December 5, 2023 • 53 mins
In this episode, we delve into the intricacies of domain brokerage in China with Kris Hou, a seasoned Domain Broker known for his work on high-profile sales like Perfect.com, KE.com, and Virtual.com. With seven years of experience and millions of dollars in domain sales, Kris offers valuable insights into the cultural nuances that shape business practices in China's domain name industry.
We explore Chinese buying behaviors, particularly their preferences for one-word or multi-numbered .com domains, and how these cultural differences can impact negotiations. Kris sheds light on the deep significance of numbers in Chinese culture, the role of luck in domain transactions, and the implications of cultural differences in domain ownership.
For more insights and to connect with Kris, reach out to him at Kris@Saw.com.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Chinese Domain Buying and Cultural Significance
8:00 - The Deep Meaning of Numbers in Chinese Culture
17:00 - Time to Roll the Dice: Luck in Domain Transactions
23:57 - Domain Name Value and Meanings
40:38 - Domain Ownership and Cultural Differences
51:51 - Implications of Tesla's Internet Connectivity
Join us for a fascinating discussion on the impact of cultural nuances on domain brokerage in China.
About Saw.com
We’re passionate about digital assets here at Saw.com. It’s our mission to create a transparent environment where you know what’s happening with every step of your domain sale or acquisition (and secure the best possible price!)
About Jeffrey:
Jeffrey M. Gabriel is the founder of Saw.com, a boutique brokerage that specializes in acquiring, selling, and appraising domains. With over 14 years of experience in the domain industry, Jeffrey has a proven track record of closing multimillion-dollar deals and delivering exceptional value to his clients.
Jeffrey's core competencies include remote team management, online marketing, and strategy. He is passionate about helping businesses and individuals achieve their online goals and dreams. He has been involved in some of the most notable domain sales in history, such as Ai.com, Sex.com, and Poker.org. He is also a Guinness World Record holder and a frequent speaker and writer on domain-related topics.
Follow us on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sawcom/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/saw-com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sawsells
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today on the uncomfortable podcast with
Jeffrey Gabriel, we dive intoChinese negotiation strategies,
their culture and, of course,domains.
Our guest to do it with isChris Howe.
Chris and I have workedtogether for seven years and
he's best known for such salesas coolcom, fancycom, perfectcom
(00:20):
, kecom the list goes on.
Chris is going to give us somevaluable insights into the
Chinese buying behaviors,cultural differences and, of
course, a little bit of theChinese involvement, of the
government's involvement.
But before we begin, pleasemake sure to follow us on
Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio.
You can watch us on YouTube.
(00:42):
You can also visit wwwsodcom oryou can always send us an email
to buzzedsodcom.
And thank you for listening.
All right, Today on our show wehave a domain broker, Chris
(01:05):
Howe, who we have workedtogether for just under seven
years.
He's worked with me here atSODcom for three.
Chris initially started hiscareer selling insurance for
Prudential Insurance in Chinaand he's been born and raised in
China to a military family andhe moved around China quite
(01:27):
often as a child and then movedto England Manchester, England
for college and pretty muchnever left Getting right into it
.
Being a domain broker, Chrishas worked on countless
different opportunities with me.
He has sold tens of millions ofdollars worth of domain sales
and I thought, talking to himabout the Chinese market, the
(01:51):
perception of the Chinesetowards certain domains and what
they like, what the meaningsare of certain things, of
letters and numbers, and thengoing over his resume a little
bit with you to show you of hisexperience.
So some of the names that hehas sold while we've worked
together are coolcom, commentcom, perfectcom, kecom, virtualcom
(02:14):
and even fancycom.
Those are all really greatnames.
One word, com, powerful namesworth hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of dollars.
But they're not all winners andyou've sold many of thousand
dollar, two thousand, fivethousand dollar sales as well,
and you know your five, ten,twenty thousand dollar names are
obviously the most common,which a lot of the times take
(02:38):
the most amount of time and themost amount of work.
So I'm going to get right intoit with you, Chris, Now that
you've been selling domains forseven years and working with
being fluent in English andfluent in Mandarin.
One of the things myself, asbeing in the domain business for
(02:59):
now almost 14 years, wassurprising to me was when I got
into it and starting to dealwith the people in China and the
way that they negotiate and theway that they approach
different opportunities.
And one of the things thatalways made me scratch my head
was is why is it that, ifsomebody wants to buy a domain
(03:21):
name from China from somebodyfrom, say, the United States or
Canada or someone like that,that either themselves will
pretend that they're multiplepeople or they will hire
multiple brokerages to allconverge on the same domain name
at the same time?
What is the thinking in thestrategy there?
Because in the United States,if I'm a domain owner, I would
(03:44):
think, holy shit, there's a lotof people who want to buy this.
I better raise the price or Ibetter wait it out to see what
people do.
All of those are not beneficialto the person in the end
writing the check for the domainname.
So why does a Chinese buyerthink that that is a good
strategy?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, good question.
So basically, I think that'spart of the culture.
I think it's not just Chineseculture, it's more like Asian
culture.
When people are buyingsomething, they always want to
compare prices.
They always use those.
I'm sure you get a lot ofcomparison website in the US If
(04:25):
you're buying home insurance orcar insurance.
You just try differentcompanies and get different
quotes.
Same as buying domain namebuyers.
They always want to try to usedifferent brokers and then get a
domain name.
Whoever quotes him the lowestpossible price, he'll use that
(04:47):
broker and get a domain name.
That's just a simple way thatAsians.
I think most of the scenariosare not helpful.
It's kind of give this seller afeeling that there are many
(05:07):
buyers interested in acquiringthe domain name.
I gotta raise the price or do abidding war, but in the end
there's only maybe just one ortwo buyers there.
This thing is like deep in theculture.
Even myself, if I'm buyingsomething on Alibaba, I talk to
(05:30):
different shops, ask fordiscounts all the time.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
But the thing is the difference is if you're gonna
buy a television and you look atat least the United States had
Best Buy and you go look atTarget, you look at Walmart and,
even if it's all the same, sonytelevision it's obviously up to
them to they might havepromotions with the manufacturer
or they are willing to make alower margin on the sale.
(06:00):
But there is, in essence, anunlimited number of those TVs to
choose from, and so going andoffering, making bad offers at
all three of those places don'treally affect the price of the
TV it's a question of whetherthe retailers willing to make
nothing on the sale or losemoney on the sale to get the
sale.
But the difference is is thatthere's only one TV to be had in
(06:24):
all the land and everybody isgoing to the guy who owns the
only TV.
And then when making all theseoffers from all various places
and IP addresses and companiesand places like that, don't you
think that that would make theseller kind of shut down and
make the price as favorable, Imean, I would think the outcome
(06:45):
is you know, it's hard to breakculture, right, Because I guess
people don't think into it asthat much because we're on this
side of the fence.
But you know, thinking about itthat way, you know, kind of
leaves me scratching my head,right?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, it's a little bit annoying sometimes.
You know we represent theseller most of the times we knew
that.
You know the broker is tryingdifferent ways to try to get
this domain name.
But I mean, if they believethis works, we just have to let
them waste a bit of time andthen give up different brokers
(07:20):
and then choose one broker totalk to us.
That's it, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Understood.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
All right.
So, moving on, and typicallyfrom what we've experienced with
the Chinese market in general,is that they really like
onewordcoms that are prettypopular words in the English
language, like coolcom that yousold to you know, a Chinese
company, yeah, and many othersingle words that are, you know,
(07:50):
normal understood words in theUS.
But at the same time as again,something I didn't understand
when I got into the industry isthe Chinese culture is wrapped
around a lot of numbers, andculture is also various letters
and strings that don't reallymake sense to people from the
English speaking culture, right,and so when you see those
(08:11):
letters together, it's anunpronounceable string of
letters, right, whether it's two, three, four, five letters, and
it means nothing.
And even if you were topronounce those letters out loud
in Mandarin, a lot of thosetimes wouldn't make a lot of
sense, but phonetically theymean something.
So why don't you tell us alittle bit about numbers and how
(08:34):
they relate and what, how muchthey mean in the Chinese culture
, and then we can get more intothe alphabet and the letters?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
next, yeah, so generally numbers is is deeply
attached to the Chinese cultureas well, for thousands of years.
I mean, I don't want to go intotoo much details.
Obviously we can talk aboutthis for like probably a few
(09:04):
hours, until tomorrow, but youknow.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
We've got all the time in the world we don't move
it on the podcast.
Let's go.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, so I just want to share some simple,
interesting, you know facts.
You know like Number four someans that because it has the
same pronunciation at that inChinese.
So so people don't really likednumber four, especially on the
(09:38):
fourth floor or the 14th flooror on the fourth floor.
is is just normally the fourthfloor and 14th floor will be on
any you know apartment buildingsor even like commercial
buildings will be empty or justleave it as a storage thing so
(10:00):
nobody wants to work there.
You know there's this, there'sthere's no even like 14th or
about.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Let's get this so.
So in the US, 13th floor and alot of hotels and other
commercial buildings don't exist.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
So it's similar, a similar thing, right?
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
But the number three isn't considered bad in the US,
right?
But you're telling me that inChina, if you have the fourth,
the 14th, the 24th, 34th, 44th,going on and on having a floor
ending in four is not a goodidea, right?
No, so do they skip the fourth,14th, 24th, 34th, 44th floors
(10:45):
every time there's a four?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Not everybody want to skip this, but if it's a
business owner, it seems it'snot a lucky sign.
You know people will tend to goto the sixth floor, eighth
floor or ninth floor and try tostay away from.
You know, the levels got fourinvolved, especially 14th.
(11:09):
It's like it means like goingto die.
So what is what is four for me?
So it's still not very good.
