team to give interpreter support to those on this present crisis.
Please note we will do our best to help, but cannot locate victims, doctors etc as this will be done by the relevant governmental and aid agencies.
Tags: assistance, beichuan, beichuan earthquake, china, china earthquake, chinaONEcall, earthquake, emergency, sichuan, sichuan earthquake, wenchuan county
Posted in chinaONEcall, emergency by Greg, May 15, 2008 4:19 am | Comments (0)
Michael Sinclair recently appeared on the Fox Business Channel talking about chinaONEcall.
Michael Sinclair (Marketing Director of China One Call Ltd) was recently asked at short notice to give a speech on ‘Doing Business in China’ to the Business Referral Exchange (BRX) at a breakfast meeting at HSBC, Fleet Street, London.
To see the full text of the speech please click here.
After the lengthy description of an alternative service there is a interesting anecdote given by Michael Sinclair in this Financial Times article about Language Services.
I think the key distinction may be that chinaONEcall’s local knowledge and affordability makes it something to use regularly throughout a trip to China and not only for emergencies. Infact Michael describes how the service can be used spontaneously to create new and exciting opportunities.
Michael Sinclair, marketing director of chinaONEcall says: “A customer of ours was on holiday in a Chinese village full of jewellery shops and thought some of the products would be of interest to a friend who ran a jewellery business. He called us and arranged to have samples sent over. Now the friend is importing from the business.”
http://tinyurl.com/4tj5pe
chinaONEcall will be at the Corporate Travel & Technology World at Shanghai’s Regent Hotel on 8th-9th April. Come and visit us at Booth #12 for a free trial.