I take the end of a gigantic fax that has spooled on the floor. I walk out our door and nearly reach our neighbor's before I have to stop like a dog at the end of its leash.

Living in Beijing, China, as I did three years ago, my connection to company headquarters back in Alabama seemed as thin and fragile as that thermal fax paper.

It was how I stayed in touch with home. It was a daily reminder of how far away it was.

Peking duck soup

I had gone to Beijing with my spouse and son to edit books for a Chinese publisher. Our decision to send our son to the International School of Beijing, however, meant we needed to come up with US$11,000 for tuition, about 10 times what I was earning at the publisher.

A truly gifted writer/editor, I finagled my way into a job as office manager for an American company headquartered in Alabama. The firm designed and built feed mills. A week later, the guy who hired me quit.

Suddenly, I was in charge of the Beijing office and a staff of engineers, half of them young Chinese desperate to get to America, the other half a roving band of expat misfits, including an Irish emigre who refused to drink Guinness and a Hell's Angel biker.

I leaned on the knowledge I'd gained growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, while feverishly studying the fine points of feed milling. Soon, I was chatting on about acceptable CVs for horizontal ribbon mixers.

Sounding intelligent was one thing. Feeling connected was more difficult. Since the money to run the Beijing office came by wire each month, it was natural that Paul, the company's accountant, became my phone pal.

E.T., phone home

Until recently, when email accounts became more common in China, the bulk of business communication went by fax or phone, often using a callback service.

Beijing is a convenient 12 hours ahead of Alabama, so I'd call Paul about 10:30 a.m. my time. (Dial the callback access number, listen for one "ring" signal, hang up. Within seconds, my phone would ring and I'd have a USA dial tone, making mine an incoming call and eliminating local phone charges.)

Paul would fill me in on who was back stabbing whom, the general cash flow outlook, and, after we got to know one another quite well, progress reports on the IRS auditor who was sifting through the company's records.

One of the auditor's favorite topics was the company's two jet planes. Aside from the question of how a Mom and Pop operation could afford them, he was particularly interested in the frequent "business" flights to Florida and Texas where the owners just happened to have weekend homes.

Our biggest customer, essentially our only customer, in Asia was a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Thailand. It ran about 60 joint venture feed mills in China. We sold them the equipment.

Nothing odd about that, except that we charged them 15 to 20 percent more than competitive prices. Were we that good or were they that dumb? No one cared, except for the Chinese customers who wanted to buy our equipment but refused to pay the premium.

For two and one-half years this discrepancy was my standard answer to our president's queries about my dismal sales to the Chinese. (He handled sales to the conglomerate himself.)

Consistency was the company explanation. We sold to the Thai company doing business in China for X dollars, so we had to sell to the Chinese at nearly the same price.

What I came to suspect, but could never confirm, was that the difference between what the equipment should have cost and what we charged formed a slush fund. The multinational used it to finance the startup of its Chinese joint ventures (unbeknownst to its Chinese partners, of course). My company got a cut, which it used it to buy jets.

No wonder our prices were so unmoving.

Wake up call

Or were they? I was determined to find out, and what more perfect time than the morning the people from Sheng Li Oilfield showed up.

We'd been negotiating with this Chinese company over US$1 million in feed milling equipment for a sideline business it was developing. That day, totally unannounced, twelve of them arrived ready for final negotiations.

My secretary began pouring tea, always the first response in China, then went off to line up a restaurant. In time-honored Chinese modern day business practice, Sheng Li had arrived shortly before noon, knowing that we would be obliged to feed them.

Later, lunch under our belts, we all trundled back to our office. Sheng Li wanted to drop several pieces of equipment from the quote we'd given, and reduce the price on the remaining equipment about 10 percent, still making it about 5 percent more than it should have been.

Alas, I couldn't approve the discount without HQ approval. Sheng Li seemed close to making a deal, and I considered US$400,000 better than nothing. I turned the meeting over to my secretary, went into my office, and dialed the president's home phone number.

By this time, it was 3:00 a.m. back home so he was, understandably, a bit groggy. After the third time through explaining the situation, he caught on. There was a pause.

In that pause, as short as it was, I had time to think. How to square the company's pressure on me to increase sales to Chinese companies with its reluctance to lower prices from artificially high levels?

It wasn't long before Sheng Li left in disgust. I'd missed another sale.

Suddenly, I missed the States. I craved coffee and a decent bookstore. I longed for friends and family. I felt the need to do business face-to-face.

Did it make sense to continue living at the far end of a long, thin phone/fax line?

We're now back in the U.S.A. As a freelance writer, I'm still a telecommuter of sorts.

All my clients are good. My friends and I solve world problems over cups of Sumatra Mandheling. Life is sweet. And Alabama is a world away.

RANDALL BRAAKSMA faxes copy drafts to his clients from his home office on a Panasonic KX-F155 exactly like the one he used in Beijing.