 Welcome, Analoja. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we will go across the sea to China with Roger Epstein. Roger is a Hawaii lawyer who began representing major Hong Kong clients in 1974 when he was a very young lawyer. And that led to a lifelong personal and professional adventure with China. Sometimes synchronistic events take us on voyages of fun and fulfillment that we cannot predict. Roger, welcome. Good to see you. Tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into China. How you got hooked on China. Yeah, interesting. Synchronistic is the right word, Mark. So I grew up in Washington DC, went to the University of Maryland, where I got a degree in accounting. And then I went to work for the Internal Revenue Service. And after one year, I started at night at Georgetown Law School. So I continued to work for the IRS for five years. And then when I graduated from Georgetown in 1972, somehow out of the blue, I got another synchronistic call. Was I interested in working in Honolulu? Had you ever been to Honolulu? Never been to Honolulu. 1971, just before I was graduating in 72. So I came out and I thought, gee, if you like it, this is an incredible place. And so I decided to take the job with the Cade Shetty Law Firm, which is now the largest law firm in Honolulu. And shortly after I got here, I got connected with things Chinese. And your background was tax law. You came from IRS and that's exactly your background. Yes, when you went to work for the firm. Is that what you were doing? Yes, absolutely. They'd been looking for a tax lawyer for some years. Hard to find somebody with good experience. But see now, I had an honor degree from Georgetown Law School. And I and I was with the IRS for five years, so they really were happy to have me out here. So you had practical experience as well as the scholastic background to be a tax lawyer. So you had the credentials. Okay, then what happened? Cade Shetty had a program every Wednesday where they had what they called a tax talk. So all 30 of the lawyers in those days would go up to the Pacific Club and meet. And every week I had to give a tax talk to the other lawyers so they could know. This young lawyer. Right. So my whole career mark, interestingly, has been five, 10, 15 years ahead of myself. So right away when I came to Cade Shetty, I was giving tax advice to Russell Cates, who was already 60 years old, and I was 27. So it was a really interesting lawyer taking advice from a young kid, basically. Yes. So two things happened to me. One, I hurt my back, and I got involved with Chinese acupuncture. And the acupuncturist said, look, you could take acupuncture every day for your back. But if you want to learn how to take care of yourself, you need to learn how to do chi kung. This is 45 years ago. I fixed up their company so that it became a Taoist church clinic, an acupuncture clinic and a school. And the church was on top. And I got them a tax exemption. So you used your background in law to help them and they helped you. And then they then she said, why don't you become Chairman of the Board? So I became Chairman of the Board of a Chinese acupuncture college for almost 20 years. Wow. So at the same time, Sir Run Run Shaw, who was a knight of the British Order and who created the kung fu genre of movies, he had some 10, 20,000 acres in Hong Kong, where he had movie studios and developed all this. His daughter lived in Hawaii. And his son-in-law was the head of Morgan Stanley, what's now Morgan Stanley. And so he hired Milton Cades to help them because Run Run Shaw wanted to acquire real estate in the United States. So he hired Milton. Milton brought me along to the meeting. They needed tax advice. They needed tax advice. And actually, Milton was the first tax lawyer in Hawaii, but he was already kind of over the hill and brought me along. He was very senior. Very senior. He needed somebody to do all the work, like I used to do in the last few years when I was at Cage Shedding. At the same time, Jardine Matheson, one of the oldest and largest companies in Hong Kong, acquired the Theo Davies Company. That's right. He ended 1973. So both of those things happened at once and synchronistic. And then a third thing, I had a client came into the office and one of the other lawyers brought me to the meeting and they were sending charters from San Francisco to Hong Kong. $499 round trip San Francisco to Hong Kong and a week stay at the Hilton or the Hyatt. So I told them, they said, well, we're going to make a lot of money with a tourist gone to nightclub tours in Hong Kong and we have a partner there and we keep from paying taxes on the money we earn in Hong Kong. And I said, yeah, if you set up a company in Hong Kong. So they said, oh, well then you got to come here. Okay. So they flew me to Hong Kong and I had a really nice room with all these amenities and welcome from the manager, assistant manager, all this kind of stuff. And the next morning I got up to meet with my clients. They had a two bedroom suite in the penthouse of the Hyatt Hotel in Kowloon. So anyway, they had a dining room table for eight. They say, Roger, come on in. Give me that a waiter taking their order in their room. Anyway, long story. They said to me, what are you going to do while you're here? I said, well, I'm meeting with Run Run Shaw because he just became a client. This guy's 70 years old. Run Run Shaw. Yeah, and a night of the British Order. So they said, well, why don't you use this place to meet with him? So here I am, their 27-year-old US tax lawyer, entertaining Run Run Shaw at age 70 and his CEO and CFO in my two bedroom penthouse suite in the Hyatt Hotel. I'm sure that made a very good impression on them, right? It made them think I was way above where I was. And I used to go to different dinners with Run Run Shaw sitting in the back of his Rolls-Royce. But then we started talking politics about some time later. And we weren't on the same wave thanks. But anyway, it was a wonderful