China Trip - Conclusions

This Weblog was an ongoing work, that maybe even started with our classes, books and articles and the written part was concluded today on a sunny afternoon by the lake in Austin, TX.
I am also sure that this whole experience will have probably changed me going forward until the next opportunity I get to expand my horizons. Like a very good professor told me a few days before I left, I don't think I will be the same after the trip.

This journal is meant to be read from the bottom up, since the latest articles are on top, while the first articles are located at the bottom of the page.

In the end China is a land of contrasts that can't be compared to any other place or civilization without doing it an enormous injustice since no other place has seen the history it has been exposed to.
As a foreigner having visited China part of me feels slightly despaired for the country, the rate of growth at which it is moving is too fast to be compared with any other nation. The ecological, social, and economic results for what they are doing are unknown, and given the lack of protective measures (that would slow development) in place there is a huge possibility that the country may become polluted beyond repair, and its population may be so narrowly educated and trained that in the end China will once again fall into disrepair and become a world power that got sidetracked. On the other hand every developed nation underwant a period of high growth that allowed it to take a leadership position later in its history.
Some of the things that caught my eye by the level of use they had reached were cell phone usage. While people walking around the UT campus will get the impression that everyone has a cellphone in the US, I think that the use of cell phones in China severely outpaces that of the US. Additionally the amount of stores and different models available in the large cities would make any sprint or T-mobile store here jealous.
Another big contention point was driving in China. I have driven in Mexico, Argentina and Israel, and I thought those guys didn't know how to drive safely, but even in the small cities in China I had to keep my heart from coming out my mouth for fear of crashing into anything and everything. Although General Lee made fun of cars in Beijing as a method the government used to control overpopulation I was surprised that I didn't see any accidents on the road during my stay.
In the end it is my hope that everybody who reads this Blog enjoys it and realizes that this has been a short three week trip described by an outsider of that culture. I hope to be able to relive my trip by re-reading this many years from now and remembering the whole experience.

Sincerely,
The Author

China - Pictures

As a final link here's a selection of the pictures I took from the trip:

Click here to see the pictures

China - Yangshuo - 3/21/2005

There's a rumor that says that doing nothing is bad for people.
I'd have to disagree with it today. Having been awaken by Rohit around 9:10 am to warn me that the breakfast was not going to be served past 9:30 in our hotel, I had to rush down to get some toast to eat before starting my very "tough" day.
I started by trying to catch up on this blog from 10 am to noon at an Internet cafe down the street from the Hotel. After doing that I agreed to meet Rohit for lunch at a place that Simon had recommended the previous night. It was a restaurant called "7th Heaven" on West St. (Everything for foreigners seems to be on that street), where I got fried duck with peanuts, that while good, didn't agree too much with my stomach either... at this rate my adventurous side will completely dissapear by the time i get back to Texas, and I'll go back to my Quesadilla-only diet.
In the afternoon I proceeded to chill out for awhile in the hotel room, and then sat at another coffee shop having some more banana milk shakes, and diet cokes while i read a bit more from my novel, at this rate I hope to be done with it before I get to Hong Kong, but we'll see... luckily I borrowed from Kabir another large novel that will probably tie me over the flight back to Austin.
After there was not enough light to keep on reading I decided to move to another cafe where they were showing some old episodes of Friends (probably from the large collection of pirated DVDs available in the stores), for a short while, I also borrowed their Internet connection and wrote another entry to the blog.
For dinner I ended up going to the bar where I was playing foosball last night, because i saw a sign that stated they had "Australian Meat pies", so I had to try that here in the middle of a Chinese village. It was actually very good, and something completely different for a change. After dinner I got them to lend me their internet to chat a bit with some friends and finish updating the blog (now I need to enter some back entries to complete it). Unfortunately I'm unsure when I'll be able to log on again, so it may fall into being out of date while I find a PC in Hong Kong.
I hope to have completely kicked my bug by the time I get to HK, but in the meantime I'll keep being sober and taking my antibiotic... could be worse, i guess, but doing absolutely nothing has been feeling good after the breakneck pace of the past two weeks.
Well, gonna head back to the hotel to go to sleep early and prepare for the trip back to Guilin tomorrow.

China - Yangshuo - 3/20/2005

Well, it is official, beds in China are HARD!!
I sure hope the ones in Hong Kong are softer.
So today we had a "western" breakfast, my favorite detail was that they had slices of cheese in it! It's one of those things that you kind of don't realize until you see it again, but in all of my meals for the past few weeks there was no trace of cheese, except for Tofu, which i'm always reminded is not really a cheese (even though it feels like it). So back to my excitement, it's funny how the small things sometimes make the day start out really well.
After breakfast we were driven to our "cruise" to go to Yangshuo. The weather was very dreary, with visibility almost nill, but once we got on the boat and sailed out things started clearing up as we moved south. The "cruise" was a small riverboat with tables where they crammed 8 people for the 4 hours the trip took place. Although once we were underway we could go topside and take pictures (which i did for awhile). In our table Rohit and I were seated with 6 Chinese women, and we were lucky that at least one of them spoke some passable English, acting as a translator for us. They even taught Rohit how to play cow-cow (A very weird card game, with some weirder scoring rules), while I watched for awhile. On the deck of the boat it was a bit windy, so considering my precarious health conditions I tried to spend little time on the deck, but I think I got some very impressive pictures, it was sad the weather wasn't more cooperative, but it could have been worse if it had been raining. The food on the boat was very interesting since it was cooked on the back of the boat in the open air. Some of the fare was pretty standard, such as rice and veggies, but other things like small deep fried crabs and other small fish was something very weird, and i tried being adventurous and eating some of it (to the sadness of my stomach).
When we got to Yangshuo we were exposed to how commercial the middle of nowhere can become given the right number of tourists.
The town/village is surrounded by hills, and it has a pedestrian street called "West Street" where it's full of stores and western style cafes, most of these places seem to be partly owned by expats, mostly Australians. The hotel we are staying in is 2 blocks away from the street, and I spent most of my afternoon walking around West st. and then reading a novel, while sitting in a cafe drinking a banana milk shake (my current substitute for beer until I'm done with the antibiotics). For dinner Rohit and I went to a cafe that had a sign in Hebrew announcing that the food in that place was good, and it actually WAS pretty good, too. I had sizzling beef that tasted really good. After dinner we walked around West street some more talking to some of the vendors in the market and trying to see how low they would take their prices, while they're open to haggling their prices are still much higher than in Beijing, so Rohit and I were a bit more leery of buying stuff from them.
After awhile I went off in search of a bar that was down a very dark and small alley that advertised a "free pool table", so I was very excited when I found it, and was able to shoot some pool against a Brit called Nick, who then introduced me to his friends, an Aussie named Simon, and a couple of Chinese girls called "Rabbit" and "Winter", they sort of adopted me under their wings and we proceeded to cafe-crawl to a different bar that had a foosball table and many boardgames people could play while getting intoxicated. Personally I had to switch from Coke to water as the night dragged on, since it was getting too sweet for me, while I got my behind handed to me a couple of times by Rabbit in foosball, and then by Simon, so we settled to play a game of Chinese checkers, which I have yet to even comprehend how it's played. After a very fun night of carousing without alcohol, I proceeded to head back to the hotel to sleep in for a night... Yeah, in another very hard bed.