But you know, if I'm a businessowner in China, I skip, you
know, fourth floor.
I'll stay away from there.
I'll go to third or fifth orsixth, which is I prefer, you
(11:34):
know.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
you know it's just a bit of a culture thing, thinking
, and then in the Chineseculture would, even though I say
I'm building a commercialbuilding and you have the first
floor, second floor, third floor, fourth floor, like in the real
plans.
But if it goes first, second,third, fifth, people know it's
the fourth floor.
Yeah Well, they still skip itand still want the sixth over
(11:58):
the fifth, because they knowit's the fourth and they know
that after the third floorthings are all off.
Or is it really just the numberthat makes it unlucky?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
They will build fourth floor but you probably a
low roof floor, and then forstorage purposes only, like I
said, oh, really, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Okay, they put all like the ace units in there or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, yeah exactly, yeah, like, and they do put like
different, you know stuff inthere and then on the 14th floor
, I think on most of theresidential buildings there
won't be a 14th floor.
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Do you think to this day that when people talk about
that, they say, oh, that's anold wives tale.
Or like a black cat crossingyour path or walking under a
ladder in the US where you know,100 years ago people like
actually believed in some ofthat crap, but now they don't
really pay that close attentionto it?
Do you think in China that thenewer generations don't pay as
(12:56):
close attention to the numberfour or the meaning of that?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, yeah, I think they still do.
I mean it's deeply into theculture and in mind.
I mean you get to know thissince you start talking and
learning stuff around and thenit's deeply attached.
I mean there are people theydon't care.
I mean that's fine.
I mean I think I heard of therewere people buying cheaper
(13:20):
house or cheap apartment onfourth floor, or even they have
a 14th floor.
They want to buy it for cheap.
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, it's like the same as my wife doesn't.
We were looking at buyinghouses and there was one near a
cemetery, like right next door.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
She wasn't having it.
She's not moving there.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
No, I would never, that's your best neighbor you're
ever going to have.
What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
All right, I've never , never I wouldn't leave.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Would you rather live next to a jail than a cemetery?
Yeah, really.
Yeah, I'll live next to a jail.
Okay, so let's move on to someother numbers.
So I know that six is meanslike wealth and prosperity.
You know, triple six in theUnited States Eight.
Six is luck.
(14:16):
Yeah, okay, yeah.
But in the US, triple six islike the devil.
Yeah, I know, you know.
So six is luck.
And if you had 666, which is areally strong term 666.com, how
would you pronounce?
You just say the same name,same word, three times.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
We'd probably say it like triple sixcom.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
You'd say triple six.
Yeah, you wouldn't say.
How would you say six inMandarin Lil.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Mil M-I-L, no, l-i-u like Lil yeah.
I pronounced that wrong.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So lu, lu lu.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, online gamblingcompanies would love to have a
website like that, but probablyblocked by the government in a
few months.
And then you know we have awebsite that's like you know.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
We have a website, that's like you know.
You know you can get into thatin a minute.
Yeah, so we have four, six, andthen, you know, I've always
seen like Chinese restaurantscalled Dragon88, dragon.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Dynasty, eight stuff like that.
So what does eight mean?
Eight means wealth, which youknow.
Business people love that.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
I used to work on 18th floor for potential.
Yeah, hey how you doing Allright, so keep going.
I used to work in the 18thfloor.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, I used to work on 18th floor in central Beijing
for potential insurance.
I mean, you know they pay a lotof money for the floor, like
every year, so, and thenpotential is a British insurance
company and then, yeah, theywere team up with the city group
(16:12):
in China.
So you know, even British haveto to take Feng Shui thing
seriously in China.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Okay, yeah, Got it.
And do you at your own personalhouse?
You're talking about Feng Shui.
Do you actually have your bedpointed in a certain direction
and things in your house incertain ways?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Good question.
I mean I turn not to like theprevious thing we discussed.
I would never live in acemetery or close to a cemetery
or within a mile in a cemetery,because that's it's not
something that you know.
(16:54):
Like my mom always said, wehave to respect the people that
passed away.
That's why we don't reallycelebrate like Halloween in
China.
You know, on the Halloween,there's, like we call it more
like a ghost festival in China.
We burn paper money, like fakemoney to family members that
(17:19):
passed away.
And then you know we, we, we,we, we pour wine and bring home
cooked food.
You know, you know to toremember them, to, to tell them
we still miss them, and you knowwe, we do things like this.
We don't really celebrate.
(17:39):
Oh, like with, with ghosts andstuff is it's quite an important
thing in China.
You know, in Asia, cultures,you know ghosts and humans are
two different things.
You go separate ways, you don'tinterfere with them.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, I think.
I think the thing is with theUS and Halloween.
Was it had to do with more orless the end of the harvest
before the winter?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Oh right, Okay, Right .
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So it's like it's like you need to be done
harvesting your crops, and thenit just kind of turned into this
party that had to do with theharvest, but then they added in
like ghouls and ghosts and kindof commercialize it.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Oh, I didn't know that.
I thought it was all about.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I think it was just all about death it's not like in
Mexico a day at the Muerte,where they have sugar spells and
things like that, all right.
So let's play a game.
Okay, I got dice to my kids.
Okay, in their game I actuallyhave five dice, but we're going
to roll.
We're going to start with threedice and we're going to roll
them right now.
Actually, let's do four first,let's make it now.
(18:40):
Let's do three first, let'smake it complicated, all right.
So 362 or 236 or 632, orhowever you want to do it.
What would that mean if you hadthose in order?
236.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Okay.
So if it's 236, it's got a sixin the end.
Which online gambling companieswould love to have that?
And then, on the other hand,they call it a really good chip,
you know, because two timesthree equals six.
(19:20):
You know domain names like 236or 248, you know, is just loved
by these online gamblingcompanies in China, or you know
how would you market that topeople that they would know to
go to that domain to make it?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
It's just a shot.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, it's just a shot, easy to remember and
catchy domain name.
You know I could never get thewhat gambling companies you know
really like, but these 236 or248, they definitely love it.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
And so, even though depth is in the middle of the
two and the eight, they like it,because it's two times four is
eight.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
That's right.
Yeah, it's not a bad thing then.
No, no, it's not.
If it's just 48 or 46, it'sstill a good one because it's
very short, only two digit.
But it depends on different,you know online gambling
(20:32):
companies, they always want likesix or eight.
In the end, they'd love it.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So what about one, the number one?
Speaker 2 (20:39):
One is is less popular, I think, but it's not
as less popular as just numberfour.
Okay, so if it's 111, okay,that's really good.
123, really good, you know, butthere are still big companies
are using one at the beginning,like 188.com.
(21:00):
The company span like probably$3 million or 2.
Something million dollarsbought 188.com.
163.com is a very popular likelike online news website in
(21:20):
China.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Well, I remember when we had pagers in the US.
143 means I believe I love youright?
Does that?
Does that mean that in Mandarin.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
No, I love you, in Mandarin will be 520.com.
520.
Yeah, 520.
Yeah, so it's yeah, I mean Ilove you in text.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
I'm looking at it back in the 90s and pagers are
widely used.
143 was a quick way of sayingit.
Each number of 143 contains theletters of each word.
One is love, four is you three,I don't know.
But there you go.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Okay, yeah, good to know that.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
So it's funny how it doesn't translate over, because
you would think that in theChinese market they make, they
made the pagers, and 100 yearsbefore people were using numbers
.
But then it was created in theUS in a different way.
Yeah, it's quite different, butit's good to know that you have
a number culture as well,that's.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
that's something pretty new to me.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, all right, so I'm going to, I'm going to roll
a five dice right here.
Let's see.
So at one point when Chris andI first started working together
, the Chinese market got reallyhot and at the time when we
worked at Uniregistry, we had ahandful of clients that, over
the years prior, purchased andowned a lot of two digitcoms,
(22:45):
three digitcoms, four digitcoms,five digitcoms, and then two
letter, three letter, fourletter and some five lettercoms
as well.
And at the peak of the market,I would probably say it was
2014,.
2015 to the Chinese market.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, 15 or 16.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Right, those names were being sold for considerable
amounts of money and we can getinto why they were selling for
that and what they're referredto.
But let's do one roll the diceof five dice.
Let's see how lucky we aretoday.
All right, one, two, three,four.
Oh my God, look at this it was.
(23:24):
I can't tilt my.
Let me see my desk here it wasone, two, three, four, five.
Oh, I guess I'm not that lucky.
I'm not going to do it, butthat's where it is.
That's what it says One, two,three, four, five.
So I'll take a picture it just.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
it doesn't have any meanings, but it's a great great
domain name.
I mean your hands are hot today, you should go do it.
There's four, three, five, nice, nice.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Has no meaning.
It's just a good brand, so easyto remember, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I mean, I'm sure one, two, three, four, fivecom is
owned by an online gamblingcompany.
I'm sure of it.
They'd pay.
I think they'd pay, at least,at least high five figures for
this.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
The most.
Five-digit or six-digit namesdon't really mean anything these
days, right.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
No, I mean if it's five, two zero 99,.
It'll be interesting.
That means I love you forever.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
But the ones that don't really have much meaning
or a very broad meaning, they'rekind of not the market for
those is what?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Just a standard five-digit yeah just a standard
five-digit five-numbercom, butactually, if you talk to someone
from an online gamblingindustry, they'll explain to you
more about all thesecombinations because they have
the idea about how to brand it,how to market it, and then from
(25:06):
different ways.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, like in the US, in the US you have some pretty
famous zip codes or five-digitsright.
So the most famous of them allis Beverly Hills 90210.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
All right yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
If you own that, that's worth a lot of money.
If you had a clothing storenamed 90210, that would be a
great brand in the US.
