F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 24-page original story is here and it is a great story in its own right. However, besides the title and the lead character’s name, it has little in common with Fincher’s film. My wife says it borrows heavily from the 2003 novel The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I haven’t read it, so you’ll have to take her word for it. Or, if you don’t feel like reading it, you could just wait a few month’s and see it in theaters. I just read that Brad Pitt’s production company has picked up the title, which is set to release later this year. I, for one, won’t be going to see it. Unless I decide I’m in the mood for another romantic time travel film.

“Who is saying that the painter is just a rehash of season 1? This entire show is just a rehash of season 1. Someone time travels, sees a bleak future, and comes back to stop it and a painter makes absolute visions of the future that take all the suspense out of things. It’s this show’s MO.”

Which reminds me of my un-published Season 2 take-away…

We arrived at the world headquarters of Alibaba.com in Hangzhou to a fanfare of music–music that could have come from the soundtrack to the original Super Mario Bros. Across the less than 1,000 sq. foot office floor, the 115 employees stood inside their 4×4 ft. cubicles and stretched their arms in the air. Then, in unison, the entire mass of twenty-somethings began doing jumping jacks. They continued their group exercises while our group of MBA students was escorted past the cube-clusters into a large meeting room.

The calisthenics are but a small, visible piece of the unique corporate culture of Alibaba Group, an English language web-based business-to-business eCommerce and eAuction service specializing in connecting international buyers and small- to medium-sized Chinese sellers. Our guide quickly made us aware that the company knew it was unique. “For most companies,” he said, “employee culture is like a cliché or a joke.” Well, it is not that way for the employees here. “Everybody is happy,” he continued. “It is our environment.”

We were then given a rough translation of a company joke that concerned a stubborn donkey in a mill that refused to work for his master. The master enticed the donkey to do his work at the mill by threatening to send him to work for Alibaba.com. “Here we all work like donkeys!” he announced as the punch line. Indeed, the word “work” actually appears in 2 of the 6 points of their printed company motto. So, are hard work and teamwork the strong points that make Alibaba such a successful company? Or is there more to this unique start-up’s corporate culture?

The lobby of HQ is decorated in orange scarves and bright orange hanging plastic fruit. And one other ubiquitous decoration—photos of company founder, Jack Ma. Ma is the poster-child of the New Chinese, the modern entrepreneurial self-made success story that this newly-capitalistic nation adores. And he is on posters. Giant reprints of the man’s photo adorn 2 out of every 4 walls in the building and line the staircase up to the top floor. In ’88, Ma was an English teacher fresh out of college. 11 years later, after a visit to Seattle and a crash course in computers, Ma was founding his own eBay-esque business. Then, 8 years later, he took his company public on the HKSE to raise $3 billion USD and become the IPO with the greatest increment in stock price at first trading in 2007.

Jack Ma’s influence is everywhere and his success is a model to the employees of his company. “He has us call him Kwai Chang, from the TV series Kung Fu,” our guide told us. During our tour, every action and idle quip of the 43-year-old founder was revered as holy writ, and even offered as justification for the “spirit” that prevailed there at the company. When asked what he thought Alibaba would do to maintain its growth and close the gap on rival companies Google and Baidu, our guide’s response, stars nearly visible in his eyes: “I can’t answer that. I’m not Jack Ma.” –Shawn Butler

The American Dream is no longer exclusive to America. During the past 20 years, 1.3 billion Chinese have also dared to dream as indulgently, as hedonistically, and as short-sightedly as our culture does. Long admirers of the reckless and materialistic American lifestyle portrayed in our Hollywood film exports, the rising core of the Chinese population is becoming free to pursue the American dream of self-indulgence and instant gratification of all their wants.

“Chinese dream of buying a car, a house, a first-class education for their children, and a range of consumer goods conferring status and convenience, just as they do to middle-class families in Europe and America. As disposable incomes rise, people are eating more protein and using more electricity to run their computers, televisions, and household appliances,” writes James Kynge in his book China Shakes the World (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). We are seeing China undergo in a very short period of time the changes that the U.S. and other developed countries underwent over the course of three centuries. China is being forced through this period of turbulence at an incredible pace because of the social, economic, and political pressures within and surrounding the country. The velocity of the change, rather than the change itself, is the root of the many ills currently plaguing the budding progress of China.

The rate of change in China has not allowed the nation to develop a mature social conscience and moral law. Chinese history is steeped in great thinkers, wise men and profound philosophical insight. This makes it all the more appalling that they have degenerated into a nation without a moral compass. The 1960’s rise of communism imposed atheism that undermined the current generation’s ethical foundation. Kynge states that “[t]he ideological vacuum that replaced communism undermines [trust]. The daily diet of propaganda disorients it. The venality of officials devalues it. The ascendance of a value system dominated by money hollows it out. What is left is a society in which describing someone as honest can just as easily be a gentle criticism as a compliment.”

Without a strong national moral compass, the country is rampant with instances of fraud, deceit and counterfeit. In many instances, these are only for the gain of wealth, but often the cost of the deception is human lives. We read from Kynge that “every time a Hollywood blockbuster was cut, it would appear on DVD in China before it had been released in the same format in America… A sixth volume in the series of Harry Potter novels appeared in China months before J.K. Rowling had written it… Kettles blow up, electrical transformers short-circuit, medicines have no effect, brake pads fail, alcoholic beverages poison those who drink them, and the use of inferior milk powder has caused several babies to starve to death.”

From our Western-centric point of view, it is simple to feel aloof from the morally remiss situations we read about in the East. However, we need to recognize that Americans are one of the leading forces causing the rapid changes to the Chinese nation. Kynge reports that “it is the advertising, marketing, and sales executives in Europe and the United States, as well as the shareholders of the brand-owning company, that take the lion’s share of the value from the product that the migrant workers create.” When we comment that the changes in China are happening too fast for the country to reasonably adapt, we cannot ignore the powerful influence that the demands and the unintentional export of the US culture have had on their current situation.

So it should be no surprise that the ambitions and appetites of its people are also following suit. China is adopting the same American dream of self-improvement, comfort and wealth that has been the calling card of immigrants to our country for so long. However, “in spite of the resemblance China bears to America in an earlier stage of its development, the chances that the Chinese will one day be able to consume at the same rate as Americans do today are close to zero. It is not that they will choose to be more frugal. It is simply that the world does not have the resources to cater to 1.3 billion Chinese behaving like Americans.” It should be added that the world in its current environmental situation does not have the resources for the 300 million Americans to continue behaving like Americans either. –Shawn Butler