China - Guilin - 3/19/2005

The official part of the trip is now over, and the hotel in Shanghai even feels emptier.
Rohit and I left the hotel at 9:15 am after checking out. The taxi took us to Hanqou airport where we were able to figure out what airline counter actually was "China Eastern". The checkout procedure was straightforward and we managed to breeze through until the security checkpoint, which is funny to see is always just as congested as in the US. But after going through it, we sat to wait in our gate for an hour or so. A few minutes before boarding time I was getting worried since there was no sign of our airplane or even of agents at the gate. Even worse was the fact that the name of the city had dissapeared from the monitor in our gate. 15 minutes before departure I was able to find out that the plane had been moved to a different gate, just at that point the announcement came over the PA that our plane was going through final boarding, so we had to run to the new gate.
We managed to safely catch our flight to Guilin. An interesting finding is that airplane food also tastes as bad in Chinese as in the US flights. When we got off the plane, as expected, our guide wasn't there to receive us.
After screaming at people over the phone our guide walked in late, and it turns out that she was given the wrong flight information. Luckily we were now rolling out to visit Guilin's hills, we first visited one called "Elephant Hill", called like that because it looks like and Elephant drinking from the river Li. Then we went to visit Fubo Hill, where we got to climb all the way up the hill and saw the view of the whole city from it.
From there in order to kill some time we went to visit an Art Gallery where we saw some very interesting paintings, some that even cost more than a car (about 50,000 USD). From there we went to a "Western" dinner where we had a different selection of platters, that were not too bad. And once again I was thrilled to find Flan, although it was not as good as the one in Shanghai.
After that we went back to our hotel in Guilin to get an early night's sleep before going out tomorrow to Yangshuo.

China - Shanghai - 3/18/2005

Last official day of the trip.
Today we woke up early to go to visit the Dell offices in Shanghai and sit in on another team's final presentation for their project. Sadly enough after trying many different types of medicines I find myself still sick and coughing most of the time, but during the presentation I was able to keep myself from being too loud.
The presentation was very interesting, starting with a very good set up given by one of the directors in the office, about Dell's China operations. He painted a very optimistic outlook for the company going forward, while letting us know that all this still depended on his team being able to continue delivering results. After his presentation we got to listen in to one of our fellow team's project results that were in line with some of the findings in our project, and we may be able to reference some of those in our presentation when we get back to Austin. Since our project coordinator was not available this day we decided with her to present in Austin instead. The director listening to this teams presentation was very good at focusing his attention on specific issues of the presentation, and asking questions geared to find out more exact information from the presenting teams, this reminded me a lot of the behavior of many other Dell directors I have met.
After the other teams presentation we went to the office's cafeteria to listen to the HR team talk about working for Dell. For Richa, Carolyn and me this was an opportunity to meet some of the local HR managers and introduce ourselves to them, since we never know when and how we may want to come back. We also asked many questions geared to find out how to obtain an international assignment. The main answer was that, while getting an international assignment was simple, getting one on US based salaries would be a bit tougher.
After a pizza lunch we headed back to the hotel where I got another opportunity to use my Chinese phrase book, when Diego and I headed in search of a pharmacy (turns out there was one a block away from the hotel... if i had only asked earlier!!). In the pharmacy, using my book, a book the pharmacy had with the names of all the prescription drugs in Chinese and English, and Diego's knowledge of what we needed, we managed to come out carrying antibiotics for my cough, robitusin, and some throat lozenges... All without a prescription and for less than 15 US Dollars :), Luckily Diego's wife is a doctor, and thus he knew exactly what to look for. After taking my first dose of antibiotic, I was still tired from all that was going on that I started packing, and then fell asleep for an hour before having to head out to our closing dinner.
Our closing dinner with the Jiaotong students, was pretty good in their faculty club. The menu was very similar to the usual stuff we're used to by now. While we got a chance to interact with our counterparts for one last time face to face.
We got a gift from them during the dinner, and since I couldn't drink any alcohol (because of the antibiotics), and I was still a bit tired I couldn't go out with them to the final outing to party in Shanghai.
In the end, I found myself unable to live any part of the Shanghai nightlife, but I heard it was much better than anywhere else in the trip.

