Water bottle display at Banana Republic

In a recent trip to a wedding reception in New York City, I came across a window display that was very cleverly done. It is decorated with empty plastic water bottles that were repurposed to create beautiful light fixtures. We need more “outside-the-bottle�?ideas to combat the rapid deterioration of our environment that is attributable to “outside-the-box�?innovations.

Don’t get me wrong, I love innovation. I love watching it, and I love being a part of it. Engineers are often told to think outside the box for innovations in product design, manufacturing processes, and distributions. A life cycle of car design used to take five to six years, now it is less than two years. Moore’s Law of electronics has lasted more than 50 years with no sign of slowing down.

Internet and mobile devices have driven even faster innovation and consumer product cycles. Think about when your contract is almost up on your mobile phone �?you’re ready for a faster, better device. We expect to have a new mobile phone every two years.

Great outside-the-box thinking has had some negative consequences, though. We are seeing unprecedented environmental impact all over the world, but especially in developing countries where economic growth often outweighs environmental, health, and safety concerns until it is too late.

Water bottles themselves are a manufactured demand in developing countries like the U.S., where most tap water is potable. But in some countries such as India, China, and Brazil, manufacturing output has greatly polluted primary water sources, and there is a dire need for clean drinking water.

Several years ago residents in east China began having serious health problems. After an investigation, 23 out of 26 battery manufacturers were found guilty of polluting the local river. China now has more oversight and hardware to combat the growing environmental issues, however much damage is already done. And most corporations still give precedence to profitability over environmental impact.

But some companies are bearing their share of environmental stewardship and corporate responsibility. Here are a few things they do:

• Integrate EH&S practices into their manufacturing process. Our Quantum Compliance (www.usequantum.com) is one of many companies that provide solutions to make it easy and streamlined to do so.
• Reduce unnecessary waste such as water bottles, plastic cups, plates, and etc.
• Make something out of recyclable materials. For example, Tzu Chi Foundation’s volunteers turn plastic bottles into blankets for victims of natural disasters.

I certainly would not mind having these beautiful bottle light fixtures in my home or office!

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The trip to Chicago today is the third time I’ve ridden a “high-speed�?train in three weeks in three countries. Each ride gave me insight into how high-speed trains have not only affected the day-to-day schedule of people travelling from one location to another, they have also brought parts of the world closer together for greater, more interesting experiences.

I started my trip going to Fuzhou, China where my father is from to sweep the tombs during the Tomb Sweeping Festival to pay my respects to my ancestors. In 1978 when my father returned to China the first time after 30 years away from home, he took a train from Guangzhou (close to Hong Kong) to Fuzhou. The train was so slow that it took the whole day (24 hours) to cross the neighboring provinces. According to travel restrictions, my father was only allowed to bring 5 large packages and 5 small packages from Hong Kong. Among the 5 big items were a TV and a refrigerator. The 13-inch TV became the only TV in the village that sometimes would bring a ton of people from all over the village into my father’s courtyard to watch it. My relatives were so poor that they could not afford the electricity to run the refrigerator, so they brought it out and plugged it in when my father visited them.

A photo of my cousins who went up the mountain with me. They are standing in front of the tomb.

I remember when they brought out the refrigerator to stock food when I visited China for first time with my father in 1990. It was the first time I had hiked up the mountain to the family tomb. The mountain didn’t have a lot of trees and the trail was clear. My cousins told me that the trail leading to the tomb was the main road for people going north to Beijing to take the national examination in the Forbidden City. The exam brought the brightest students from all over China to the Forbidden City in hopes of being the champion (狀�? �?or receiving one of the highest ranking scores. A champion would receive recognition from the emperor and be guaranteed a nice government job.

