Reporting from Dalian, China — Looking back, Japanese businessman Tomatsu Ito says, he might as well have moved to Mars rather than a few hours' flight away to China.
Unlike in his publicly polite homeland, drivers in Dalian were chaotic, often careening through crowded crosswalks. Worse, he couldn't muster even the most basic Chinese.
Often desperate, he would phone JianHua Yang, his second in charge at the branch office of an Osaka, Japan-based software company. Yang is a Dalian native who, like many here, speaks Japanese.
"I'd call him out of nowhere," Ito recalled. "I'd say, 'I'm lost again. I have no idea how to get home.' "
Their budding bicultural friendship symbolizes a trend here: Ito is among thousands of Japanese flocking to this bustling port on China's eastern seaboard. Resentment still runs deep in China over Japan's 40 years of often brutal colonial rule in this region in the early 1900s, but Dalian has become a singularly welcoming oasis.
Seeking to establish a regional high-tech hub, Dalian officials are courting Japanese investors, offering tax breaks and talking up the city's weather, infrastructure, friendliness and proximity to Japan.
Dalian, a Japanese military hub in the colonial years that still bears the stamp of the past, features direct flights to Japan and hotels catering to the Japanese. Many road signs are in Chinese and Japanese.
At a business zone called the Dalian Software Park, Japanese firms make up a quarter of the 450 tenants. Local universities are crowded with thousands of young Chinese studying Japanese, many of them seeking software careers. Others staff new business call centers where multilingual Chinese workers serve the needs of customers in Tokyo and other cities across Japan.
When Ito drives on roads with names like Japanese First Street and Japanese Fragrance Street, he said, Dalian feels like a second home.
"The troubled history between Japan and China is not that remote, but it is in the past," the 52-year-old said. "The new generation seems to have put this behind them. They want to move on."
Yet Dalian remains conflicted. Although Japanese business provides jobs and development capital, many of Dalian's 6 million residents still carry the scars of a war with Japan's Imperial Army.