China - Shanghai - 3/17/2005

Today was the day we established with our Jiao Tong team as the day we would use to finish our presentation for Dell, even though the latest news was that we would be unable to present here in Shanghai. We still wanted to take the time to work on it together in the same room, since working on it via the Internet wasn't as easy or straightforward. We had ironed out some recommendations on the bus ride to Baosteel the previous day, so we started out by putting those into powerpoint and took it from there.
After working on it for a couple of hours we had a presentation that we could use (although I'm still not thrilled with it). Unfortunately, since the Chinese team is not graded on their work on this project they were not very motivated to come up with a better presentation, and they didn't even seem to be interested in working for Dell, thus I did not even have that leverage... In the end I think that we came up with some good suggestions, I am now looking forward to presenting them to see how they're received.
After our presentation Kenji and I went with part of the Chinese team for a very traditional meal of Hot Pot. I had heard a lot about this, described to me as a fondue thing where you cooked vegetables and meats. A closer description is like a soup on your table that you use to stew food in. The things you can throw into the Hot pot range from normal things like noodles and veggies all the way to the bizarre like Bullfrogs and other bugs. I was not very thrilled with the meal, but at least I got to say that I did it.
After lunch we were shown to a DVD store close to the Jiao Tong where we got to explore the results of the widespread piracy in China. Movies that have barely been out in the US movie theatres were available for purchase for less than a dollar each in DVD format. Ironically this is something extremely common in China, while only 52 movies are said to be shown a year in the movie theatres (supposedly those need to be cleared by the government), all the movies are available via bootleg DVDs faster than they would be in the theaters.
From the DVD store Kenji and I went to check out the Xiao Yang market, that supposedly has a lot of counterfeit items and other gifts, while I expected something like the shopping center in Beijing, what we found was simply a very messy flea market. None of the important brands were on display in these stores, but people would keep coming over and trying to hawk these items by showing us catalog pages and asking us to follow them to their "house" to see the real stuff. To make it even worse, these people were VERY aggressive in their pestering. Personally I was very paranoid about following them, so I didn't, but I heard of some other people who did go with them and got some knock off purses and watches, although the deals were not as good as Beijing, and the environment was very shady. It seems that the police cracks down on people selling those brands inside the market, so they have the additional layer of secrecy around it.
After walking around for a while I got tired with all the loud people trying to get me to their homes, so I decided to head back to the hotel. Luckily before I left I managed to find a "North Fake" jacket to purchase for less than 17 bucks, now I can also say I belong to the China Trip group, since everybody seems to have gotten their own North Face jackets, only one of them having been bought in the US.
For dinner we had the Alumni reunion in Shanghai. It took place at a place called Viva Azul. This was a Tapas joint in the Expat neighborhood, and it was owned by a Peruvian guy living in Shanghai who looked exactly like Jefferson Ganoza (a Peruvian in our class), so after many sangrias, beers and even a Pizco Sour and some VERY good food we headed back to the hotel.
I got to see James Ding and Kai Qu, who graduated last year and now work for Dell in Shanghai, and it was great seeing them here living the life. I think there were fewer alumni that made it to this event than the one in Beijing, which makes me wonder how strong the network really is in China, but at least the recent grads did show up.

China - Shanghai - 3/16/2005

Today I woke up feeling a bit better, after a very long night of sleep.
We went in the morning to meet up with the Jiao Tong team, and we finally got to be all together to do a bit of field research for our project.
We split into two smaller teams mixed between the UT and Jiao Tong students, and we managed to go visit a small business in Shanghai to ask them about their computer purchasing behavior. We managed to get some interesting feedback for our project, especially as to the importance of the computer malls and system integrators for these companies. The description of the system integrators in China is very similar to the way they are in Latin America, thus raising some significant questions as to how can Dell fulfill the needs of this market segment successfully.
The only drawback to our trip to visit these companies, was that since it was cold and rainy it was very tough to get a taxi on the street, and I ended up standing out in the cold without my heavy jacket (I was wearing my suit) for around 40 minutes, I'm sure this will screw up my cold again.
From interviewing the employees at the company we went to another "Lazy Susan" lunch that was unremarkable.
After lunch we drove for almost two hours to visit a State Owned company called BaoSteel. This company produces many steel pieces, and has seen significant growth because of the economic development and expansion in China. The presentation was extremely dry and boring, with people actually falling asleep during it (yeah, they were even snoring and all!), the speaker didn't even notice the person sleeping, but then again, his charts were boring enough that he probably needed to focus on them a lot to avoid falling asleep.
After the boring presentation we toured the steel plant, unfortunately due to the cold weather we were unable to see too much out the windows. The only interesting part was a visit into one of the factory buildings where we saw a coil of steel being rolled, it was interesting to see the process.
Ironically during the presentation and the tour, the guide kept mentioning that they were "highly ecologic" and how "green" they were, yet they're producing steel, and their safety mechanisms seemed to leave a lot to be desired, since we were able to see the burning hot steel moving through the whole process. But i guess if it makes them feel better they can fool themselves as much as they want to.
That night we had dinner at a Brazilian BBQ restaurant, that was an all you can eat steak place. Finally a place where I could enjoy the food in China :)
For less than 10 bucks we each filled up on a lot of meat cuts, and FLAN!!! Yes, they have Flan in China too. I was VERY happy during this meal, so much I was unable to stand up from all i ate. This seemed to be a popular hangout amongst the expatriates living in Shanghai, since I think the only Chinese people in the restaurant were the Jiao Tong students.
Once again I passed up the drinking outing to go spend a nice night with my Nyquill... rumor has it was a very fun night for those who went out, since they got back around 4:30 am.

China - Shanghai - 3/15/2005

Well, I'm sad to say that after all the medicines I took last night I didn't manage to shake off this cold. The only thing that makes me feel a bit better is that I'm not the only one who is feeling this bad. During our meetings with companies our group seems to be a chorus of coughs emanating from all over the room. The bus rides are even worse, since the space is so confined. One of our classmates described our bus as a "Hot Zone" in reference to bio hazard areas. Hopefully all the water and nyquill i'm taking, and the fact I've locked myself indoors most of the day may improve the way I'm feeling soon.
Today we got to visit an technology/industrial park that is being developed in the outskirts of Shanghai. This visit was interesting because it gave us a glimpse of how the Real Estate market is developing in Shanghai. The rumors of a bubble may be very true, since this tech park not only provides office space, but also markets the fact that they provide access to two universities being built on campus, and even financing for startups. Even though the park is well outside of Shanghai's downtown area, they are trying to get the same prices for the office space, which can only mean a lack of supply that creates a bubble like situation.
After the visit we headed back to the downtown area for lunch, where oh surprise! we had another "Lazy Susan" Lunch with even more food than normal, but a very similar fare. Besides the fact that my cold made me even less hungry.
Once we were done with lunch we all climbed once again on the bus to go to Delloite's office on the Bund. To say that their offices has an amazing view is an understatement. Out of their 30th floor window one could look down on the whole Bund (Shanghai's main coastal avenue, where the talles and most impressive buildings stand) and the river. While we waited for the meeting to begin we were transfixed watching the scene below us. Unfortunately the presentation was less enthralling than the view downstairs (I guess that's what happens when accountants make presentations... they're dry and long-winded).
By the time the presentation was over I packed myself up on the bus and headed back to the hotel while the rest of my project team met with part of the Jiaotong student team to visit technical malls and obtain information on PC sales.
For dinner I broke down since I didn't want to go out where I'd be out for too long. In the end I found a McDonald's a block away from the hotel and I had a burger and fries.
After that exciting day I have now taken a Nyquill to hopefully sleep well tonight.
Looking forward to feeling better tomorrow.