Over the past 25 years, that trail going up to the mountain has gradually disappeared. Freeways and high-speed trains are replacing the mountain trail as roads toward Beijing. Nowadays, I could travel from Shanghair to Fuzhou in six hours on a high-speed train at 180 miles per hour. The only time anyone travels through the mountain anymore is for the Tomb Sweeping Festival. The trail has become very slippery and trees have grown everywhere, making it difficult to find the tomb. My cousins occasionally get calls from people asking them how to find certain tomb. I was impressed by their knowledge of gravesites as well as their ability to walk on the trail. I am embarrassed to say that even though they are in their late 60s, they had to grab me several times whenever I started slipping downhill. I asked them how they know their way around so well. They said “When you have to spend four hours a day for ten years trying to find every available firewood to make sure that your family has fire for cooking, you pretty much know every piece of this mountain.�?/p>

High-speed trains and improvements to transportation technology have changed the lives of people all over China. It used to take me five hours to go from our Shanghai office to Nanjing, but now it takes one and half hours. From Nanjing to Beijing is only another four hours on the same train. So in theory, I can stop by all three Logic offices in a day. That was unthinkable when I set up these offices back in the 2000s.

Recently on the way back to the US from Taiwan, my wife and I stopped by Tokyo to see our daughter, Emily, who is now working there. Emily said that a new Shinkanshen (high-speed bullet train) just opened in the northern coastal city Kanazawa. We used our Japan Rail Passes (a pass only for foreigners to get unlimited rides) to see that city. The train was very comfortable with power outlet available in every seat, traveling at 160 miles per hour, and arriving from point to point at the precise minute it was expected.

There was another type of high-speed bullet train that we experienced in Kanazawa. While we toured the city, we also made sure to check out the local restaurant hotspots. Someone at the train station tourist information center suggested we visit the restaurants around the famous fish market in the center of the city. After waiting for 30 minutes in line, we got into a popular sushi establishment. It is one of those sushi train restaurants run with modern technology. An iPad with a self-service ordering app was mounted on every table. I thought the iPad POS app system (www.touchandserve.com) that we’ve developed was very impressive, but these iPad stations were way cooler! After placing an order through the iPad app, a miniature Shinkanshen model train carried our sushi through the restaurant, stopping next to us. We took the sushi plates off the train and pressed a button to send the train back to it’s the home station. It is really cool to see “high-speed�?technology compliment the traditional restaurant experience!

For a country that invented high-speed internet and changed the lifestyles of a whole generation, true high-speed train is still a far-off dream for most major American cities. So many technological advances have improved the livelihoods of millions of people around the world and it will keep finding ways to make it easier. I would love to someday be able to travel to Chicago in just one and half hours. I am also craving for a high-speed sushi train with delicious sushi to come to a table near me. Maybe we’ll see sushi trains in restaurants in the U.S. before high-speed rail becomes available to the populace.

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The new set of faces that greet visitors to Logic’s Ann Arbor office

Every year when I travel to Asia to celebrate Chinese New Year, I usually bring back a ton of stuffed animals for the animal of the year. Last week I brought back around 40 goats. They are so cute and were gone minutes after arriving at the office. Some years, I struggle to give the stuffed animals away because they’re not as cute. Who would’ve thought that goats would be so popular?

Ironically, I recently learned that some Chinese believe they should avoid having babies in the Year of the Goat because goats are thought to be weak animals. A popular Chinese saying describing someone in danger is “sending a goat into the mouth of a tiger (羊入虎口)�? Some people even go as far as to induce labor to have babies born in the Year of the Horse and not the Goat. To me, this superstition is total nonsense. Goats don’t represent weakness; they symbolize gentility and peace, and I am proud my daughter was born in the Year of the Goat.

The most popular auspicious phrase for the new Year of the Goat is “Three goats bring peace and safety (三羊開泰)�?  This is a play on the saying “Three suns bring peace and safety�?because “goat�?and “sun�?in Chinese have the same pronunciation. The saying is a wish for the three suns (who were sons of an ancient god) to bring a prosperous early spring (new year).

I am not sure if I need three goats or not,  but there were many things that happened in the Year of the Horse in sets of three that led to the Year of the Goat that I want to share here.

