TULALIP — John McCoy is trying to figure out how to ship fresh fish to China without a lot of water to keep the fish alive.
McCoy spent eight days in China last month with Gov. Gary Locke and a large trade delegation. The state representative and general manager of the Quil Ceda Village business park spent most of his time checking out trade and tourism potential between the Tulalip Tribes and the Chinese. As a representative of the tribe, the Tulalips paid for his trip, which cost just under $2,000, he said. The group’s visit included a layover in Tokyo, Japan, and then time in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
"There are tourism opportunities," he said. "They were interested in the (Tulalip) Casino. The Chinese gamble. I didn’t get as much tourism requests in mainland China as I did out of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a little more liberal."
Those discussions with the Chinese will continue, he said.
"There’s a lot of changes going on in China. They’re thinking about privatizing land. And a phrase I kept hearing from some government and party officials was ‘We have to stop governing by man and start governing by law.’
"It’s a very crowded country, lots of people. Beijing has 17 million people inside the city limits. Their streets are double and triple-decked. These run right through town. There were a number of places I saw that they were so close to the skyscrapers that the people that lived in those apartments could open their window and step right into traffic. They wouldn’t have to worry about falling, they’d have to worry about being hit."
Guangzhou and Shanghai have 12 to 14 million people each in their city limits, he said, adding that the crowds made him appreciate even more the rural nature of the Tulalip Indian Reservation.
He went as a tribal representative, but the Chinese also noted his role as an elected state official.
"That added some curiosity for the Chinese," he said.
He attended official functions with the governor as a state representative, but much of his time was spent looking for possible seafood outlets and other trade and tourism opportunities, he said. In his free time, he visited the Great Wall and did some shopping.
"They were interested in me because of my heritage," McCoy said. "I gave gifts of small carved animals, orcas, salmon, frogs, beaver. I had a little story to tell about each one and they were enchanted with that."
He got a small crystal globe in Guangzhou, and brought back some leftover Chinese money and maps for his grandchildren to take to school.
While Locke hawked Washington apples, McCoy kept asking what each area wanted in seafood products.
The northern Chinese (Beijing) want fresh seafood, but in Guangzhou they want live fish, he said.
"I was immediately perplexed on how in the world was I going to ship all that water? To keep salmon alive, you need a lot of water. It would drive costs up and the fish wouldn’t be affordable to everybody. I struggled with it and I talked to people about what could we do to meet that market."
People in Shanghai would take fresh seafood, but prefer it live, he said.
The tribes would catch the fish, gut it, flash-freeze it, then ship the head, tail and everything. Like American Indians, the Chinese eat the whole fish once it’s gutted.
"We got a lot of work done on both sides. My job now is to work with all the tribes. They want more product than any one tribe could deliver. To get over this fresh and live issue, we would have to do a major public relations campaign for about a year before we delivered the first fish, so they would understand what we were delivering," McCoy said.
"They have finally figured out what we have learned also, that farmed salmon is not good for the human body because of all the chemicals. We have to explain what wild is, how we catch the fish and how we process it."
That public relations campaign will be monumental and costly, so the tribes will have to find a partner in China and work out the details of what’s in it for each side, he said.
He also talked about participation in Chinese cooking events to show the Chinese how American Indians prepare and present fish in their native style, like smoking it on a stick or cooking it on an alder plank.
"When you go to their fish markets, everything is live and they’ve got fish I’d never seen before. They’ve got all kinds of varieties of eels. They even have guys standing around grading them.
"Mrs. Locke at a lunch in Shanghai leaned over and said, ‘John, do you know what you’re eating?’ I said, ‘Mona, don’t tell me, just let me eat it and enjoy it.’ And I did."
Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.
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