China - Shanghai - 3/14/2005

Today I started the day a bit slower than usual due to my having taken a Nyquill pill last night. To make matters even more fun as soon as we got down for breakfast we got a note saying that our departure had been moved up by 15 minutes, meaning that everybody got down to our departure point late, thus starting our morning the way the rest of our day would go (getting late everywhere).
Our first appointment during the morning was a visit to Shanghai GM's plant. The plant is a Joint Venture between GM and Shanghai Auto Industry Corp (SAIC), and the plant looked like almost any other in the world as far as the processes and the layout. We got a very interesting presentation on the history of the business in China, then we got to visit their showroom to see their vehicles and took some interesting pictures. After the showroom we got a plant tour where we followed the manufacturing of several of their cars from simple parts all the way through being fully assembled. The plant was less automated than the ones in the US, but in the Q&A session we found out that this manual labor provides a higher quality level in the cars than in more automated plants.
After our plant visit we went to lunch in smaller groups so we could avoid going to a Lazy Susan restaurant. It was much better fare than usual, especially since we got to pick the dishes we wanted.
Once we were done with lunch we headed to meet our Jiaotong counterparts. While our counterparts had been very dilligent working with us from the US, yesterday only two of them showed up out of the 5 that made up our team, thus not allowing us too much of an opportunity to get that much work. Before getting to work we had our Jiaotong counterparts come with us shopping for suits at a tailor, but since I couldn't figure out what the difference was between the fabrics, and they weren't able to negotiate a very good deal we simply walked away. After that we went to a Starbucks so we could shoot around some ideas and get to talk further about our project. We came up with some interesting ideas, and a working schedule to produce the expected results including company interviews and competitive analysis.
After we came up with a good plan we decided to start going out to work on it, but as I got to the place we were going to I was just too sick and tired, so I left the team and headed back to the hotel to get an early night's sleep.
After a nyquill I went to sleep around 9:30 pm.

China - Suzhou/Shanghai - 3/13/2005

This morning we woke up having slept much better than any of the previous 3 nights, so even though we were still slightly sleep deprived we were much better rested. We had to wake up a bit early to take our suitcases outside, but we managed it successfully.
After getting ready, Brad and I decided to skip the optional visit to the silk and pearl factories and went to walk around Suzhou to get a better feel for the city. We ended up walking aimlessly for about 3 hours getting to see a lot of different buildings and parks. The city seemed to be very active for a Sunday, yet it did hold a more relaxed feeling than the larger cities.
For lunch we were able to seek out our own place to get it, so we took the opportunity to go into a restaurant where we seemed to be the only foreigners. It was a very typical noodle house, where people ordered downstairs from a menu on the wall, and then the food was brought to their table. In our case since we couldn't read the menu we were taken to a table and given the only English menu they had. While it was more descriptive than the one in the wall, which was in Chinese, some of the entries still held a lot of mistery, such as the "7 Delicacy Noodles: Noodles with our 7 delicacies", when I asked the waitress what those 7 delicacies were, all she told me was that it had delicacies, so in order to maintain my stomach lining I went with the safer bet of "Fried Egg Noodles", the food was really good, and Brad and I ate a ton of food for less than 4 dollars for both of us.
After lunch we met up with the group again in order to visit the "Master of Nets Garden", which was a house that belonged to a high government official during one of the dinasties, and we got to tour his house with all the gardens that were in it. We clearly observed Feng Shui aspects all over the house, and we got to spend more than an hour walking around, taking pictures, and listening to our guide describe some of the interesting aspects of the house.
After visiting the garden we finally got onto the bus to head over to Shanghai.
As I mentioned yesterday, Shanghai looks amazing, there are tall buildings everywhere you look, and the amount of construction still going on is unbelievable. This really brought home the point made at the US embassy in beijing, when the speaker made the joke about China's national bird being the 'Crane'.
As soon as we got to Shanghai we checked into the Holiday Inn (Finally a western hotel!), and then we had to run out to dinner around 5:30 pm. Since we were running late, and we were rushed, all the dishes were already arranged on the lazy susan. This was a much better setup than the usual way where dishes are brought out one at a time, since it IS much faster, and at the same time it gives you a clear idea of what exactly the meal is composed of, allowing you to pick and choose your favorite dishes. We managed to eat our dinner in record time for a group our size, and then run out of the restaurant.
From dinner we were taking straight to a "cruise". It is my opinion that in China the word is used very liberally to describe anything that floats and has a roof, but this was a 5 story ship that took us down one of Shanghai's main river so we could get a great view of Shanghai's nightline and the Bund. I managed to snap off several pictures of the waterfront and I was even asked to pose with a group of Chinese older ladies who were also touring Shanghai.
After the cruise was over we were taken by our tour guide to the tallest building in Shanghai, the Jinmao tower. This tower is composed by offices up to the middle and the top 40 floors are part of a very luxurious hotel. On the top floor there is an observation deck that allows you to see the whole city. Unfortunately it was tough to take good pictures through the glass windows, but I still tried to. The views were amazing, and I don't think any of my pictures did it any justice.
By this time, after a very long day many of us were pretty much exhausted, and the following day promised to be almost just as long, so we headed back to the Holiday Inn so we could rest for the next day when we'd meet our Jiao Tong counterparts.