Three Days of Disasters
There were three consecutive days of disasters during my visit to Shanghai last summer. The first one was on August 1 when a series of explosions from a chemical company’s pipe leakage in Kaohsiung, Taiwan ripped through 6 kilometers of road and killed 25 people. The second one was the explosion at Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products, an automotive parts manufacturer, on August 2 in Kunshan, an industrial city in the eastern province of Jiangsu, China. The blast killed 68 people. The third one was on August 3 when a magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the province of Yunnan and killed 617 people.

Each day there was a headline of a major catastrophe, and every morning at breakfast I was shaken. The owners of the chemical company in Kaohsiung and the automotive parts manufacturer in Kunshan expressed their sincerest regrets after they were arrested for negligence. They both said that they knew that there were things that they could have done to prevent such tragedies, but they just had not gotten around to doing it. These tragedies could have been prevented but, instead, these owners willfully put their employees and civilians at risk because they didn’t want to spend the money implementing safety protocols.

Quantum Compliance (www.usequantum.com), a subsidiary of Logic Solutions that specializes in environmental health and safety software solutions, had numerous discussions with companies in China last year. Many companies agreed that our software would greatly enhance the health and safety of their employees, yet I was told over and over again that their management was more focused in growing top line (revenue) so these safety measures would have to wait. Similarly, many city officials in most Chinese cities are so proud of their rapidly-built skyscrapers that they fail to consider the environment or the safety of their cities. As a result, their focus is not on maximizing the safety of their people and the damage done to the environment and the numbers of poorly-structured buildings continue to increase.

As we move forward into 2015, I want to focus on how the Year of the Goat can help us think more about the safety of the people around us and the impact we have on the world.

Three Countries to Call Home
2014 was the first year I was able to travel to three countries that I was or still am a citizen of and that I called home.

Our family reunion in front of the condo where we used to live in Santo Domingo.

I lived in Taiwan from 1963-1978, and in the Dominican Republic from 1978-1980, and have been in the US since 1980. Many months ago, I got an invitation to my good friend Shin-ming’s daughter, Elisa, and her fiancé’s, Chad, wedding in the Dominican Republic, which has become a hot wedding destination in recent years. I got so excited, and told my wife and children that we were going to the Dominican Republic and could also see where I used to live. They’ve all heard me talking about the epic story of how my parents sold everything we ever owned in 3 months, and took my sisters and me to a country that we’ve never been and couldn’t speak the language of. My sisters heard about my plans to travel to the Dominican Republic and said their families wanted to see it as well. Not only that, but we also decided to bring our parents from Taiwan and make it into a big family reunion.

My father was separated from his family during the civil war in China and has been for more than 30 years. Going to Dominican Republic was the ticket for my father to reunite with his family (Taiwan and China were still very much enemy states in 1978). Although my parents paid a huge price to get out of Taiwan in 1978, the one-and-half years I spent in Santo Domingo were unforgettable.

Three “M”s That Gave Us Harbaugh
The Year of the Horse was also a year of turmoil for Michigan sports, but we all believe that we Michigan fans had our wishes come true by getting a top-notch football coach, Jim Harbaugh.

Three “M”s that helped to land Jim Harbaugh: “Millions�? “Mobile�? “Michigan�?

It costs millions to get a pricey coach nowadays, and Jim Harbaugh was no exception. Although he didn’t want to be the highest paid coach at the college level, the $5M salary and $2M bonus were no small package.

After rumors that University of Michigan offered the then-49ers coach a lucrative contract to return to Ann Arbor, Michigan’s huge alumni network and football fans, myself included, took to Twitter in anticipation for Harbaugh’s return. The buzz generated from social media and mobile users demonstrated to the coach that he would be well-received if he decided to return.

Finally, Jim Harbaugh is and was a Michigan man. He was Michigan’s quarterback when I was going to school and I would like to think he would give anything for the chance to return to the Wolverine state. You can take a man out of Ann Arbor but it is difficult to take the love for Ann Arbor out of the man.