In the United States, new YorkCity's zip code, which I think
is not as important as it wasbefore.
But being in sales for 20 yearsnow, you get to know figure out
zip codes and then area codeson phone numbers, which are
three digits.
I would know that 646 isWestchester County in New York
(25:43):
where there's a lot of money.
So if you have a sales leadwith a 646 number it's worth
something.
617 is Metropolitan Boston, 212is New York as well.
You know those are valuable butlike an Arkansas one, typically
people in Arkansas don't have asmuch money as somebody in New
York so you know instantly, youstart to learn the area codes
where the best leads are from,and so you just glance at a
(26:06):
phone number and know and samewith a zip code or an area, and
those numbers are valuable.
All right, so let's talk aboutletters.
Yeah, so letters are similar ina lot of ways to numbers, where
in the US language, in mostcases you say like three or four
(26:28):
letters, which would beconsidered an acronym.
That has a meaning in a lot ofways, like USA, right, there's
value there, but the U doesn'tmean a million different things
and the S doesn't mean a milliondifferent things and it doesn't
usually like flow intosomething, unless it is a
considered a word.
So I asked you ahead of timefor some examples.
(26:49):
Ymsdcom, you said, is domainshop.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
How would you?
Pronounce that you don't reallypronounce it, it's just like YM
means domain.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
How would you say domain in Mandarin?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yuming like Y U M I N G.
That's like the first letter ofa domain name YM.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
So is Ming the word name and you is the word name.
Yeah, that's right.
So what's another word thatwould go with name that starts
with Y?
Why would you assume thatthat's domain?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, good question If you're from the main industry
and you own YMcom and then youknow that's one of the best
domain names you can.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So it's just associated with the group of
people that you happen to betalking to, that they should
know, but that Y could mean amillion other things.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, that's right.
It has probably another 30, 50other meanings or other words.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So if I have K H S D, it would be Chris Howe shop.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
K H S D okay.
K H means like clients.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Clients, customers, meeting.
So you're so good at saying K?
H equals customers, yeah.
And then S?
D would mean shop, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
S, d has other meanings like wait, like speed
time you know, lock or feel youknow.
There's just so many meanings,I know.
That's why I'm getting intodetails, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So let me ask you this right?
So if someone owned a domainshop, they wanted to call or
register our YM which obviouslythat sounds like a really good
shorthanded way or acronym tocall you know, register or more
domain brokerage.
But if somebody bought abillboard and put it up in
(28:54):
Beijing with just Y Y, m S, dcomon it, or even dot, cn Like
that's, that's pretty much apointless ad because there's
just so many meanings to whatthat could be.
So you would have to thenobviously do a lot more further
branding.
Yeah, understand what you'reoffering, right.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
So it's a pretty broad keyword.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
It's almost like owning the domain cardcom.
You think of greeting cards,business cards, you know, credit
cards, you know playing cardslike just all kinds of different
things right, is it?
That it's like almost thatbroad, like a shotgun spray of
possibilities.
Yeah, that's right.
Okay, yeah, well, that makessense, all right, so you guys
(29:39):
don't really have, or theChinese cultures don't really
have, vowels, right?
You don't really use vowels.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It depends If, let's say, if it's VVcom, vvvcom.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
That's really good Victor, victor Victor.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yeah, yeah, that's really good Like it completely
depends on.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
V is not a vowel A, e , I, o, u and sometimes Y.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
So it's a vowel in the US.
The letter V, you've told me,isn't really being used in the
Chinese culture.
No At all.
Either right and X.
Right or no.
X is being used in the Chineseculture X is being used Well
actually.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
I mean because the Chinese culture has combined a
lot of like other Asian culturesand even like US cultures and
you know European cultures aswell.
So people are.
You know the culture is alwaysdeveloping.
You know it's changing.
It's going to be like quitedifferent from now compared to
(30:44):
50 years ago.
So I'm sure, like all thesevowels are being used in
different ways in business, likein branding in the maze, and I
think all these vowels are.
I mean, the value is definitelyslightly lower but if you use
it in the right ways, it can bevery brandable and catchy.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Um.
So let's go over a couple morequick.
Jkkl means health and happy,yeah.
Jkus means joke yeah, you know?
Um, I don't know what the KLwould mean.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
KL is like happy.
Uh, you know you want to.
If you own JKLcom, you probablycan builda like a kids like
show website.
Um yeah, so.
So so you know the the meaningcould be like health and happy.
(31:40):
You know it's kind of good forthe kids.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Okay, so, moving on um, from that, let's go back to
2015, 2016, 2017.
Yeah, you know, crypto isreally cooking then going up
substantially.
There was a lot of you knowinterest in that.
Um.
The Chinese market was buyingmostly, you know, two letter,
two digit, three letter, threedigit, four letter and some four
(32:10):
digit and then up to five digitdot coms.
I saw some people like six andseven digits for sale, um, and
what people were doing andcorrect me if I'm wrong is they
were buying these differentnames based on the quality that
we went over for differentreasons.
Some were better than othersand when they would buy that in
China, um, they would call it achip because they can put their
(32:32):
money into that, and then therewas always kind of like a value.
So, in essence, it was almostlike the first cryptocurrency,
because it went up and down sofast and people were able to use
them to get money out of China,because they could buy it with
their Chinese money and thensell it in the United States and
have a US bank account and gettheir money put in there.
(32:52):
Or they could just hold on to itas something like a Bitcoin or
a Bitcoin or something like thatas well, but with crypto and
different regulations, theChinese government didn't really
have limitations on the amountof money people could spend on
domains for a period of time,right, but then that changed in
the last few years.
Am I right about that?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, so, um, it's uh , it's a bit complicated to
explain that.
You know, because of the?
Um the Cold War.
What's the Chinese governmentdoing?
Um, you know, on differentthings.
I'm I, to be honest, I I don'twant to, you know, go into
(33:35):
details, but people in Chinatend to move their properties,
um uh, or money or theirfortunes out of China into um,
put them into different bankaccounts in different countries,
like, um in the UK, uh inSingapore, in Japan, in Korea,
in the US, which is um you know,a lot of Chinese uh uh have
(33:59):
saving accounts in the US, um,because also, in the in in in,
like Vancouver we've seen theprice of real estate is
absolutely astronomical becausethe Chinese have have come in
there and bought.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Very trendy place to buy.
We saw when I first startedcoming to Manchester working at
Uniregistry.
Yeah, chinese investors startedcoming into Manchester to buy
commercial properties and andresidential properties.
Yeah, and the prices just went,you know, through the roof.
And so to the building right sopeople could get money out of
China.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, actually, um one of one of my friends, uh one
of uh uh the a good friend ofmine who I met at uh potential
insurance.
This guy bought like fiveapartments in Manchester.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
So there you go, cause they're.
They're well priced and therent supported it right, yeah.
And they're doing goodinvestment for his and get his
money out of China.
But recently, to myunderstanding, china has started
to tighten their grip on themoney leaving their country,
which has affected peopleinvesting from China and crypto
and those buying those fourletter, three letter, four digit
(35:08):
, three digit domains right.
And they put a limitation on acommon person without a license
of $50,000 a year, right.
So if I wanted to spend$100,000 on a condo in
Manchester or use it as a downpayment as a, as a standard
Chinese or a normal Chinesecitizen, I wouldn't be allowed
(35:29):
to do that.
Is that what is happening there?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, it happens a lot.
I mean uh, one of the.
I think the most importantreason that Chinese are trying
to invest uh internationally isbecause you know the political
side of uh.
You know reasons Um, the ColdWar between China and America
(35:53):
and even the Cold War betweenChina and European are getting
more and more concerns Um it's,um, it's it's.
It's hard to explain, but theyjust don't feel it's a safe
environment to invest in China.
Uh, in, in in all the marketsUm, you know the the currently
(36:18):
the um, the stock market, theprofit market in China are all
going downhill since thepandemic.
You know people are losing likeconfidence to throw money in
there.
I mean, uh, a lot of peoplelost a lot of money in there as
(36:39):
well.
It's, and there are no otherways to invest in China.
So that's why people startbuying cryptos and buying domain
names.
And then you know, move.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I would think there's a lot of Chinese citizens that,
let's say, you know you had$50,000 in the bank.
Then the idea would be is everyweek you go and take a thousand
dollars out and hide it underyour bed because you're afraid
that maybe the government willtake it from you.
Is there that kind of fear, oris there no fear in that it's
more like your?
Your money would just sit therestagnant because that's right.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yeah, it's more, more about just losing value.
It's not about a governmenttaking the money.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
It's not that's me as a crazy Westerner saying the
Chinese government will justtake their money and do what
they want.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
It won't happen to ordinary people.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Uh-huh.
So let's pretend you know you'reback in China and you wanted to
buy a property in Manchesterand you get a hundred thousand
dollar down payment and you'regoing to get a loan, you know
for whatever amount of money,and you go to send the money.
You have to go down to the bankto wire the money, so you're
going to go over your.
You go over your limits, sothey're going to ask you why you
want to send it and you have towait for them to say no to you.
(37:49):
Is that kind of how it works?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, so in China every citizen will have like
$50,000 US dollar limits to wiremoney out of China every year.
So if it's over $50,000, theywill ask you what is this money
for?
They will ask you about moneylaundering.
You know questions.
(38:12):
And then if you say I'm lookingto purchase a house or a
property, a real estate property, some country, they ask you to
fill in a form and they want tocharge you tax.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Okay, you can still get the money out.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
You can still get the money out.
But this was about like thiskind of they kind of raised the
bar like since about three, fouryears ago.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Okay, so it's a lot harder yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
It's a lot harder.
So that's why crypto currenciesand domain names are so popular
for investors to kind of usethem as a tool to move money out
of China.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay.