China - Suzhou - 3/12/2005

Today was another VERY long day that seemed to go on forever. Unfortunately most of it was spent on a bus.
Our train got into Shanghai today at 6:30, the part of the city we saw seemed amazing! huge buildings with a lot more being built by the minute, it was Saturday at 7 am and there was a huge flurry of activity everywhere, even in the construction sites.
We rode for a short while to a hotel for a very nice breakfast (at least compared after the past few days). The best part after the overnight train ride was to see a toilet where you could actually sit down on (most of the toilets in China are holes in the floor), most of the group ended up running to them when we drove into the hotel. After breakfast we got into our bus for a 2 hour ride to Suzhou that actually lasted all of 4 hours, because of a ton of construction and traffic. Once in Suzhou we were able to recover our suitcases and take a warm shower (what a luxury after 3 days of missing it), and shave... I even felt like a new person for a few hours.
Our lunch consisted of what has by now become very typical fare (no more excitement in it), of a lazy susan full of dishes including (but not limited to) some vegetables, some sort of rice/noodles, some fish/chicken/beef and a soup to end our meal with maybe some fruit.
As soon as we were done with lunch we got to run to the bus and were driven around Suzhou on the way to a Silk factory. Silk and pearls are the main products of Suzhou, besides it being a Special Economic Zone (meaning there's also several high tech companies in the area). The silk factory was a dog and pony show where they explained the whole process of manufacturing silk and the conversation kept turning back to Silk Quilts that they were pushing on us like an Amway salesperson sells shampoo. After their pitch that went on for about an hour I found the store that had other stuff besides quilts, so I bought myself a couple of ties that are supposed to be Hermes (need to compare the logos to the real one to see if it's for real or not) for much less than the normal price I've paid before. The reason I am supposed to assume they're for real was that the store is ran by the government, so if it's for real I may go again tomorrow.
As soon as we were halfway through the shopping time we were told we had to run to an impromptu company presentation at Selectron (contract manufacturer of integrated circuits) where their HR director had given last minute notice to Daniel that we could show up there to visit them. The visit was very interesting and I was impressed at the amount of manual labor being executed as far as the QA was concerned and all the other functions being performed.
Since we hadn't done enough running around during the day, we went to see a Tie factory, after a few logistical issues we managed to get to the factory that seemed to be an upscale version of what i always envisioned a sweat shop to be. Especially considering that people were working and it was 8 pm on a Saturday night. Still even though many people were impacted by that visit I keep having a sense of Deja Vu where I've seen these types of things in Latin America before.
After that we ran back to a restaurant that was close to the hotel. Once again this consisted of a lazy susan with many dishes that we didn't even feel like tasting... at least the beer wasn't too pricey and we probably ran through 10 large bottles of Budweisser to fill up.
It's sad that on a Saturday night most of the group is too exhausted to even go out and check out the town, but the group's nerves are frayed, and people are starting to snap at each other. Hopefully a nice relaxing night, where we sleep in a comfortable bed might get us to calm down a bit.
Suzhou is a very interesting city that has a lot of very large and new buildings. The area seems like it's growing fast and it may be a model for China to follow in its future development, given the way it has employed many people and trained them to fulfill better jobs than simply farm jobs. I was also impressed at the percentage of people who actually understand and speak English in this town...
Once again, can't wait to get to Shanghai tomorrow!!

China - Taishan - 3/11/2005

This day begun with what will be remembered in my mind as the Sunrise of Almost Frostbite. After a very cold night on top of our mountain hotel where our kind hosts decided to shut down the heat after 10 pm (by knocking on our door and coming into our room when i had no idea what the heck they were talking about). I went out with a group of people to see the sunrise on top of the mountain. Luckily I paid attention to Brad (my roommate) who suggested we wear all our weather gear plus our "Chinese Communist General" Jackets (I guess I'll have to attach the pictures for it to be understandable in the future). The weather was probably below -20 degrees centigrade at that time, or in my terminology "Damn Cold". After following the wrong group of people wearing Chinese General Jackets we got to where we had a nice vantage point of the sunrise. All in all it was so cold it was not really worth it in my opinion. After breakfast we received the great news that given the strong winds we may not be able to go down the mountain in the cable cars, but we crossed our fingers hoping we'd be able to make it. Luckily by the time we got to the cable cars they had reactivated them and we were allowed to go down on them. We were lucky too since it was starting to snow a bit too on top of the mountain. After our descent from Mt. Taishan we went back to the hotel where we dropped things off the previous morning before climbing the mountain. After picking these things up we were taken to visit a village a couple of hours out of town, in this village we got to have lunch in the house of one of the villagers. The food was probably one of the best so far, but even with that in mind I'm already getting tired of all the different types of grass, bamboo, and tofu. I really was craving some McDonald's. After lunch at the village we were shown around it, and we were even taken to a kindergarten where the children put on a small show for us where they danced and sung and played with some of us. It reminded me a lot of some of the experiences I had in high school, and it gave me that usual feeling of sadness when some people are made to put on a show for other because they don't know any better. I also started getting an awful sense of things being "staged" for us, but overall I was happy to be back on the bus heading to the city.
After our short trip we were taken to the second "tourist trap" in this city, but this one raised a loud alarm in many of our minds when we walked into a room with VERY pricey pearls in it, and the manager of the store closed the door behind us and the doorknob was broken. We all managed to escape the place without purchasing anything, but that stunt probably caused our tour guide to lose most of the possible tip from many of us.
We then went to an Internet Cafe (or given the lack of functioning computers it was dubbed an InterNOT cafe), this proved to be a funny experience in trying to translate chinese in the keyboards with what we already know of Internet Explorer. Since the day wasn't going too well it didn't get better for this point, so we tried to use the PCs as well as we could and send as few e-mails as possible and get out of there.
For dinner we went to a Chinese version of Medieval Times, since it was a castle-like structure that had people in old Chinese costumes. The food was almost the same as all the other one we've had.
We made it to the train station 2 hours early and had ample time to buy beers for our ride to Shanghai. The train left on time and was much nicer than the previous one, and luckily i was able to get a room in the quiet car. The "Latin Quarter" room had its party was going as loud as usual, but they did close the door after awhile. I spent a short time with people in the "Midnight Bar" room just hanging out before heading out for a short rest in my room while the train kept heading to Shanghai... While it wasn't a nice soft bed, it WAS much softer than the bed on Mt. Taishan and although I slept a bit over 4 hours I was feeling happier about things as I felt myself getting closer to civilization.
One thing I'm learning about myself, is that I really appreciate being close to technology, tall buildings and other amenities found in large cities. Not sure I'd be able to survive long in a small town anymore... but alas, only time will tell.