experience. And Jardine Matheson then acquired Davies around the same time. And I ended up going every six months to Hong Kong, working with the Shaw brothers and Jardine Matheson and being both of their US tax lawyers. And so this boy from DC who had never been to Hawaii, not to mention Hong Kong, all of a sudden finds himself through all these little connections that you couldn't have predicted, right? Absolutely. You know, you hurt your back. Right. And boom. All of a sudden I'm the chairman of the board of a Taoist Chinese group of companies. So what did you do? Is that how that's how you got hooked? That's how you got into China, right? I mean, but Hong Kong wasn't quite China then, right? That's exactly right. Well, I started going to China. My first trip was 1974. And Hong Kong was due to be returned to Britain in 97. So between 74 and 86, there was no assurances what Britain was going to do. No one really knew. They had a 99 year lease, which expired in 97. And so at that time, it was an independent colony, and very much of the financial place in the world. And so it had its own its own mostly British operatives in politics, but it had its own existence. And then about 86, 85 86, the queen announced that she was going to give it back. So nobody knew what was going on. In fact, when I took a early on, I took a little sightseeing tour. And the tour guide took me up a mountain in the new territories. And she said, look over there. And you could see a train track that ended at a fence. He said, that's China. Now, Nixon went to China in 1972, the great handshake experience. And that was an opening. But remember, diplomatic relations with China didn't really start until 1978 with the United States. And but I was doing these Chinese things in Hawaii. And I was traveling every six months, I would go to Hong Kong. And then I would travel around Asia. My other client was the Hong Kong side of the travel business. So after I spent a week working really hard in Hong Kong, I take two weeks travel all over Asia by myself. And they set me up in Weets here and you know, it was it was good fun for 30 year old. Well, let's take a couple photos of places in China that you've been to. And we'll we'll do some more after the break. But let's take a look at the first photo and tell us what this is. So that's a recent photo of me at the back of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City in Beijing. So the Forbidden City is the old palace for the emperors. And I first went there in 1982. This picture is just a couple of months ago. But I went there in 1982. And I was thinking about it the other day, all of the people there in 1982 were foreigners. There were almost no Chinese there. Oh, wow. And because Chinese didn't have any money to travel. Like I said, Deng Jiao Ping took over in 1978 after Mao died in 76. And then they had four years of by the time I got there, they were just four years into the opening up and becoming a capitalist country. Let's take a look at the next photo. Where's this? This is a beautiful park that I love. It's actually not too far from the Forbidden City in Beijing. On the right hand side, there are thousands and thousands of tourists. But they see that you can just see the big wall on the backside must be 1215 feet high on the right hand side. On this other side, there's this little park that has only one entrance. Very few people go there. And there's 1000 tourists on the other side. So I come here, I practice my Qigong. I sit around I took this picture I just thought was just beautiful. I love these weeping willow trees. And on the right side where the color is those are flowers and there's a waterway. It's pretty classic of Beijing. There's so many nice parks. And they're kept so nice because labor is still cheap. And you know, we don't really know about that side of Beijing or China in America. We don't we think it's concrete or it's, you know, here's an interesting thing. I was in Beijing not too long ago. And I was sitting in a lobby of the Beijing hotel, one of the oldest hotels there. And there was a couple young couple from Pennsylvania. And I chatted them up. And I said, she said, you know, I said, What do you think of China? He said, you know, it's nothing like I thought it would be. And I said, What do you think it would be? She said, I don't know. I think that's what it is American communication. Americans. We have here. That's right. Americans don't know anything about it. But their impression is nothing like what it really is this background or Shanghai will show you. That's the Shanghai building on the left. And we have another photo of Shanghai in our next. Oh, yeah, isn't that spectacular? That's a picture that I didn't take. But my partner took from the old Bund area in the front, which is built by the Russians in the 50s, looking across the river, the Huangpu River that runs down the center of Shanghai, to the new area of Pudong, which was built as a financial center. This is the financial center of China in Shanghai. They have a financial exchange. And I often say, it looks like they had an architect's convention to see who could build the most unusual 50 to 100 story building. So you came from DC to Honolulu, Hong Kong, and then you went to other parts of China? Yes. And they're not China. I went to other parts of Asia. I didn't travel around China till you till you and I got started with the US China Legal Network in 2007. Oh, okay, but but you went to Beijing? I went to Beijing in 82. And in 94, I did travel around some other other areas in with my Chinese group. I went to the Longhu Shan Taoist Temple, the second oldest Taoist temple in China. Okay, now, the point I want to make is you didn't know anything about China. Yes, when you when you started, right? Then all these connections happened that brought you in, that kind of sucked you into China. And you've been hooked on it ever since. So we're going to talk a little bit more after the break. Okay, take a break right now. Thank