400 Million Customers

Carl Crow (1884-1945) was a Missouri-born businessman and author who opened the first Western advertising agency in Shanghai, China, which he ran for more than 25 years. In the 1930s and 1940s, Crow wrote 13 books, including his most popular work 400 Million Customers (1937). Crow was also founding editor of the Shanghai Evening Post. In China, - a shopkeeper chooses his employees not for their intelligence, industry and honesty, but because they are members of important and influential families whose trade the shopkeeper desires; the women will not accept, even as a gift, a packet of assorted needles; orthodox poker is played as it was played in Texas thirty years ago; a man likes to conduct his business in the open so that every passer-by may see and comment upon his industry; an empty beer bottle is counted a precious gift.... The pages of this candid and hilarious book are crowded with these and thousands of other diverting facts which Carl Crow had the opportunity to gather through his more than twenty-five years in China as newspaper correspondent and advertising man. Brought up to date by the author before his death, this is a book of endless delight and rich human wisdom, a book that brings you valuable knowledge of a great people.