China - Taishan - 3/10/2005

The train ride was very interesting overall, sadly enough we really got to start missing General Lee as soon as we got off the train in Taishan since our local tour guide was not there to greet us. Taishan seemed to be either extremely foggy when we got in or the train station had too much smog around it. When our new tour guide, named Maggie, got to meet us she profusely apologized and even sung a bit to make up for her being late. We promised to forgive her if she stopped singing, and thus peace was achieved very early in the morning.
We proceeded to visit a hotel in Taishan where we had a few rooms that we would occupy for a couple hours to "Freshen up", which meant take a quick shower and have a place to sit for a few minutes and relax, since we couldn't really sleep in that time because of the cramped quarters we found ourselves in. The TV was funny because one of the channels kept playing a scene from Spiderman 2 over and over with ads for some other movies every time in between of the following replay of the same scene from Spiderman 2.
Breakfast was a far cry from being good in my skewed opinion after almost a full week of the buffet at the Prime Hotel in Beijing. Ironically since I'm not a big coffee drinker, I found myself having two full cups of it to try to come back to the world of the living after all the drinking and partying of the previous night without significant sleep.
As soon as we were done with breakfast we dropped all our heavy stuff into one room and proceeded to head out with the small backpack we would need to climb Mt. Taishan and stay over there for the night.
Our tour guide took us to visit the Daimaio Temple that had a very nice Tea Garden, where we were invited to listen to an explanation about the different types of tea and what made them special. Since I'm not into drinking tea I was not extremely excited about that session, but something that made me even more uncomfortable was when they were selling us the different boxes of tea, and at the end Maggie, our guide, was given several boxes for herself. It seemed to me like it was a kickback for taking us in there. A scene that seemed to repeat itself at a souvenir store in the temple, where some people bought some gifts and she also walked out with something for herself. I'm not sure if she has a running tab and that's why she didn't pay or if it's a common practice, but coming from the world of Integrity of GE where any potential conflict of interest is to be avoided at all costs, this seemed like a huge one to me.
The temple was also very nice and it added to the architecture we got to see. Something that struck me though was how commercial they had made it, since there were a couple of booths where they were selling locks to write wishes on, and another one where they sold strings with papers attached to it to write messages and leave them behind. All of these things were there for luck, which struck me as something weird, but I guess that it played into people's sense of superstition.
After walking around the temple for awhile we were driven to a different hotel where we could eat lunch. While the meal was a bit of the same type of dishes it was much better than our breakfast, so we really wolfed it down. Although some people were trying not too eat too much, since they would have to walk up the mountain. Personally I decided at this point that I was tired enough where I didn't really feel like climbing the thousands of steps that were edged onto the mountainside "just for fun", so I proceeded to join the very small group of people who took the cable car up so I could lay down comfortably in the hotel room I was hoping would be up there.
Even doing the lazy man's version of the climb up the mountain in the cable car, proved hard, because of all the stairs between the exit of the cable car and the top of the mountain where our hotel was located. Considering we were also carrying with us two 48-packs of beer to have for that night it added significant weight to our part of the trip, but after some slow progress we made it up (significantly ahead of the next group that arrived maybe 30 minutes later, who started climbing at the bottom and then took the cable car the rest of the way up from the middle of the mountain). I was very happy that I got to the hotel when we did, since we managed to get one of the first rooms assigned, and this was critical in this "three-star" hotel that had very few rooms with running water and heat. Since I was already pretty tired, and cold, I went up to my room and proceeded to play with our Heating unit trying to get the room temperature up a bit, and after testing different settings managed to get something that in the end gave me a warmer room than the outside corridor or anywhere else I had visited in the hotel.
Dinner wasn't ver good either, especially since by the time I made it up there much of the food had been wolfed down. We finally got some more dishes served, and the best thing of the dinner was the French Fries, but when we asked for more we were told that we couldn't have any (This was a small plate that was put in front of our whole table, so it didn't have any hope of making it for long).
After dinner I was so tired that I really crashed in a bed that felt like a piece of wood that had been covered in concrete. Maybe the most notable part was when at a very late time (I think it was 11 pm, but it felt like 2 am) a lady basically burst into our room to turn off the central heating. I wasn't sure what was going on, and since she couldn't successfully communicate with us I just let her do it and went back under my covers. Later I was to find out that the central heating was turned off at that time so leaving the circulation on would have really cooled down our rooms, so I guess it was a good thing that my rebelious self didn't turn the air back on.