Yeah, and then so is that on alike you know, if I sent 50
grand today, is that reset onthe Chinese New Year or is that
12 months like kind of roll?
Speaker 2 (39:04):
like 12 months.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
So what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
So like, yeah, it'll be like from January, the 1st,
to December the 30th or the 31st.
You got you can buy it 50k out,got it?
Speaker 1 (39:18):
So then the calendar year changes and then you get
another 50 grand and another 50grand yeah, so then what would
happen?
I apply you go to do buy thisplace and I just say, hey, yeah,
I'm buying it with Chris and Igot 50, he's got 50.
We both, why are there?
They're really not going to saymuch, are they?
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Because they will.
They will ask for a contractand then see the details, and
then all they're trying to do isstop you buying money out of
China.
So so they all, they want tocharge you tax for it.
Okay, yeah, so interesting, Allright.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
So moving on from that is one of the things that
I've noticed selling domainnames to Chinese citizens is
that we use escrowcom you knowquite a bit as an escrow company
.
We use escrowcom domains as anescrow company.
Why is it that, if they'relimited, buyers are limited to
paying $50,000 a year out?
(40:13):
Why isn't that?
Typically Chinese buyers ofdomain names are really against
paying for domains on a paymentplan.
I would think that they'd wantto pay on a payment plan to
spread out you know that amountof money, but it seems like
whenever we pitch the idea of apayment plan, a Chinese person
is adamantly against not doingit.
Why do you think that's thecase?
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah.
So I think it's just it kind ofmade the buyer feel insecure
about the whole thing.
So you you normally if it's apayment plan, you do like 30%
down payment and then you paythe rest, let's say, within six
months or within a year.
But for payment plan they feellike I paid like 30% but I'm
(41:01):
still not the owner.
What if the owner changed hismind?
I then I can't get my moneyback, or they want to.
They want a lot more than thanthe original price we agree to,
and even explaining thatespritcom holds the domain and
they're going to connect with it.
No, they wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
They wouldn't trust it because I wouldn't trust it
in China either.
So I don't blame them if it wasthe other way around, I'm just
curious.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, but the other reason is when situations like
this, If the seller, let's sayif the seller, changed their
mind, we probably have to go tothe court and then you know that
would.
That means extra costs on thelawyers and international, maybe
(41:46):
traveling.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
But they can do the same and like escrowcom, they
don't trust it.
When you pay the full amountcan then just keep the money and
never transfer the name.
I mean, there's that still thatpossibility?
Then you know, still thespending risk.
I mean, it's just drawn outlonger, but it's still a similar
risk that you're taking rightRather than okay.
Yeah, I'm gonna go here on aleft field question what
(42:12):
language do you dream in, sinceyou're so well versed in
Mandarin and in English and youspeak pretty much perfect
English with me, and then,obviously, at home with your
wife and children?
We're both from China, or allthree of them are from China.
You speak Mandarin, so what,when you have dreams at night?
What?
Speaker 2 (42:32):
language is it?
I think I speak Chinese.
Yeah, I feel yeah, okay.
All my dreams, most of mydreams.
I think it's all aboutsomething happened in China when
I was a kid, or when I was withfamilies, and then you know, I
think most of my dreams are inChinese.
(42:54):
Okay, yeah.
I never had a dream that I waswearing like a British, like
knight armor sword, killing adragon or something.
I haven't had one of those yeteither.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
All right, so then let me ask you this question as
well.
So you've lived in, you knowthe Western world in Manchester
now since you know college.
Until now I know you went backfor a short period of time, but
then you're back to England.
So you've been in England forlike 15 or 20 years now, yeah,
and then you lived in you knowChina for actually less time, if
(43:29):
you actually think about that.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah, but you grew up in the military, as I mentioned
before.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
What's the biggest difference for your kids living
in England and growing up, bornand raised there, and you know
you growing up as someone whereyour dad was in the Chinese
military.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah, so, yeah, it's quite different.
To be honest, my dad was bornin a small village in Shandong
province, china.
So his life, if he stayed there, he's going to be a farmer or
some construction worker in thatsmall village or in Shandong
(44:09):
province for the rest of hislife.
When he was 16, he decided tomake huge change to join the
military, and then he was only16.
Yeah, so he traveled likethousands, over a thousand miles
to a different province, joinedthe Air Force and became a
pilot for five years and thenstart doing like ground, like
(44:33):
officer works after that.
My dad was a very strict father.
I mean, I can be quite honestwith you, he was very strict to
me but I wasn't listening to allhis orders.
I mean, I'm sure you canimagine, you know what.
(44:55):
I remember one of the joke myfriend kept mentioning.
It's not a joke, it's somethinghappened to me when I was in
middle school, that's likeseventh or eighth grade.
In the US we have to do thelike a thousand meter run test
to go to high school.
My dad was dragging me out ofthe bed and then run, practicing
(45:20):
the thousand meter run with meevery morning, almost every
morning, and then my classmatesor, you know, classmates from
other levels.
They saw my dad kicking me inthe butt, chasing me in the
playground and forced me to runthat to.
(45:40):
You know, it was just.
You don't get too many.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
He was treating you like a recruit.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's what he said yeah, yeah, like some soldier in
the military, like he was verystrict, he doesn't care, like
who is around he just want me toget the job done and then go
home.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
That's it yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
A lot of my classmates in middle school did
remember that moment, and thenthey kept asking me about how is
your dad still treating you thesame way?
Well, I mean, my dad is a verygood father, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
But I mean, you told me that when you were a little
kid, sometimes like the militarycar would come pick you up.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah all the time.
Yeah, that's like you know themilitary car we were driving to
my school.
You picked me up in front ofthousands of students.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
But it wouldn't be your dad driving.
It would be like a friend.
No, it wouldn't be my dad.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
No, it would be my dad's driver, and then it was.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
So you were driven around like a general in the
back of the military car.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, you know, I kind of.
Yeah, I took a lot of advantageof that sometimes.
You know they, you know themilitary cars can go through the
red lights, they don't have tostop.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
And they can drive on a one-way traffic road.
You know, I'm not proud of this, I'm not proud of this, but I
feel like, okay, that's justwrong.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
How often are you seeing military cars in and
around China driving around?
I can't imagine you see themthat often.
You have to see them once in awhile.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, you don't see military cars too much on the
road, but if it's officers car,they will have special place
like registration plates likeAF-001, AF-002.
Yeah, so, yeah, so with amilitary sign on it.
(47:45):
So I was All right.
So let's move on.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
What are your feelings?
And then we'll wrap it up,because we're getting right
close to an hour and this iswhere we want to kind of keep.
It is Well, most importantly,how can people contact you if
they have some questions abouttheir own domains or they want
to work with you or talk to youmore about the Chinese market?
Speaker 2 (48:08):
You can always send me a LinkedIn message or just
search on Google chrishowcom,you can find me, or you can
email me at chrishowcom.
So that's chriswithk K-R-I-S ats-a-wcom.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
What's your WeChat?
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Oh, wechat, that's my will be my UK mobile number so
I can share that.
I think it's on my LinkedIn orWhatsApp can reach me out so
many ways.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Okay, perfect.
So before we wrap it up, as anAmerican I hear.
I listened to a lot ofdifferent podcasts, and one of
the things that I've beenlistening to a lot about is
social credit scores in China.
Is there a social credit scoreright now in China?
Have you heard about it, or isthis a lot of just?
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah, they are building a credit system in
China.
They have been building thisfor about, I think, for almost
10 years.
It's working.
I'll give you a quick example.
If I, before I moved toManchester, if I borrowed like
(49:21):
10,000 or 100,000 Chinesecurrencies in a bank in China,
and then didn't pay for it, payit back and then moved to
Manchester.
So that means if I ever travelback to China and then please
(49:42):
and please department, and thenof some local debt department
company, they will try to trackme down and find me and ask for
those money back.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Yeah, they did that in the US too.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah, so I could never get on the train.
If I have a debt on me for like100,000 Chinese currencies, I
could never take a.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
So if you have a debt and you don't need to get to
work, like if you can't afford acar, how the hell are you
supposed to get to work?
If you owe someone 100 grand,just ride a bike.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Figure it out.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Yeah, tough shit.
So they start shutting downsocial services on you.
Yeah, if it owes somebody money.
What if you're caughtprotesting?
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Oh, there's no protesting in China.
This is.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
All right.
What if you're like a habitualspeeder with your car?
Does that hurt your socialcredits?
Speaker 2 (50:38):
That's not a criminal record.
But if I drink and drive,that's a serious crime in China.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
So if I drink and drive, they're gonna take away
the train, so I can't use thatmode of transportation, so I
have to drive my car again.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
No, you have to just get on public transport like bus
tram and Do you?
Speaker 1 (51:01):
think it's to the point where they will limit,
like, the amount of televisionyou can watch or the amount of
internet you can use or what youcan look at on the internet for
so long.
Do you think that that's allkind of in the works?
Speaker 2 (51:18):
No, that won't affect .
But since you mentioned this,with the Cold War going, Chinese
government started to put ahuge fight on people trying to
watch YouTube and then useTwitter or use Instagram.
(51:40):
They didn't want people to readinformation outside of China.
They just want you to stickwith whatever they're telling
you to believe.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
So one of the things that I've talked to my friends
about is a lot of the new carsthese days are having autonomous
driving and then they'reconnected to the internet and to
the car companies and therecould come a day where a Senator
or President wants to limit thenumber of miles you could drive
(52:13):
in a period of time.
I mean, imagine you go to getin your Tesla, which is wired
into the internet and you'vedriven 600 miles that month
already and they believe thatanyone who drives over 650 miles
they don't need to go anywhereelse and they're making that
decision for you or we werelaughing.