you. Aloha, I'm Mellie James, host of Let's Mana Up. Tuesdays, every other Tuesday, from 11 to 1130. This show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs, and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii. I'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off. And so please join us on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock, as we talk to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Aloha, my name is Wendy Lo and I want you to join me as we take our health back. On my show, all we do is talk about things in everyday life in Hawaii or abroad. I have guests on board that would just talk about different aspects of health in every, in every way, whether it's medical health, nutritional health, diabetic health, you name it, we'll talk about it, even financial health. We'll even have some of the Miss Hawaii's on board and all the different topics that I feel will make your health and your lifestyle a lot better. So come join me. I welcome you to take your health back. Mahalo. Welcome back. I'm Mark Shklav, host of Law Across the Sea with Roger Epstein today talking about being hooked on China. And Roger got hooked. A young man, a young lawyer, whose background kind of set him up to go to Hong Kong first, and learn a little bit about Chinese religion and art. And then he went across the Sea to China and Roger, okay, tell us what you've learned you let me let's go to the next photo and talk a little bit about what you learned about China. Well, this photo is a very interesting one to me because it speaks to the changes in China. Since I've been going there. I mentioned to you in 1994, I went to the Longhu Shan monastery with my Chinese group. That was for the grand opening of the Longhu Shan monastery, the second oldest monastery, Taoist monastery in China. This picture that you just had up is the Jing'an Temple. This is on the Rodeo Ninjiang Road is is equivalent to Rodeo Drive in China, Rodeo Drive in LA. And this temple is right at the end of this, you know, every store you can imagine shopping district. And these are gold leaf, there's a bunch of these I have a number of photos of this. These are different kinds of Buddhist masters. This is a Buddhist temple, not Taoist. But when I first started going there regularly in 2011 to Shanghai, it was totally rundown. It was kind of interesting to see an old rundown temple. But starting in 2015, I think, they began to fix it up to where now it has gold leaf on this is on the road. What does that tell us about China? Well, think about it in 1994, they were just allowing religion. Now, on the busiest street in the in Shanghai, they put, I don't know how many tens of millions of dollars into making it at a much higher level. So what it tells me is that it's it's demonstrative of the opening up of China from a totally, you know, the completely communist system, nobody could even own anything to the heavy capitalism we have now. The same thing with religion, it's gone from banning religion to opening it up for tourism, to now making it as prominent as it needs to be. And there's lots of Chinese involved. Lots of Chinese. Let's take a look at the next photo. Okay, this temple, this is from the Hermitian temple that I went to last year in Chengdu, which is where the pandas are, by the way. And Chengdu, this Hermitian temple is the first Daoist temple in China. And it was it was built in 46 AD, for the first century after Christ. And now they're they're re establishing this temple and not for tourism. They want to have scholars there. They want to I met with the government, actually. And we talked about how we could use the long who showed the Hermitian monastery to bring Chinese Daoist scholars from all over the world. This is the boy from DC. Yeah, talking about this stuff that I remember now. Remember now this is 45 years later. I see. I've been I've been 20 years, 1820 years as a chairman. And I'm still very active with the Chinese group here that I started with in 1975. And and I'm doing all this business. I've got a bunch of others. What are you doing in China now? Let's take a look at the next slide. So my first thing as you well know, it was about lawyering in China. And and now I retired from Cade Shuddy in 2016. And I formed a business called Asia Pacific Group. And Asia Pacific Group was set up, designed to do business at a high level, an ethical level between Chinese and American. Let's go back to that photo for a minute. And who are the who are these folks? So this is our latest business opportunity. This is in a small city of two or three million people called Yulin. And Yulin has 40% of the world's magnesium. And magnesium is becoming the green metal of the future. And so they have 40% of the world's magnesium, but the distribution system is totally dysfunctional, because nobody trusts Chinese. And so they're in the coal business for years. This is in Inner Mongolia. They're in the coal business. People don't want to buy as much coal. That's all fading out. But they have magnesium. But magnesium needs to be processed. So in order to process it, it costs money. They don't want to invest the Chinese don't want to invest in the processing, unless they've got a buyer to put up the money to pay for the processing. The buyers like Mercedes buys 1500 metric tons of magnesium every month. Wow. They don't want to give any Chinese mines any money because they don't trust them. They don't trust the quality. They don't trust that the product will be delivered on time. And they don't know what's going to happen to their money. So our company is basically Guangxi. We have trust for a whole variety of reasons. So the young lawyer from Washington DC went to Hawaii who learned about tax law. Now finds himself as kind of bringing it all together. Yes. Yes. And it gets into where I really am. In my at 74, my spiritual development is to help China and the United States come together in this transition period. Let's talk a little bit more. The next three photos you doing something what we will say is Pono something good. And that's teaching at Bayway School. Bayway Foreign Studies University. 