China - Beijing - 3/9/2005

Today was our last day in Beijing. Our suitcases were picked up early so they would be sent directly to Shanghai and save us the hassle of having to carry them ourselves on the trains and then up the mountain.
After a late breakfast Brad and I went out hunting for an Internet cafe that we heard was close to our hotel. We probably walked for about 30 to 45 minutes going into different stores and using my Chinese phrase book to see if anybody knew where we could find the Internet cafe, unfortunately only one person seemed to know where there was one, but his directions were broken enough that we didn't quite find the place until giving up and heading back to the hotel through a very small side street, and alas there I saw a computer against the window of a store, and I checked the store figuring since they had a computer they may know what an Internet cafe was, and it turned out to be the place. Considering the lack of signage I'm really surprised people even knew the place even existed, but we were able to communicate well enough where we each got a computer for an hour. This was a good break from being unplugged for almost four days.
We all got back together around noon to go on a Hutong tour. The tour consisted of being taken around an old neighborhood in a rickshaw bike and showing us one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Beijing, some of the interesting things we learnt was how family status could be added as architectural features to houses so as to communicate social standing in a visible way. Our tour guide also took us into a person's home to see what the houses looked like on the inside. Some other items of interest were that once a house got acquired by a family it meant that they would be able to stay there for several generations at a very low additional cost. Many of the houses we got to see were in the area where most of the senior Chinese military officers lived, which probably meant that they were a perk of supporting the communist government in the beginning of its rise (although this was not mentioned in the tour).
After the tour we were driven to a restaurant that was like a huge warehouse and they even had many live creatures like crabs, fish an others that could be acquired as part of the meal. Our fare was pretty much very similar to what we had been eating so far, although it did have more of a slant towards seafood dishes.
Maybe one of my favorite and memorable "Heard and Overheard" phrases was uttered in this restaurant.
Ed Hemphill: "Hmm, this tastes good"
Rest of the Table: "What is it like?"
Ed: "Tastes like Chinese Long John Silvers"
The item in question, did actually taste good, and yes, I'd say it also tasted like Chinese Long John Silvers. Ironically for most of us I think this marked the point where we were starting to tire of adventuresome eating, and the familiarity of most of the dishes allowed us to already know what we liked and steer clear of the more unfamiliar dishes.
After lunch we proceeded to visit the Imperial Summer Palace. It is necessary to mention that the sunset views of the lake and the palace were beautiful I got to snap a lot of pictures trying to capture some of these views. During this visit we had one of the only group separations of the whole trip, since we came out a different place of the Summer Palace than where we went in a couple of people from the group decided to get ahead of the rest of us, and came out the same place we entered the palace, thus getting effectively separated from us and worrying us for a short while until Daniel and Kenneth in a double pronged search effort managed to find them and we were once again all happily reunited.
By the time dinner rolled around it seemed the whole group was ready for some good old style American fare, so that dinner consisted of some good old fashioned Pizza Hut. It looked like Pizza Hut in China was mostly eat-in vs. more delivery pizza in the US, but the funny part was when we asked for pizzas that would have half of one type and the other half a different set of ingredients, we almost gave the poor waiter a heart attack by demanding that much, so in the end we figured out we all liked pepperoni and made his life easier by only ordering a full pepperoni pizza. As the book said, Flexibility is not a Chinese trait.
After dinner we were driven to the train station where we said goodbye to General Lee. It must be mentioned that General Lee set a very high bar for all the tour guides after him, since he was very honest and straightforward, and had been doing this for a long time thus making him highly knowledgeable about Beijing. Additionally he got to live through the cultural revolution and that gave him a unique perspective of China and its people. I think we were very lucky in having him as one of our guides for this trip.
The train ride to Tai-han proved to be more fun than I expected with the biggest excitement coming when we had a group of strangers trying to come into our staterooms. Actually we later found out these were THEIR staterooms, and Daniel was trying to tradewith them so we could all be together. Once again Daniel proved himself worthy by convincing them to take our staterooms and thus a very interesting confusion was averted. The ride itself was fun because the people in the different staterooms that were open for partying were giving the place their own fun environment. So you could have a "Latin quarter" and a "Moonlight Bar" section and we got to visit between them. The drawback of this style of train ride was that the sleeping was kept to a minimum. But the way I looked at it was that we didn't get to travel on a train in China every day, so might as well make the most of the experience!

China - Beijing - 3/8/2005

I guess the Jet Lag is still with me since I woke up at 5 am and couldn't go back to sleep, even though I went to sleep the previous night around midnight.
Today breakfast was the same feast we've been having at the hotel, which includes noodles, fried rice and sushi. Although I finally found where they keep the breads and went for that too (meaning less sushi and rice on the plate :)
During the morning I also got to experience what I think was my first direct exposure to censorship. I was watching on CNN news about the Taiwan anti-cessation bill when all of a sudden CNN went blank for about a minute or two and then came back to the wrap up of the story. I'm not sure if it was a satellite glitch or not, but the timing seemed quite good for it to blink out.
After breakfast we headed to the Bank of Beijing where we visited with one of the VPs, since the president was doing a "tour". Later we found out that today as part of a surprise move the board of directors had decided to shuffle all the senior management positions in something that seems to be very common in State Owned Enterprises. Even with all these changes the VPs we met with answered all of our questions very calmly and accurately. We returned to the hotel to change out of our suits and get ready to head out to the Great Wall of China.
The ride to the wall was long, but it passed by quickly hearing to the stories being told by General Lee (our guide in Beijing). He told us some stories about the discovery of the Pekin Man and the building of the wall, that Daniel found amusing since they didn't seem to be very accurate, but the rest of the group found it amusing and it kept our minds and eyes off the crazy drivers around us.
The actual wall was amazing, because of its size as well as the terrain over which it was built. According to General Lee it spans about 2000 Km from side to side, and it took 10 years to build by millions of people. To make matters even funnier right behind us we had several buses that brought with them a Marching Band from a high school in California, that came down in their full uniforms with all their instruments to play by the Great Wall. So we got to climb the wall with our own band playing in the background.
The climb up the wall was exhausting, because it was very steep and the steps were totally uneven, but I was the second who made it up all the way. And as a way to celebrate the feat I was able to get myself a beer for less than 60 US cents. So now I can say I've had Chinese beer on top of the Great Wall.
On the way back to Beijing we were all exhausted after the long climb and the cold wind that had been blowing, so the trip back was very quiet.
The alumni reunion proved to be very interesting, with 6 UT alums living in Beijing visiting and having dinner with us. By now I'm having the feeling that all the restaurants in Beijing serve the same types of dinner (at least for us foreigners), so while at first it was all great, I'm now sticking to a smaller selection of dishes (which may be a good thing for my waist).
After dinner I was too tired to even think about going out, so I stayed in the hotel with a couple of other people hanging out in the lobby bar, and the weird disco in the basement of our hotel. I have yet to figure out what that place is all about.
Well, tomorrow we head to Taishan so I may be unable to connect for the next 3 days.