I think I was talking aboutthis like a month ago.
Imagine you don't pay your carpayment and then your car just
(52:37):
drives itself back to thedealership.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
So you go outside to get in the car to go to work one
day.
They didn't pay a repo companyto get it, they just had the car
drive itself back.
Or maybe you're even in the carand the thing just drives right
into the dealership and shutsitself off.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
and you could have like your son, your wife giving
birth, and you're racing to thehospital and the thing just
pulls in the dealership and youknow there you have it and too
bad, you know.
So it's just interesting.
You know, tinfoil hat stuffthat sometimes you think about.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Hey, you have anything else to say, because
we're going to wrap this baby up.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
That's it, and thank you so much for having me.
I'm so glad to have a chance toyou know, talk to you about
different topics, about China,and then, you know, apart from
work, I'm really, I'm reallyexcited to hear this online.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
All right.
Well thanks for coming asalways.
And always a pleasure, my man.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
All right, thanks a lot, jeff.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
MUSIC.
Today on the uncomfortable podcast with
Jeffrey Gabriel, we dive intoChinese negotiation strategies,
their culture and, of course,domains.
Our guest to do it with isChris Howe.
Chris and I have workedtogether for seven years and
he's best known for such salesas coolcom, fancycom, perfectcom
(00:20):
, kecom the list goes on.
Chris is going to give us somevaluable insights into the
Chinese buying behaviors,cultural differences and, of
course, a little bit of theChinese involvement, of the
government's involvement.
But before we begin, pleasemake sure to follow us on
Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio.
You can watch us on YouTube.
(00:42):
You can also visit wwwsodcom oryou can always send us an email
to buzzedsodcom.
And thank you for listening.
All right, Today on our show wehave a domain broker, Chris
(01:05):
Howe, who we have workedtogether for just under seven
years.
He's worked with me here atSODcom for three.
Chris initially started hiscareer selling insurance for
Prudential Insurance in Chinaand he's been born and raised in
China to a military family andhe moved around China quite
(01:27):
often as a child and then movedto England Manchester, England
for college and pretty muchnever left Getting right into it
.
Being a domain broker, Chrishas worked on countless
different opportunities with me.
He has sold tens of millions ofdollars worth of domain sales
and I thought, talking to himabout the Chinese market, the
(01:51):
perception of the Chinesetowards certain domains and what
they like, what the meaningsare of certain things, of
letters and numbers, and thengoing over his resume a little
bit with you to show you of hisexperience.
So some of the names that hehas sold while we've worked
together are coolcom, commentcom, perfectcom, kecom, virtualcom
(02:14):
and even fancycom.
Those are all really greatnames.
One word, com, powerful namesworth hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of dollars.
But they're not all winners andyou've sold many of thousand
dollar, two thousand, fivethousand dollar sales as well,
and you know your five, ten,twenty thousand dollar names are
obviously the most common,which a lot of the times take
(02:38):
the most amount of time and themost amount of work.
So I'm going to get right intoit with you, Chris, Now that
you've been selling domains forseven years and working with
being fluent in English andfluent in Mandarin.
One of the things myself, asbeing in the domain business for
(02:59):
now almost 14 years, wassurprising to me was when I got
into it and starting to dealwith the people in China and the
way that they negotiate and theway that they approach
different opportunities.
And one of the things thatalways made me scratch my head
was is why is it that, ifsomebody wants to buy a domain
(03:21):
name from China from somebodyfrom, say, the United States or
Canada or someone like that,that either themselves will
pretend that they're multiplepeople or they will hire
multiple brokerages to allconverge on the same domain name
at the same time?
What is the thinking in thestrategy there?
Because in the United States,if I'm a domain owner, I would
(03:44):
think, holy shit, there's a lotof people who want to buy this.
I better raise the price or Ibetter wait it out to see what
people do.
All of those are not beneficialto the person in the end
writing the check for the domainname.
So why does a Chinese buyerthink that that is a good
strategy?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, good question.
So basically, I think that'spart of the culture.
I think it's not just Chineseculture, it's more like Asian
culture.
When people are buyingsomething, they always want to
compare prices.
They always use those.
I'm sure you get a lot ofcomparison website in the US If
(04:25):
you're buying home insurance orcar insurance.
You just try differentcompanies and get different
quotes.
Same as buying domain namebuyers.
They always want to try to usedifferent brokers and then get a
domain name.
Whoever quotes him the lowestpossible price, he'll use that
(04:47):
broker and get a domain name.
That's just a simple way thatAsians.
I think most of the scenariosare not helpful.
It's kind of give this seller afeeling that there are many
(05:07):
buyers interested in acquiringthe domain name.
I gotta raise the price or do abidding war, but in the end
there's only maybe just one ortwo buyers there.
This thing is like deep in theculture.
Even myself, if I'm buyingsomething on Alibaba, I talk to
(05:30):
different shops, ask fordiscounts all the time.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
But the thing is the difference is if you're gonna
buy a television and you look atat least the United States had
Best Buy and you go look atTarget, you look at Walmart and,
even if it's all the same, sonytelevision it's obviously up to
them to they might havepromotions with the manufacturer
or they are willing to make alower margin on the sale.
(06:00):
But there is, in essence, anunlimited number of those TVs to
choose from, and so going andoffering, making bad offers at
all three of those places don'treally affect the price of the
TV it's a question of whetherthe retailers willing to make
nothing on the sale or losemoney on the sale to get the
sale.
But the difference is is thatthere's only one TV to be had in
(06:24):
all the land and everybody isgoing to the guy who owns the
only TV.
And then when making all theseoffers from all various places
and IP addresses and companiesand places like that, don't you
think that that would make theseller kind of shut down and
make the price as favorable, Imean, I would think the outcome
(06:45):
is you know, it's hard to breakculture, right, Because I guess
people don't think into it asthat much because we're on this
side of the fence.
But you know, thinking about itthat way, you know, kind of
leaves me scratching my head,right?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Yeah, it's a little bit annoying sometimes.
You know we represent theseller most of the times we knew
that.
You know the broker is tryingdifferent ways to try to get
this domain name.
But I mean, if they believethis works, we just have to let
them waste a bit of time andthen give up different brokers
(07:20):
and then choose one broker totalk to us.
That's it, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Understood.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
All right.
So, moving on, and typicallyfrom what we've experienced with
the Chinese market in general,is that they really like
onewordcoms that are prettypopular words in the English
language, like coolcom that yousold to you know, a Chinese
company, yeah, and many othersingle words that are, you know,
(07:50):
normal understood words in theUS.
But at the same time as again,something I didn't understand
when I got into the industry isthe Chinese culture is wrapped
around a lot of numbers, andculture is also various letters
and strings that don't reallymake sense to people from the
English speaking culture, right,and so when you see those
(08:11):
letters together, it's anunpronounceable string of
letters, right, whether it's two, three, four, five letters, and
it means nothing.
And even if you were topronounce those letters out loud
in Mandarin, a lot of thosetimes wouldn't make a lot of
sense, but phonetically theymean something.
So why don't you tell us alittle bit about numbers and how
(08:34):
they relate and what, how muchthey mean in the Chinese culture
, and then we can get more intothe alphabet and the letters?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
next, yeah, so generally numbers is is deeply
attached to the Chinese cultureas well, for thousands of years.
I mean, I don't want to go intotoo much details.
Obviously we can talk aboutthis for like probably a few
(09:04):
hours, until tomorrow, but youknow.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
We've got all the time in the world we don't move
it on the podcast.
Let's go.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, so I just want to share some simple,
interesting, you know facts.
You know like Number four someans that because it has the
same pronunciation at that inChinese.
So so people don't really likednumber four, especially on the
(09:38):
fourth floor or the 14th flooror on the fourth floor.
is is just normally the fourthfloor and 14th floor will be on
any you know apartment buildingsor even like commercial
buildings will be empty or justleave it as a storage thing so
(10:00):
nobody wants to work there.
You know there's this, there'sthere's no even like 14th or
about.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Let's get this so.
So in the US, 13th floor and alot of hotels and other
commercial buildings don't exist.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
So it's similar, a similar thing, right?
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
But the number three isn't considered bad in the US,
right?
But you're telling me that inChina, if you have the fourth,
the 14th, the 24th, 34th, 44th,going on and on having a floor
ending in four is not a goodidea, right?
No, so do they skip the fourth,14th, 24th, 34th, 44th floors
(10:45):
every time there's a four?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Not everybody want to skip this, but if it's a
business owner, it seems it'snot a lucky sign.
You know people will tend to goto the sixth floor, eighth
floor or ninth floor and try tostay away from.
You know, the levels got fourinvolved, especially 14th.
(11:09):
It's like it means like goingto die.
So what is what is four for me?
So it's still not very good.
But you know, if I'm a businessowner in China, I skip, you
know, fourth floor.
I'll stay away from there.
I'll go to third or fifth orsixth, which is I prefer, you
(11:34):
know.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
you know it's just a bit of a culture thing, thinking
, and then in the Chineseculture would, even though I say
I'm building a commercialbuilding and you have the first
floor, second floor, third floor, fourth floor, like in the real
plans.
But if it goes first, second,third, fifth, people know it's
the fourth floor.
Yeah Well, they still skip itand still want the sixth over
(11:58):
the fifth, because they knowit's the fourth and they know
that after the third floorthings are all off.
Or is it really just the numberthat makes it unlucky?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
They will build fourth floor but you probably a
low roof floor, and then forstorage purposes only, like I
said, oh, really, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Okay, they put all like the ace units in there or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, yeah exactly, yeah, like, and they do put like
different, you know stuff inthere and then on the 14th floor
, I think on most of theresidential buildings there
won't be a 14th floor.
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Do you think to this day that when people talk about
that, they say, oh, that's anold wives tale.