Three Wishes for the New Year
While attending Tzu Chi Foundation’s entrepreneur camp last year, I was given a book called “Practice three kind things, realize three wishes every year�? The three wishes the book concludes with has stayed with me since.

1) Say good words to purify one’s mind (口説好話以淨化人�?.
2) Practice kind actions to bring harmony to the society (身行好事以祥和社�?.
3) Make kind wishes for a disaster-free world (心發好願以天下無�?.

Many things came in sets of three this past year. I know that the stuffed animal goats that I brought back will bring a year of peace, harmony, and safety to Ann Arbor. Happy Year of the Goat!

(Our non-Chinese-speaking members of the Management Team agreed to be a part of a video and try their hand at using Chinese to wish our overseas teams a Happy Chinese New Year. I think they did a better job than Mark Zuckerberg at his Beijing interview! You can watch our video below.)

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A Note From the President: A Time of Thanks and Reflection

A few weeks ago, as I sat over a heaping plate of Thanksgiving dinner, I realized how fortunate and how thankful I am. I’m thankful for my family, my friends, my health, my company, and my co-workers. After almost eight years at Logic, I still get up every morning excited to work. I absolutely love what we do. I love what we create, I love working with customers with cool ideas and unique needs, and I love working with such a great team.

At this time of year, we start to plan our goals and strategies for next year. Through this process, I tend to reflect on all of the things that happened both personally and professionally throughout the past 12 months. During this time of reflection, I realize that 2014 has been a tremendous year of growth and change for Logic.

This year Logic significantly expanded its eCommerce practice, adding top talent to the team. We secured a number of new eCommerce clients and became Magento certified. We are proud of our newest Magento certified Solution Specialist, Bill Xu. We also expanded our development centers, adding 12 new developers to the Taiwan office alone.

2014 seemed to be the year of the start-up. We worked with so many bright entrepreneurs with awesome ideas. I can’t tell you how much fun it is to help bring such creative ideas to life. In contrast, we also worked with many larger organizations building out development teams to create, enhance and maintain critical applications that that are instrumental to their growth.

President Bruce Richardson and Quantum Compliance’s Amanda Yerke at the Holiday Party.

In our Quantum Compliance environmental health and safety software business, we launched our SDS to GHS conversion service and added five new people to the team. We expanded our marketing and sales department and will more than double our revenue over 2013. We continue to build out our cloud-based EH&S solutions, and expect to double our revenue again next year.

In our Showcase mobile application division, we added several anchor accounts with hundreds of users and continue to build out the solution. Look for an upcoming press release on our web version soon.

Lastly, we added quite a few young professionals to our Ann Arbor office this year. The addition of this wave of talent has brought a high energy vibe to the office. I’m incredibly impressed with the worth ethic, the level of talent, and the fresh ideas that have permeated our office. We knocked down walls in both our marketing and technical departments creating a more open collaborative space. As a result, I see smiles on the faces of our staff every day as they go above and beyond to deliver great work to and with our clients. And I know that this effort is bearing fruit as we’ve received numerous kudos, thank yous, and “atta boys/girls” from our customers in the past few months. When we receive this kind of feedback, I’m reminded once again why I love what we do.

I can’t wait to get started on 2015!

Bruce Richardson
President, Logic Solutions Inc

The post December 2014 Newsletter appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

Shin-Ming Shyu, a Professor of Architecture at Eastern Michigan University who I have known for over 20 years, told me that he wished to find his family roots in China.  Shin-Ming was born and raised in Taiwan, but both his parents immigrated there from mainland China in 1949, during the civil war. The war divided the Chinese people for an entire generation. My father, who also left for Taiwan from China before the war, went back in 1978 to see his dying mother. That trip forced my father to be in exile for years until Taiwan and China opened direct communication.

Unfortunately, Shin-Ming’s father passed away forty years ago, before he was able to reunite with his family. Shin-Ming promised his father that he would go back to China someday to find his roots. I told Shin-Ming that I would like to try to go to Szechuan with him to give it a try. It sounded like another adventure that “Curious Jimmy�?can’t pass up.