China - Beijing - 3/7/2005

Ok, Given the technical difficulties I'll try writing this entry again.
Today I think that the jet lag is slowly fading. I was able to wake up close to the normal time necessary, though still a bit tired from last night's partying a-la-Chinese.
Our day begun by going to the US Consulate's Commercial Section, where we learnt about the services provided by the US Embassy to help companies enter the Chinese market to sell products in the Chinese market. Maybe the most important lesson learnt during the session was that companies that fail their market entry efforts usually do so because they lack an entry strategy, these companies have the mistaken idea that just by establishing a presence here they will succeed and conquer the Chinese market, yet they usually find themselves in deep trouble after spending millions and getting their products ripped off.
After that session we went to lunch at a very upscale mall that had stores that seem very expensive even by American standars, like Sony Experience and BMW Lifestyle. For a country with an average yearly income of 1000 dollars per year the stores seem to sell very expensive products, and they do seem to move their products in the market. We had lunch in a Chinese style food court, where we got to eat a lot of excellent food for a very little price (about a dollar for a full meal of pepper steak and noodles).
After lunch (walked back to the hotel to digest the food), we went shopping to a department store full of knock-off stands, where I managed to practice my negotiations skills to purchase two watches. Will have to see in other places if this was a good deal, but for now I like them, and I'll wear one of them until it dies on me (or I find a nicer one). As a student it's great to be able to buy nice looking things for so cheap!
After shopping we came back to the hotel for all of 20 minutes before heading out to dinner to have the "Best Peking Duck in all of China", the duck WAS great, and I once again ate a lot! Whomever said that I would lose weight on this trip was probably very wrong.
Luckily we got to walk a bit more to a Chinese "Variety" show, that was as boring as watching paint dry on a cold, wet day, maybe it'd have been better if we had had some sort of translation, but since we didn't we were VERY happy when the show ended.
Given the slowness of the show and how it put us all to sleep, there was no partying tonight. So now I get to go to sleep early....

China - Beijing - 3/6/2005

Our first day in Beijing was very exciting, while I was still feeling a bit tired and out of it because of the jet lag I had been so exhausted that I slept all through the night.
The breakfast in the hotel was extremely large, it was a buffet that included everything you could want to either eat for lunch, breakfast or dinner... so since I was still unsure what time it was for me, I selected a bit of everything, including fried rice, dumplings and some eggs with bacon. After breakfast I went out with Daniel, Eugenio and a few other people to walk around the hotel area where there were some interesting stores. Something that stood out were the amount of cell phone related stores that I saw in the short range of blocks we walked.
Another thing that kept creeping in the back of my head was how much the area looked like Mexico City, the way people moved, the traffic on the street, the buildings and so many other details gave me a huge sense of Deja vu, maybe the most significant factor was the grayness of the sky that made me unsure whether it was simply foggy or if it was actually caused by smog.
After walking around the stores in a modern looking mall, Daniel showed us a bottom floor that had smaller stalls and bazaar like stores selling traditional Chinese trinkets and clothes. We explored this area, that seemed to go on forever for almost the whole time we were there, and while we didn't purchase anything I was surprised at the aggresiveness and pushiness of the vendors who even went as far as grabbing you and putting the things in your hands so you would buy from them.
The whole area seemed to be very dormant, but it probably had something to do with the fact that it was Sunday afternoon.
After visiting the stores we went back to the hotel where we met up with our group and proceeded to drive around the Beijing area. I got to see for the first time the Forbidden City while we drove past it to a restaurant that was very close to it.
The restaurant we went to, we were told, was founded by former chefs of the Imperial Court, who had been left unemployed after the last emperor left China, and all they knew how to do was cook this specific type of food, so they simply put up different restaurants around the city and kept on the recipes for buying customers, and the food still is around in the rest of the country.
In this restaurant we experienced for the first time how cheap beer was, when we ordered 3/4 liter bottles of beer for about a dollar each. At the same time we were served a lot of very good food. The way the meal worked was that about 10 of us would be sitting in a table with a very large lazy susan in the middle (A lazy susan is a large plate that turns around so people around the table can rotate it to get different dishes), while waitresses would come over and put new dishes every few minutes on the lazy susan. This gave us a great sampling of the food that was very good and very plentiful, at this rate I'd probably gain several pounds by the time I got back home.
After lunch we went straight to the Forbidden City (although we had a hard time moving after all that we ate). We got to walk in through the rear door and something very pretty to watch was the lake around the city, that had frozen due to the cold winter. Besides hearing the explanations that General Lee was giving us, it was very interesting to see the actual buildings in the forbidden city. Maybe the most interesting point was that many of the buildings looked run down because of their age and the pollution in the air, yet because of the efforts to beautify the city before the olympics there was a lot of construction activity going around where they were re-tiling and re-painting all the buildings. An interesting comment that Gen. Lee made was that all the reconstruction was scheduled to end by the end of 2006, so that during 2007 people would forget that it had been run down before, and would be able to talk about it as if it was always like that when foreigners started arriving for the Olympic Games by 2008.
Another funny detail in the forbidden city was to see the Starbucks that had been built in there, since honestly that was the latest place I expected to find one, but China is a market where you can see almost as many starbucks as in NYC.
After walking through the Forbidden city (and stopping every 2 minutes to take a picture) we came out the front door out to Tianamen square. All the buildings had red flags flying, and this happens only for a month or two during the year when the government is in session, so it was a very nice sight for us. Tianamen square is huge (as almost everything seems to be in China), and it fits half a million people in it.
After walking around Tianamen we went to a dinner at a restaurant that served arab food. Unfortunately for me, I've had better arab food, thus I was unimpressed, and while it did have a bit of Chinese flavor to it I was unable to eat the kebabs that seemed to be the best part of the dinner. While we were having dinner we also got to experience some dance shows, which included some audience participation, so I even got to go onstage and bellydance a bit. That part woke me up a bit and I started feeling slightly better after that.
As if we weren't tired enough a group of us still managed to go out drinking to one of the streets that had many bars. Maybe because it was Sunday night the place seemed very quiet for a bar street, where we even got to haggle for the price of beer at different bars so that we would go in. In the end we hung out for a short while before taking cabs back to the hotel. Luckily we had enough business cards with the hotel name to make it back safely.

China - Austin / Beijing - 3/4/2005 - 3/5/2005

The Adventure begins!
After a long flight we have finally arrived in Beijing.
Getting to fly in Japan Air Lines, I realized how bad the service had gotten aboard U.S. carriers, between the service, the food, and the amenities I wish I would get to fly as comfortably more often, instead of being on those cramped carriers with flight attendants who should have retired twenty years earlier.
Driving into Beijing I was surprised at how much it reminded me of driving into other large South American capitals. The way the roads were laid out, the buildings and the streets it all seemed very familiar.
Well, after the long flight it was time to pass out in bed and get ready for the rest of the trip!