Or like a black cat crossingyour path or walking under a
ladder in the US where you know,100 years ago people like
actually believed in some ofthat crap, but now they don't
really pay that close attentionto it?
Do you think in China that thenewer generations don't pay as
(12:56):
close attention to the numberfour or the meaning of that?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, yeah, I think they still do.
I mean it's deeply into theculture and in mind.
I mean you get to know thissince you start talking and
learning stuff around and thenit's deeply attached.
I mean there are people theydon't care.
I mean that's fine.
I mean I think I heard of therewere people buying cheaper
(13:20):
house or cheap apartment onfourth floor, or even they have
a 14th floor.
They want to buy it for cheap.
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, it's like the same as my wife doesn't.
We were looking at buyinghouses and there was one near a
cemetery, like right next door.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
She wasn't having it.
She's not moving there.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
No, I would never, that's your best neighbor you're
ever going to have.
What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
All right, I've never , never I wouldn't leave.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Would you rather live next to a jail than a cemetery?
Yeah, really.
Yeah, I'll live next to a jail.
Okay, so let's move on to someother numbers.
So I know that six is meanslike wealth and prosperity.
You know, triple six in theUnited States Eight.
Six is luck.
(14:16):
Yeah, okay, yeah.
But in the US, triple six islike the devil.
Yeah, I know, you know.
So six is luck.
And if you had 666, which is areally strong term 666.com, how
would you pronounce?
You just say the same name,same word, three times.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
We'd probably say it like triple sixcom.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
You'd say triple six.
Yeah, you wouldn't say.
How would you say six inMandarin Lil.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Mil M-I-L, no, l-i-u like Lil yeah.
I pronounced that wrong.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So lu, lu lu.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, online gamblingcompanies would love to have a
website like that, but probablyblocked by the government in a
few months.
And then you know we have awebsite that's like you know.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
We have a website, that's like you know.
You know you can get into thatin a minute.
Yeah, so we have four, six, andthen, you know, I've always
seen like Chinese restaurantscalled Dragon88, dragon.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Dynasty, eight stuff like that.
So what does eight mean?
Eight means wealth, which youknow.
Business people love that.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
I used to work on 18th floor for potential.
Yeah, hey how you doing Allright, so keep going.
I used to work in the 18thfloor.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, I used to work on 18th floor in central Beijing
for potential insurance.
I mean, you know they pay a lotof money for the floor, like
every year, so, and thenpotential is a British insurance
company and then, yeah, theywere team up with the city group
(16:12):
in China.
So you know, even British haveto to take Feng Shui thing
seriously in China.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Okay, yeah, Got it.
And do you at your own personalhouse?
You're talking about Feng Shui.
Do you actually have your bedpointed in a certain direction
and things in your house incertain ways?
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Good question.
I mean I turn not to like theprevious thing we discussed.
I would never live in acemetery or close to a cemetery
or within a mile in a cemetery,because that's it's not
something that you know.
(16:54):
Like my mom always said, wehave to respect the people that
passed away.
That's why we don't reallycelebrate like Halloween in
China.
You know, on the Halloween,there's, like we call it more
like a ghost festival in China.
We burn paper money, like fakemoney to family members that
(17:19):
passed away.
And then you know we, we, we,we, we pour wine and bring home
cooked food.
You know, you know to toremember them, to, to tell them
we still miss them, and you knowwe, we do things like this.
We don't really celebrate.
(17:39):
Oh, like with, with ghosts andstuff is it's quite an important
thing in China.
You know, in Asia, cultures,you know ghosts and humans are
two different things.
You go separate ways, you don'tinterfere with them.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, I think.
I think the thing is with theUS and Halloween.
Was it had to do with more orless the end of the harvest
before the winter?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Oh right, Okay, Right .
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So it's like it's like you need to be done
harvesting your crops, and thenit just kind of turned into this
party that had to do with theharvest, but then they added in
like ghouls and ghosts and kindof commercialize it.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Oh, I didn't know that.
I thought it was all about.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I think it was just all about death it's not like in
Mexico a day at the Muerte,where they have sugar spells and
things like that, all right.
So let's play a game.
Okay, I got dice to my kids.
Okay, in their game I actuallyhave five dice, but we're going
to roll.
We're going to start with threedice and we're going to roll
them right now.
Actually, let's do four first,let's make it now.
(18:40):
Let's do three first, let'smake it complicated, all right.
So 362 or 236 or 632, orhowever you want to do it.
What would that mean if you hadthose in order?
236.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Okay.
So if it's 236, it's got a sixin the end.
Which online gambling companieswould love to have that?
And then, on the other hand,they call it a really good chip,
you know, because two timesthree equals six.
(19:20):
You know domain names like 236or 248, you know, is just loved
by these online gamblingcompanies in China, or you know
how would you market that topeople that they would know to
go to that domain to make it?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
It's just a shot.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, it's just a shot, easy to remember and
catchy domain name.
You know I could never get thewhat gambling companies you know
really like, but these 236 or248, they definitely love it.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
And so, even though depth is in the middle of the
two and the eight, they like it,because it's two times four is
eight.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
That's right.
Yeah, it's not a bad thing then.
No, no, it's not.
If it's just 48 or 46, it'sstill a good one because it's
very short, only two digit.
But it depends on different,you know online gambling
(20:32):
companies, they always want likesix or eight.
In the end, they'd love it.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
So what about one, the number one?
Speaker 2 (20:39):
One is is less popular, I think, but it's not
as less popular as just numberfour.
Okay, so if it's 111, okay,that's really good.
123, really good, you know, butthere are still big companies
are using one at the beginning,like 188.com.
(21:00):
The company span like probably$3 million or 2.
Something million dollarsbought 188.com.
163.com is a very popular likelike online news website in
(21:20):
China.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Well, I remember when we had pagers in the US.
143 means I believe I love youright?
Does that?
Does that mean that in Mandarin.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
No, I love you, in Mandarin will be 520.com.
520.
Yeah, 520.
Yeah, so it's yeah, I mean Ilove you in text.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
I'm looking at it back in the 90s and pagers are
widely used.
143 was a quick way of sayingit.
Each number of 143 contains theletters of each word.
One is love, four is you three,I don't know.
But there you go.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Okay, yeah, good to know that.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
So it's funny how it doesn't translate over, because
you would think that in theChinese market they make, they
made the pagers, and 100 yearsbefore people were using numbers
.
But then it was created in theUS in a different way.
Yeah, it's quite different, butit's good to know that you have
a number culture as well,that's.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
that's something pretty new to me.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, all right, so I'm going to, I'm going to roll
a five dice right here.
Let's see.
So at one point when Chris andI first started working together
, the Chinese market got reallyhot and at the time when we
worked at Uniregistry, we had ahandful of clients that, over
the years prior, purchased andowned a lot of two digitcoms,
(22:45):
three digitcoms, four digitcoms,five digitcoms, and then two
letter, three letter, fourletter and some five lettercoms
as well.
And at the peak of the market,I would probably say it was
2014,.
2015 to the Chinese market.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, 15 or 16.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Right, those names were being sold for considerable
amounts of money and we can getinto why they were selling for
that and what they're referredto.
But let's do one roll the diceof five dice.
Let's see how lucky we aretoday.
All right, one, two, three,four.
Oh my God, look at this it was.
(23:24):
I can't tilt my.
Let me see my desk here it wasone, two, three, four, five.
Oh, I guess I'm not that lucky.
I'm not going to do it, butthat's where it is.
That's what it says One, two,three, four, five.
So I'll take a picture it just.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
it doesn't have any meanings, but it's a great great
domain name.
I mean your hands are hot today, you should go do it.
There's four, three, five, nice, nice.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Has no meaning.
It's just a good brand, so easyto remember, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I mean, I'm sure one, two, three, four, fivecom is
owned by an online gamblingcompany.
I'm sure of it.
They'd pay.
I think they'd pay, at least,at least high five figures for
this.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
The most.
Five-digit or six-digit namesdon't really mean anything these
days, right.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
No, I mean if it's five, two zero 99,.
It'll be interesting.
That means I love you forever.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
But the ones that don't really have much meaning
or a very broad meaning, they'rekind of not the market for
those is what?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Just a standard five-digit yeah just a standard
five-digit five-numbercom, butactually, if you talk to someone
from an online gamblingindustry, they'll explain to you
more about all thesecombinations because they have
the idea about how to brand it,how to market it, and then from
(25:06):
different ways.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, like in the US, in the US you have some pretty
famous zip codes or five-digitsright.
So the most famous of them allis Beverly Hills 90210.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
All right yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
If you own that, that's worth a lot of money.
If you had a clothing storenamed 90210, that would be a
great brand in the US.
In the United States, new YorkCity's zip code, which I think
is not as important as it wasbefore.
But being in sales for 20 yearsnow, you get to know figure out
zip codes and then area codeson phone numbers, which are
three digits.
I would know that 646 isWestchester County in New York
(25:43):
where there's a lot of money.
So if you have a sales leadwith a 646 number it's worth
something.
617 is Metropolitan Boston, 212is New York as well.
You know those are valuable butlike an Arkansas one, typically
people in Arkansas don't have asmuch money as somebody in New
York so you know instantly, youstart to learn the area codes
where the best leads are from,and so you just glance at a
(26:06):
phone number and know and samewith a zip code or an area, and
those numbers are valuable.
All right, so let's talk aboutletters.
Yeah, so letters are similar ina lot of ways to numbers, where
in the US language, in mostcases you say like three or four
(26:28):
letters, which would beconsidered an acronym.
That has a meaning in a lot ofways, like USA, right, there's
value there, but the U doesn'tmean a million different things
and the S doesn't mean a milliondifferent things and it doesn't
usually like flow intosomething, unless it is a
considered a word.
