Diarmuid Breatnach

(reading time three minutes)

Not a lot of people know this but the big China-based mobile phone company Huawei was started by a Geordie. Yes, a man from Newcastle known as Geordie Muldoon. He developed the phone, its programming etc but found that in Britain, companies wanted to either buy him out or rip him off, whilst Geordie really needed to actually have the phone built and marketed by his own company. So he went to China.

Geordie didn’t speak a word of Chinese apart from kung-fu, aujo, won ton and shesey but reckoned he’d get by somehow – after all, English is a world language now, right? Yes it is, but Geordie or Tynespeak is not. Not even the best English speakers and translators brought to him could understand more than a few words.

But they understood his pictures — the ones he drew and, without showing them the entire schematics, they thought he might be on to something. Some drew him a picture of a bus station and a Chinese town destination. Of course, that would’ve been no good to him, written in Chinese characters. So they got to repeating the town’s name, until he got it right: Can Doo.

Geordie got on the bus with a couple of changes of underwear and a second shirt and pair of trousers — and his toilet kit.  He carried a few letters of introduction and some addresses, none of which he could read but, by showing to people and following their hand signals, he got to his first contact. And she took him to his next one …. and so on.

They couldn’t understand his speech either but they got to like him – and why not? He had not a bit of British racism, not to speak of snobbery; he was fun-loving, outgoing and a lot of the women found him attractive. He was very clean.

Somehow, after a year, with a Glaswegian translating from Geordiespeak to Chinese and back, along with a Chinese-literate Welsh woman looking over Chinese contract law, he came to an understanding: he would produce the phone in China, it would be 60% his, 30% his Chinese financial backers, 10% the Welsh lawyer’s, who became a Director, as did Geordie and a couple of other Chinese he knew well by now.

On the day that all had been tested and the first production run was ready in the factory in Can Doo, they had a party. It was an emotional day and everyone got intoxicated on rice wine, Jameson copy, Smirnoff copy and even Newcastle Brown copy. And all of the Chinese wanted to call the new phone after Geordie or something Geordieish. It is not clear whether their intention was understood but Geordie laughed and roared out “Hadaway, man! Hadaway!”

The next afternoon (none were fit to even walk until then), the Chinese advertising and production teams remembered the conversation of last night and all agreed on what Geordie had said: “Huawei, Huawei!”  They thought that this was pretty big of him, since that means “China achieving”.  They loved him him even more then as the first Huawei model rolled off the production line.

It is said that a few further branch companies are expected soon: Yareet (for the South Asian market); Tchampi-on; and Kan Eelass.

End.