Since his parents did not have any relatives in Taiwan, the information he has is very limited. The only thing he knew was the name of the village that his father is from—that the village is called “Old Horse Village�?and is located somewhere in the Szechuan province—and the names of his grandparents.

One of Logic’s past interns, Shi Chen, had just returned from the U.S. to Chengdu Szechuan to get married. She is an avid internet user, and with her help, we found that “Old Horse Village�?is about three hours away from Chengdu. I also told my General Manager in Shanghai, Zack Cai, that I was going to spend a few days in Szechuan to be on this mission. The general reaction from everyone was “this could be very challenging�?

When we arrived in Chengdu, one of my business friends Mr. Liu came to pick us up from the airport. I told him the purpose of our trip. He said “you must use my car and my driver who will take you anywhere you want. My driver will help you to find this village.”

That evening, I received an email from Zack saying that he found some information that could potentially be related to Shin-Ming’s family. What he emailed to me was a document with Shin-Ming’s grandfather’s name along with the names of many of his grandfather’s nephews. I asked, “How did you find this document!?!�?He said “I searched on Weibo (that Twitter-like site) and found several sites that are related to Old Horse Village, so I followed them. Then I added comments explain that I am searching for any information related to Shin-Ming’s grandparents. One of the officers at the police station in the Old Horse Village picked it up and started searching for any document that was related. After hours of research, he found this one single document.�?That email from Zack really boosted our confidence.

Mr. Liu’s driver showed up the next morning at our hotel. He said that Mr. Liu told him that he is supposed to drive us anywhere we want and solve any problem that we might run into. I told him that we need to go to this Old Horse Village, which is part of a county called San Tai County.

Chinese people usually called close friends either “Little something�?or “Old something�? People either stay young for years or jump to be a wise man suddenly. We called the driver “Little Young�?  I was called “Little Hsiao�?for more than forty years, but now all of sudden people are calling me “Old Hsiao�? I know I am getting old.

Little Young said that he knows where the San Tai County is, but has no idea where Old Horse Village is. We arrived in San Tai County after 3 hours of driving. While we were having lunch there, we started inquiring about the location of Old Horse Village. It was obvious that it is a very remote village that not everyone knows, but in a few minutes, there were about 10 people surrounding our driver to tell him where to go. Shin-Ming and I could not understand anything they said because of the local dialect. After a while, Little Young said “I got it. Let’s go!” He said that somehow we passed the way to the village on our way to San Tai.

We started heading back and asking people for further directions along the way. We saw a man sitting on a motorcycle that told us that we should see a road soon, and to cross the river which we should be on our way. As that man said, we found a narrow road (bridge) to cross a very big river. Once we crossed the bridge, we found ourselves now really in trouble. We faced a rapid stream of water that would be very difficult to cross to get to the other side of the road. The stream of water had been formed by the continuous rain during the day. There was another car on the other side also contemplating if they should cross the stream or not. Our driver said “let’s wait to see if they are brave enough to cross or not.”

The waiting game lasted about 20 minutes when a big public bus came up behind us. The bus immediately went through the stream of water as it has probably been doing for years. We could then see how deep the water was. Then the small sedan started going across the steam. Once they were successfully on our side, our driver said “I think we are safe to go.”

It was still kind of scary when we were travelling across. I was thinking, “If somehow the engine shuts off, we are doomed,�?but we safely got over to the other side where we found that the road was not paved, and filled with huge potholes all the way. It took us about two hours to drive five miles, passing through small villages, farmlands, and herds of cows.  When we finally arrived at Lao Ma (Old Horse) Village we were thrilled.

The first thing we did was find the police station. The police station had four or five people. I told the policeman about our purpose, and he responded that he already knew that we were coming, but he could not find any of the family information from the computer besides the piece of paper that we saw from Zack. He explained that any information dated after 1980 is only partially correct. He could not find Shin-Ming’s grandfather’s name or any of the people on that document so he was stuck. I then asked him how many people live in the village.