So I asked you ahead of timefor some examples.
(26:49):
Ymsdcom, you said, is domainshop.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
How would you?
Pronounce that you don't reallypronounce it, it's just like YM
means domain.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
How would you say domain in Mandarin?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yuming like Y U M I N G.
That's like the first letter ofa domain name YM.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
So is Ming the word name and you is the word name.
Yeah, that's right.
So what's another word thatwould go with name that starts
with Y?
Why would you assume thatthat's domain?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, good question If you're from the main industry
and you own YMcom and then youknow that's one of the best
domain names you can.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
So it's just associated with the group of
people that you happen to betalking to, that they should
know, but that Y could mean amillion other things.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, that's right.
It has probably another 30, 50other meanings or other words.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So if I have K H S D, it would be Chris Howe shop.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
K H S D okay.
K H means like clients.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Clients, customers, meeting.
So you're so good at saying K?
H equals customers, yeah.
And then S?
D would mean shop, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
S, d has other meanings like wait, like speed
time you know, lock or feel youknow.
There's just so many meanings,I know.
That's why I'm getting intodetails, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So let me ask you this right?
So if someone owned a domainshop, they wanted to call or
register our YM which obviouslythat sounds like a really good
shorthanded way or acronym tocall you know, register or more
domain brokerage.
But if somebody bought abillboard and put it up in
(28:54):
Beijing with just Y Y, m S, dcomon it, or even dot, cn Like
that's, that's pretty much apointless ad because there's
just so many meanings to whatthat could be.
So you would have to thenobviously do a lot more further
branding.
Yeah, understand what you'reoffering, right.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
So it's a pretty broad keyword.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
It's almost like owning the domain cardcom.
You think of greeting cards,business cards, you know, credit
cards, you know playing cardslike just all kinds of different
things right, is it?
That it's like almost thatbroad, like a shotgun spray of
possibilities.
Yeah, that's right.
Okay, yeah, well, that makessense, all right, so you guys
(29:39):
don't really have, or theChinese cultures don't really
have, vowels, right?
You don't really use vowels.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
It depends If, let's say, if it's VVcom, vvvcom.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
That's really good Victor, victor Victor.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yeah, yeah, that's really good Like it completely
depends on.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
V is not a vowel A, e , I, o, u and sometimes Y.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
So it's a vowel in the US.
The letter V, you've told me,isn't really being used in the
Chinese culture.
No At all.
Either right and X.
Right or no.
X is being used in the Chineseculture X is being used Well
actually.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
I mean because the Chinese culture has combined a
lot of like other Asian culturesand even like US cultures and
you know European cultures aswell.
So people are.
You know the culture is alwaysdeveloping.
You know it's changing.
It's going to be like quitedifferent from now compared to
(30:44):
50 years ago.
So I'm sure, like all thesevowels are being used in
different ways in business, likein branding in the maze, and I
think all these vowels are.
I mean, the value is definitelyslightly lower but if you use
it in the right ways, it can bevery brandable and catchy.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Um.
So let's go over a couple morequick.
Jkkl means health and happy,yeah.
Jkus means joke yeah, you know?
Um, I don't know what the KLwould mean.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
KL is like happy.
Uh, you know you want to.
If you own JKLcom, you probablycan builda like a kids like
show website.
Um yeah, so.
So so you know the the meaningcould be like health and happy.
(31:40):
You know it's kind of good forthe kids.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Okay, so, moving on um, from that, let's go back to
2015, 2016, 2017.
Yeah, you know, crypto isreally cooking then going up
substantially.
There was a lot of you knowinterest in that.
Um.
The Chinese market was buyingmostly, you know, two letter,
two digit, three letter, threedigit, four letter and some four
(32:10):
digit and then up to five digitdot coms.
I saw some people like six andseven digits for sale, um, and
what people were doing andcorrect me if I'm wrong is they
were buying these differentnames based on the quality that
we went over for differentreasons.
Some were better than othersand when they would buy that in
China, um, they would call it achip because they can put their
(32:32):
money into that, and then therewas always kind of like a value.
So, in essence, it was almostlike the first cryptocurrency,
because it went up and down sofast and people were able to use
them to get money out of China,because they could buy it with
their Chinese money and thensell it in the United States and
have a US bank account and gettheir money put in there.
(32:52):
Or they could just hold on to itas something like a Bitcoin or
a Bitcoin or something like thatas well, but with crypto and
different regulations, theChinese government didn't really
have limitations on the amountof money people could spend on
domains for a period of time,right, but then that changed in
the last few years.
Am I right about that?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, so, um, it's uh , it's a bit complicated to
explain that.
You know, because of the?
Um the Cold War.
What's the Chinese governmentdoing?
Um, you know, on differentthings.
I'm I, to be honest, I I don'twant to, you know, go into
(33:35):
details, but people in Chinatend to move their properties,
um uh, or money or theirfortunes out of China into um,
put them into different bankaccounts in different countries,
like, um in the UK, uh inSingapore, in Japan, in Korea,
in the US, which is um you know,a lot of Chinese uh uh have
(33:59):
saving accounts in the US, um,because also, in the in in in,
like Vancouver we've seen theprice of real estate is
absolutely astronomical becausethe Chinese have have come in
there and bought.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Very trendy place to buy.
We saw when I first startedcoming to Manchester working at
Uniregistry.
Yeah, chinese investors startedcoming into Manchester to buy
commercial properties and andresidential properties.
Yeah, and the prices just went,you know, through the roof.
And so to the building right sopeople could get money out of
China.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, actually, um one of one of my friends, uh one
of uh uh the a good friend ofmine who I met at uh potential
insurance.
This guy bought like fiveapartments in Manchester.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
So there you go, cause they're.
They're well priced and therent supported it right, yeah.
And they're doing goodinvestment for his and get his
money out of China.
But recently, to myunderstanding, china has started
to tighten their grip on themoney leaving their country,
which has affected peopleinvesting from China and crypto
and those buying those fourletter, three letter, four digit
(35:08):
, three digit domains right.
And they put a limitation on acommon person without a license
of $50,000 a year, right.
So if I wanted to spend$100,000 on a condo in
Manchester or use it as a downpayment as a, as a standard
Chinese or a normal Chinesecitizen, I wouldn't be allowed
(35:29):
to do that.
Is that what is happening there?
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, it happens a lot.
I mean uh, one of the.
I think the most importantreason that Chinese are trying
to invest uh internationally isbecause you know the political
side of uh.
You know reasons Um, the ColdWar between China and America
(35:53):
and even the Cold War betweenChina and European are getting
more and more concerns Um it's,um, it's it's.
It's hard to explain, but theyjust don't feel it's a safe
environment to invest in China.
Uh, in, in in all the marketsUm, you know the the currently
(36:18):
the um, the stock market, theprofit market in China are all
going downhill since thepandemic.
You know people are losing likeconfidence to throw money in
there.
I mean, uh, a lot of peoplelost a lot of money in there as
(36:39):
well.
It's, and there are no otherways to invest in China.
So that's why people startbuying cryptos and buying domain
names.
And then you know, move.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I would think there's a lot of Chinese citizens that,
let's say, you know you had$50,000 in the bank.
Then the idea would be is everyweek you go and take a thousand
dollars out and hide it underyour bed because you're afraid
that maybe the government willtake it from you.
Is there that kind of fear, oris there no fear in that it's
more like your?
Your money would just sit therestagnant because that's right.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yeah, it's more, more about just losing value.
It's not about a governmenttaking the money.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
It's not that's me as a crazy Westerner saying the
Chinese government will justtake their money and do what
they want.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
It won't happen to ordinary people.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Uh-huh.
So let's pretend you know you'reback in China and you wanted to
buy a property in Manchesterand you get a hundred thousand
dollar down payment and you'regoing to get a loan, you know
for whatever amount of money,and you go to send the money.
You have to go down to the bankto wire the money, so you're
going to go over your.
You go over your limits, sothey're going to ask you why you
want to send it and you have towait for them to say no to you.
(37:49):
Is that kind of how it works?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah, so in China every citizen will have like
$50,000 US dollar limits to wiremoney out of China every year.
So if it's over $50,000, theywill ask you what is this money
for?
They will ask you about moneylaundering.
You know questions.
(38:12):
And then if you say I'm lookingto purchase a house or a
property, a real estate property, some country, they ask you to
fill in a form and they want tocharge you tax.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Okay, you can still get the money out.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
You can still get the money out.
But this was about like thiskind of they kind of raised the
bar like since about three, fouryears ago.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Okay, so it's a lot harder yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
It's a lot harder.
So that's why crypto currenciesand domain names are so popular
for investors to kind of usethem as a tool to move money out
of China.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay.
Yeah, and then so is that on alike you know, if I sent 50
grand today, is that reset onthe Chinese New Year or is that
12 months like kind of roll?
Speaker 2 (39:04):
like 12 months.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
So what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
So like, yeah, it'll be like from January, the 1st,
to December the 30th or the 31st.
You got you can buy it 50k out,got it?
Speaker 1 (39:18):
So then the calendar year changes and then you get
another 50 grand and another 50grand yeah, so then what would
happen?
I apply you go to do buy thisplace and I just say, hey, yeah,
I'm buying it with Chris and Igot 50, he's got 50.
We both, why are there?
They're really not going to saymuch, are they?
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Because they will.
They will ask for a contractand then see the details, and
then all they're trying to do isstop you buying money out of
China.
So so they all, they want tocharge you tax for it.
Okay, yeah, so interesting, Allright.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
So moving on from that is one of the things that
I've noticed selling domainnames to Chinese citizens is
that we use escrowcom you knowquite a bit as an escrow company
.