70% of foreign diplomats from China went to this school. And I was invited to come and speak at the law school. This picture is from the law school building looking back on the main campus that building in the front campus nice campus that's the that's the main building in the campus and then inside you see the trees and it goes back. It's not all those buildings but it goes back quite a ways and it's a very nice school. So what did you teach? I taught two classes of legal writing, which I hadn't taken a legal writing course in 50 years. And I taught one class to graduate students in US tax law. Oh, wow. Let's take a look at the next photo. And that is I just like this photo a lot. And where is this? This is looking through that bridge in the back is called the summer palace, where the emperor and his group would stay for the summer. It's in Beijing. It's in Beijing. Yes. And so it was this when you were there teaching when I was teaching one of the great things I did was I bought a bicycle. And I was bicycling all over Beijing. It's a terrific city to bicycle as long as you're not don't have too much fear for your life. The traffic because of the crazy traffic and nobody follows any rules of the air and the air. Oh, I next time I come on I'll show you the mask I bought. It's a Darth Vader mask I bought. I wouldn't go on the bicycle and exercise like that without a Darth Vader mask on. And so there's a canal that I rode down for about an hour to get to the summer palace from my my room at my apartment. So besides teaching, you were able to wander around the city, take a look at Beijing, take in its sights. Oh, yeah. And I also had my company going. So we had an office in Wang Fujin near Tiananmen Square near the Forbidden City. That was about 10 miles. So I would ride back and forth to there and get a good look at the city. And the next photo we have here, it looks like is this your class or what? This is this is five of the students and myself. There are about 35 students in my tax class. The woman in the front was such a sweetheart. She was my like class assistant. When I would pass out homework and things she would I got to China for Bay Y and they said, Oh, you're going to teach this graduate tax class, which I've taught at the University of Hawaii. So I had all the paperwork and I had all you know, everything all set up for this. And I get there. My first class with the graduate students, nobody had had a class in accounting. Imagine the tax law class in the US tax. That's a you take that first, right? So I had to yeah, you know, accounting is kind of the basic basics for so I had to become an accounting teacher. But they it was such a great experience. And the kids are so good. The the the undergraduate students, especially the women, the young girls and the law is an undergraduate course in China. And I was teaching two classes of legal writing about 25 kids in each class. And it was in English using American case law. Isn't that incredible? And the young people were pretty, pretty sharp. The women were very sharp. The guys were mediocre. And this is a good school. I this is probably one of the top 10 schools in the country. And not the not the number one, but very high up there. And I can't tell you how the girls they were just so interested in what was going on and worked hard. And, and I really focused on telling them how important it was to be meticulous in the United States and really drilling into commas and, you know, proofreading as we proof reading as well as all the other factors that are necessary. And also, telling them how important I thought it was, that they were going to understand the US and China, because this is where the future is for the world for the next 2030. Okay, so we have a couple minutes left. What have you learned about life and law from your how many 45 years experience with China and being hooked on China. And while you talk about that, let's take a look at this last photo. I would say I've learned, of course, and began to learn this when I moved to Hawaii, that everybody's the same. Everybody wants to have a family, they want to have a good job, they want to take care of themselves and people close to them. And that's their primary goal. They're not political. China has become very capitalized. There's so many middle class people, there are 800 million people got out of poverty. And they have no ethics. They're just getting into ethics. The same time that I was going in 1994 to the opening of the Longhushan monastery, they were beginning to go back to their own principles of Taoism and Confucianism and Buddhism, which had been put down by the Communist Party for so many years. Everything old was put down to basics. Yeah. And so what I see now is the same growth in ethical conduct, especially with lawyers and wanting to develop that. And we recognize they're not there yet. One more look at the last photo and tell us who that is and what that tells you about your life in China. These are the two sons of Kingward Gahn, who was one of the lawyers that that came as Mark knows to our US China legal network program where they stayed in Hawaii for three months. Boy closest to me is rain. I had a contest with him when he was three as to whether my Chinese was better than his English. The younger boy was born in Los Angeles in a program to make him a US citizen. Okay, so the point you're making is we're all the same. We're all the same. And we should be coming together. We should be collaborating. China is going up. The United States is more stagnant. But they still totally admire us should sit at the same table. And what we have to offer wisdom technology about all kinds of things they can use in their growth. And now we're all participating to make the world a better Roger. And Hawaii is perfect. Thank you very much, Roger. We'll talk again. I look forward to it. Thank you. Aloha.