He said 10,000.

I said that we are in trouble.

How could we find Shin-Ming’s family members when there are so many people in the village? I asked them, “Can you find any elderly people in the village that have the same last name?�?The police said, “Give us some time; we will start calling people in town to find some answers.” So we hung out in the courtyard for a while. Shin-Ming said that it was not very hopeful. He seemed quite depressed. He asked me to take a photo of him in front of the police station so that he can at least tell his siblings that he tried.

A few minutes later, someone ran into courtyard yelling, “I found your family!�?( he spoke in the local dialect so we had to find the driver to translate the shouting for us). The police came out and said that they found a man who knows the Shin-Ming’s family. We were very skeptical, but we just had to believe: it was the only source of hope at that point.

We (Me, Shin-Ming, our driver, and the policeman) followed that man to a tea house nearby. Along the way, more and more people joined us. By the time we got the tea house, there were quite a few people that were all saying something, and we could only pick up bits and pieces. The driver translated for us and said that they found an elderly man whose father has the same name as Shin-Ming’s grandfather.

After about 20 minutes, an old man around 80 years old came to the tea house. He said “Shyu Shi-Pin” is my father. Shyu Shi-Xin” is my uncle who is Shin-Ming’s grandfather.�?Shin-Ming said that he needs to verify that this is his relative, so he started asking the old man a few questions through our driver. The old man said that one of his cousins was drafted away by nationalist troop and was “kidnapped�?to Taiwan. That cousin of his was an excellent student. Shin-Ming said that it must be his father, but the name does not match.

Though the name wasn’t an exact match, there bore a strong resemblance. I told Shin-Ming that it should be his father because many people changed their names when they went to Taiwan to avoid political prosecution. My father did the same. And I told Shin-Ming that this old man has his family look.

A few minutes later, another old man appeared. Everyone was again speaking with a lot of excitement. Shin-Ming and I could not understand anything, but I could see that Shin-Ming was so shocked. He explained that this old man looks just like his father. He said to me “there is no doubt about it. This has to be my uncle”.

The old man said that his oldest brother was “kidnapped�?to Taiwan, and that he is the youngest of six siblings. Everyone else has already passed away, and he is the only one that is still living. He did not know what happened to his brother after his brother was taken to Taiwan. They were afraid to even talk about his brother because of political reasons.

In old Chinese tradition, every generation has a given initial that are the same. A family tree can be developed in accordance with the middle initial. Shin-Ming started asking about the names of each of his siblings. They all had the same middle initial. He said that his oldest brother’s first name is “gold”, his second brother’s name is “silver”, etc. Shin-Ming said that his father’s first name is “triple gold” with a different initial.

At this point, another guy showed up. He said to Shin-Ming, “I am your cousin.” It turned out that he and Shin-Ming have the same middle initial. At this point, Shin-Ming said to me “there is no doubt that these people are my family”. He was really shaking, and asked for paper to draw up a family tree.

Shin-Ming is one the best artists and calligraphers that I know. I could see his excitement while he was drawing his family tree. I told Shin-Ming that this is time to bring out his red envelopes (money to give to the relatives, especially the elderly). They all started hugging when he gave the elderly the red envelopes.

Our four-hour return trip to Chengdu was less eventful. Shin-Ming said that without me coming along, he probably would have given up a lot sooner. Without the driver from my friend, no rental car would dare to cross the rapid stream. Without Zack’s Weibo to the police station, we would not know where to start. Shin-Ming said that he is so sorry that I probably missed a lot of work in the past few days.

I said, “You have been waiting forty years for this day. I am sure that I can pick up my work tomorrow.�?/p>

I learned a valuable lesson of the power of internet and the tool like Weibo. I was just thrilled. The real power is to combine the Guanxi (relationship) of doing business and the modern tools such as Weibo.

– Jimmy Hsiao

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