It was my first Canton Fair with Mr. Yu, and the split was simple: he handled pricing and the conversations, I got the front of the booth - don't sit down, greet everyone who passes, keep the price list open in your hand. We were in Hall 11.2, Booth D47, set back from the main aisle, so foot traffic was never heavy and anyone coming in had to walk a little way to reach us. The booklet wasn't thick. A few product lines, that was all: half-round grille panels, the wall panels that go with them, and plywood; the WPC section had thickness and unit price printed underneath, every number fixed in advance. What a newcomer could actually do was stop someone, find the right line and read it out - getting it wrong was worse than not knowing it at all. On the 23rd, opening day, and through the 24th, I did it properly. By the afternoon of the 25th the hall had emptied out: most of the people left in the aisle were heading for the exits with their suitcases, one booth near us had already started packing samples back into crates, my price list had curled at the corners, and there was nobody left to greet. In hindsight the timing was odd - buyers rarely walk into a new booth on the last days of a fair.
He came down the aisle with a backpack on, not walking the way someone comparing suppliers walks - no slowdown, eyes just passing along the wall of panels. He should have gone straight by. Instead the glance caught on the half-round grille and held for a moment. I couldn't say how long; probably less than a second, and there was no way to tell whether he'd recognised the material or was matching it against something he'd seen a few booths back. There wasn't time to work any of that out. I called out, asked him to come in and take a look, and he answered "coming" - and actually came over. He turned the grille over in his hands a few times, then the questions came one after another: indoor or outdoor, does it go with wall panels, is it WPC, what's the unit price. All of it was in the booklet. I read it off. He didn't bargain, didn't close with the usual "I'll have another look"; he just stood there holding the sample, saying nothing. That kind of pause is harder to handle than haggling. Haggling at least tells you he's still doing the maths. A pause could mean the numbers aren't working, or he's comparing you with the last three booths, or he's about to set the sample back down on the table. The last one is the bad version: sample down, a "thanks", and he's gone before there's even a gap to ask for a card. So I didn't push the price any further. I changed it to "there's a seat inside, no rush" - keep him in the booth first.
He came in, dropped the backpack on a chair, looked up and took in the whole display wall from one end to the other, and only then said he wanted to see plywood. I wasn't starting from zero there. Specs, thickness, roughly where it gets used - I could manage a few sentences. But he kept going, down into the core material and how the joints are made, and I ran out; my head went blank for a second. The normal move at a fair when you don't know something is to give an approximate answer, because most buyers won't press it on the spot and you can have the boss tidy it up later. I genuinely considered it. What stopped me wasn't principle so much as the fear that the figures I half-remembered wouldn't match the actual product, with the price list sitting right there in black and white and the whole order having to be redone afterwards. So I said it straight: I'm not going to guess at that detail, I need to check with Mr. Yu. He asked where Mr. Yu was. I said I'd go and get him. He said, "No rush." By the usual reading, that means we pick it up when I come back with someone. What came next was that he wanted to place a trial order, order now. I thought I'd misheard and confirmed it - "Are you sure?" - and he said yes, without any hesitation at all.
"No rush."
"I want to place a trial order - order now."
"Send me photos before shipping."
Those three lines turned up again in the emails afterwards. The middle one was said there in the booth; the last one came as he was walking off down the aisle. What followed is barely worth describing: Mr. Yu came over, the order was written up on the spot, no bargaining, no "let me think about it", $1,700 in cash counted out in front of me, a receipt made out, the half-round grille sample went into the backpack and left with him. The whole thing was shorter than any version of it I'd imagined beforehand - short enough that all I can reconstruct now are a few images, with the steps in between missing. The only things I can actually check against each other are these: the afternoon of October 25, USD 1,700 in cash, one receipt, one half-round grille sample that left with him, and a request for photos before shipping.
As for what made that order happen, I still don't have a version I can verify. The product wasn't well presented - I couldn't answer the one question that mattered. Price wasn't the advantage either; he never even negotiated. If I have to name a difference, it's only that I admitted I didn't know, at the exact moment he was deciding whether he could hand over money to us there and then. It's just as possible he needed stock that day and anyone standing at that booth would have got the same result. There's no control group for this sort of thing. I don't know where that curled price list ended up.
I've told this a few times since. Every time I get to the plywood part, I still stall for a second. Same as that afternoon.