We use escrowcom domains as anescrow company.
Why is it that, if they'relimited, buyers are limited to
paying $50,000 a year out?
(40:13):
Why isn't that?
Typically Chinese buyers ofdomain names are really against
paying for domains on a paymentplan.
I would think that they'd wantto pay on a payment plan to
spread out you know that amountof money, but it seems like
whenever we pitch the idea of apayment plan, a Chinese person
is adamantly against not doingit.
Why do you think that's thecase?
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah.
So I think it's just it kind ofmade the buyer feel insecure
about the whole thing.
So you you normally if it's apayment plan, you do like 30%
down payment and then you paythe rest, let's say, within six
months or within a year.
But for payment plan they feellike I paid like 30% but I'm
(41:01):
still not the owner.
What if the owner changed hismind?
I then I can't get my moneyback, or they want to.
They want a lot more than thanthe original price we agree to,
and even explaining thatespritcom holds the domain and
they're going to connect with it.
No, they wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
They wouldn't trust it because I wouldn't trust it
in China either.
So I don't blame them if it wasthe other way around, I'm just
curious.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, but the other reason is when situations like
this, If the seller, let's sayif the seller, changed their
mind, we probably have to go tothe court and then you know that
would.
That means extra costs on thelawyers and international, maybe
(41:46):
traveling.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
But they can do the same and like escrowcom, they
don't trust it.
When you pay the full amountcan then just keep the money and
never transfer the name.
I mean, there's that still thatpossibility?
Then you know, still thespending risk.
I mean, it's just drawn outlonger, but it's still a similar
risk that you're taking rightRather than okay.
Yeah, I'm gonna go here on aleft field question what
(42:12):
language do you dream in, sinceyou're so well versed in
Mandarin and in English and youspeak pretty much perfect
English with me, and then,obviously, at home with your
wife and children?
We're both from China, or allthree of them are from China.
You speak Mandarin, so what,when you have dreams at night?
What?
Speaker 2 (42:32):
language is it?
I think I speak Chinese.
Yeah, I feel yeah, okay.
All my dreams, most of mydreams.
I think it's all aboutsomething happened in China when
I was a kid, or when I was withfamilies, and then you know, I
think most of my dreams are inChinese.
(42:54):
Okay, yeah.
I never had a dream that I waswearing like a British, like
knight armor sword, killing adragon or something.
I haven't had one of those yeteither.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
All right, so then let me ask you this question as
well.
So you've lived in, you knowthe Western world in Manchester
now since you know college.
Until now I know you went backfor a short period of time, but
then you're back to England.
So you've been in England forlike 15 or 20 years now, yeah,
and then you lived in you knowChina for actually less time, if
(43:29):
you actually think about that.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah, but you grew up in the military, as I mentioned
before.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
What's the biggest difference for your kids living
in England and growing up, bornand raised there, and you know
you growing up as someone whereyour dad was in the Chinese
military.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Yeah, so, yeah, it's quite different.
To be honest, my dad was bornin a small village in Shandong
province, china.
So his life, if he stayed there, he's going to be a farmer or
some construction worker in thatsmall village or in Shandong
(44:09):
province for the rest of hislife.
When he was 16, he decided tomake huge change to join the
military, and then he was only16.
Yeah, so he traveled likethousands, over a thousand miles
to a different province, joinedthe Air Force and became a
pilot for five years and thenstart doing like ground, like
(44:33):
officer works after that.
My dad was a very strict father.
I mean, I can be quite honestwith you, he was very strict to
me but I wasn't listening to allhis orders.
I mean, I'm sure you canimagine, you know what.
(44:55):
I remember one of the joke myfriend kept mentioning.
It's not a joke, it's somethinghappened to me when I was in
middle school, that's likeseventh or eighth grade.
In the US we have to do thelike a thousand meter run test
to go to high school.
My dad was dragging me out ofthe bed and then run, practicing
(45:20):
the thousand meter run with meevery morning, almost every
morning, and then my classmatesor, you know, classmates from
other levels.
They saw my dad kicking me inthe butt, chasing me in the
playground and forced me to runthat to.
(45:40):
You know, it was just.
You don't get too many.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
He was treating you like a recruit.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
That's what he said yeah, yeah, like some soldier in
the military, like he was verystrict, he doesn't care, like
who is around he just want me toget the job done and then go
home.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
That's it yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
A lot of my classmates in middle school did
remember that moment, and thenthey kept asking me about how is
your dad still treating you thesame way?
Well, I mean, my dad is a verygood father, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
But I mean, you told me that when you were a little
kid, sometimes like the militarycar would come pick you up.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Yeah all the time.
Yeah, that's like you know themilitary car we were driving to
my school.
You picked me up in front ofthousands of students.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
But it wouldn't be your dad driving.
It would be like a friend.
No, it wouldn't be my dad.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
No, it would be my dad's driver, and then it was.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
So you were driven around like a general in the
back of the military car.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, you know, I kind of.
Yeah, I took a lot of advantageof that sometimes.
You know they, you know themilitary cars can go through the
red lights, they don't have tostop.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
And they can drive on a one-way traffic road.
You know, I'm not proud of this, I'm not proud of this, but I
feel like, okay, that's justwrong.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
How often are you seeing military cars in and
around China driving around?
I can't imagine you see themthat often.
You have to see them once in awhile.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, you don't see military cars too much on the
road, but if it's officers car,they will have special place
like registration plates likeAF-001, AF-002.
Yeah, so, yeah, so with amilitary sign on it.
(47:45):
So I was All right.
So let's move on.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
What are your feelings?
And then we'll wrap it up,because we're getting right
close to an hour and this iswhere we want to kind of keep.
It is Well, most importantly,how can people contact you if
they have some questions abouttheir own domains or they want
to work with you or talk to youmore about the Chinese market?
Speaker 2 (48:08):
You can always send me a LinkedIn message or just
search on Google chrishowcom,you can find me, or you can
email me at chrishowcom.
So that's chriswithk K-R-I-S ats-a-wcom.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
What's your WeChat?
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Oh, wechat, that's my will be my UK mobile number so
I can share that.
I think it's on my LinkedIn orWhatsApp can reach me out so
many ways.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
Okay, perfect.
So before we wrap it up, as anAmerican I hear.
I listened to a lot ofdifferent podcasts, and one of
the things that I've beenlistening to a lot about is
social credit scores in China.
Is there a social credit scoreright now in China?
Have you heard about it, or isthis a lot of just?
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Yeah, they are building a credit system in
China.
They have been building thisfor about, I think, for almost
10 years.
It's working.
I'll give you a quick example.
If I, before I moved toManchester, if I borrowed like
(49:21):
10,000 or 100,000 Chinesecurrencies in a bank in China,
and then didn't pay for it, payit back and then moved to
Manchester.
So that means if I ever travelback to China and then please
(49:42):
and please department, and thenof some local debt department
company, they will try to trackme down and find me and ask for
those money back.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Yeah, they did that in the US too.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah, so I could never get on the train.
If I have a debt on me for like100,000 Chinese currencies, I
could never take a.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
So if you have a debt and you don't need to get to
work, like if you can't afford acar, how the hell are you
supposed to get to work?
If you owe someone 100 grand,just ride a bike.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Figure it out.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Yeah, tough shit.
So they start shutting downsocial services on you.
Yeah, if it owes somebody money.
What if you're caughtprotesting?
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Oh, there's no protesting in China.
This is.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
All right.
What if you're like a habitualspeeder with your car?
Does that hurt your socialcredits?
Speaker 2 (50:38):
That's not a criminal record.
But if I drink and drive,that's a serious crime in China.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
So if I drink and drive, they're gonna take away
the train, so I can't use thatmode of transportation, so I
have to drive my car again.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
No, you have to just get on public transport like bus
tram and Do you?
Speaker 1 (51:01):
think it's to the point where they will limit,
like, the amount of televisionyou can watch or the amount of
internet you can use or what youcan look at on the internet for
so long.
Do you think that that's allkind of in the works?
Speaker 2 (51:18):
No, that won't affect .
But since you mentioned this,with the Cold War going, Chinese
government started to put ahuge fight on people trying to
watch YouTube and then useTwitter or use Instagram.
(51:40):
They didn't want people to readinformation outside of China.
They just want you to stickwith whatever they're telling
you to believe.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
So one of the things that I've talked to my friends
about is a lot of the new carsthese days are having autonomous
driving and then they'reconnected to the internet and to
the car companies and therecould come a day where a Senator
or President wants to limit thenumber of miles you could drive
(52:13):
in a period of time.
I mean, imagine you go to getin your Tesla, which is wired
into the internet and you'vedriven 600 miles that month
already and they believe thatanyone who drives over 650 miles
they don't need to go anywhereelse and they're making that
decision for you or we werelaughing.
I think I was talking aboutthis like a month ago.
Imagine you don't pay your carpayment and then your car just
(52:37):
drives itself back to thedealership.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:40):
So you go outside to get in the car to go to work one
day.
They didn't pay a repo companyto get it, they just had the car
drive itself back.
Or maybe you're even in the carand the thing just drives right
into the dealership and shutsitself off.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
and you could have like your son, your wife giving
birth, and you're racing to thehospital and the thing just
pulls in the dealership and youknow there you have it and too
bad, you know.
So it's just interesting.
You know, tinfoil hat stuffthat sometimes you think about.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Hey, you have anything else to say, because
we're going to wrap this baby up.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
That's it, and thank you so much for having me.
I'm so glad to have a chance toyou know, talk to you about
different topics, about China,and then, you know, apart from
work, I'm really, I'm reallyexcited to hear this online.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
All right.
Well thanks for coming asalways.
And always a pleasure, my man.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
All right, thanks a lot, jeff.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
MUSIC.
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