Links & Drinks in China

After arriving in Beijing late on Saturday, we spend the day on Sunday on a guided tour of the Great Wall. I don't think we realized that Johnny (a girl, who apparently had short hair when given her English name) would also be taking us on a few side trips to try to get us to buy stuff at the state-owned jade factory and academy for Chinese herbal medicine (the dr gave me a bill of perfect health before he stormed off complaining no one in our group was going to buy anything). Before the wall, we also stopped at the Sacred Way, where the funeral processions marched to the tombs. We visited the Mutianyu section of the wall, which had been restored. However, we hiked to the end and could see some of the unrestored wall, too. Due to the rain, we could not take the toboggan down, but we still enjoyed ourselves with a myriad of sweet posing pictures.

And the rest can be seen in my Great Wall album.

With each passing day, I'm finding less and less time to blog and the guilt is racking up. We have already been in Beijing for two days and I haven't written a thing about Shanghai. So, here is my brief synopsis and the pictures can tell you more.

Shanghai is an awesome city and I could definitely see myself living there. Not that I am going to up and move there after school, but if an opportunity presented itself to move to Shanghai, I would absolutely consider it. The city is very modern and western in many ways - its not the China I was expecting. It may have helped that we weren't really roughing it at the Portman (for those of you who don't know, we were trying to stay at another hotel, but it didn't open in time, so they hooked us up with this replacement - we didn't say, oh, we need to stay at the ritz!). We also got a pretty good glimpse of the expat lifestyle through hanging out with Michelle, Ted, John & Co.

For the school part of our trip, we went to ZJ High Tech Park, where we visited their info center, Finchi (incubator for Finnish Companies), and the park's incubator. We also visited Abbott, Qiming Venture Partners and CKGSB. Additionally, we heard an updated on the state of Chinese manufacturing from Ted Hornbein.

TopGolf research included visits to Tomson Golf, Adidas/TaylorMade and the head of the VIP Golf Academies in China at Nike's offices. We played in the AmCham Charity Golf Outing at Silport Golf Club and I spoke with the Director of the David Ledbetter Golf Academy there. Genny took the tourney by storm winning both the women's longest drive and closest to the center and picked up some serious[ly heavy] hardware. Golfing with the women caddies there was quite the experience and I think we could get very used to not using a single muscle except when swinging.

For a little sightseeing, we did the river cruise along the bund, saw Shanghai Center, Jing An Temple, the Yu Gardens & building with 9 turns or whatever it was called, and the Urban Planning Museum (not much room for a TopGolf facility...). Feel free to check out my pics to get more of the details:

Shanghai first half
Shanghai second half

Ok, so its been a while since i've posted and in my head i've moved beyond the beach and beer in Qingdao to business & golf in Shanghai, so I'm not going to write too much about the weekend.

Qingdao is a beautiful city on a penninsula overlooking the Yellow Sea. Its the home of Tsingtao beer, which is really the english spelling for Qingdao (so now that you are in the know, use the proper name in China). The city has a lot of german influence (hence the beer) and the government has pumped a lot of money into it, so its really nice.

We had beerfest headquarters at the Shangri-La - i'm not sure how many of us were staying there, but I'd maybe guess 30 or so. We spent our days at the beach drinking beer out of plastic bags and straws. How does that work, you ask? Well the beer stays perfectly cold in the kegs, even though they are not in ice (is it magic? or just because we drink it fast?). You fill the plastic bag with beer and then poke a hole through the bag and drink away. It helps to drink quickly or go for many smaller pours to keep the beer cold once its in the bag.

You can also play a game with the bags where you try to pop other people's bags with your straw (sneak attack works best) and then they have to drink/chug the rest of the beer as it flows out:

The first day's weather was decent, but the second (and official beach day) was rainy but we made the most of it with our umbrella city.

Sunday was absolutely beautiful and everyone pretty much chilled at the beach until the moment they left for the airport (we stayed til monday). This is the best picture of the weekend and pretty much sums up the beach environment in China:

That is actually a lady!

For the most part, the Chinese people at the beach did not try to hang out and party with us. The did do a lot of staring, but then again so did we. That all changed when Steve arrived on the beach on Sunday - people were coming up to him all day asking him for pictures.

We did have an unsucessful trip to the beerfest on Saturday night. It was crazy big - tons of giant beer tents, both Chinese and Foreign brands - with lots of sweet Chinese entertainment. It started off on a sour note, though, when one of the girls in our group got her boob grabbed by some drunk dude right when we walked in, so that put me on edge a little. Then, as Genny, Chris & I paused for a picture we lost everyone. Seriously, we could not find them anywhere and even a borrowed cell could not help us to locate the group. So we walked around and left. Without any beer. FAIL. Ugh, but here are some sweet photos:

Gotta rep the homeland!

Genny and I went to the Jusco to stroll and laugh at Chinese things. We did end up doing some "research" when we saw a lone pair of women's golf shoes in the adidas store (no men's pairs, though). We've come to find out that the stores will put out random stuff they ordered and still haven't sold, with no regard for the products actual use. And someone will probably buy them and wear them purely for fashion.

Ok, and for more photos, you can check out my shutterfly albums for the weekend:
Qingdao 1
Qingdao 2

So the trip has been great so far. The flight wasn't bad at all. It probably helps that I'm good at sleeping and sitting and doing nothing

Good thing I didn't know Kevin was so sick before I filled out my quarantine form. I was a little sad they didn't take all of our temperatures.

First really awesome thing I saw when I got there was this:
Just strap your baby in right above the floor.

Thanks to Michelle's great directions, I made it to her work via the Maglev and full-contact metro. People weren't staring at me as much as I'd expected even though I was the only westerner I saw on the metro.

In order to fully immerse me in Chinese culture, Michelle & I went to get pedicures. And stopped at the store to get some chips. They have the best flavors here, including Kiwi, Blueberry & a variety of meat flavors. These are my favorites:

BBQ Sausage Flavor

Braise Pork Ribs Flavor (they were not good - Michelle's steak salad flavor was better)

Afterwards we headed back to John's house and miraculously Chris made it there on his own. He was dripping sweat because he walked up 4 flights of stairs to a Law office and got someone to walk him over to John's place. That night we went to some cantonese restaurant that is apparently featured in some video game. It was pretty cool because we had our own private room. Unfortunately all the food was ordered by the time we got there and I'm not nearly as adventurous as Chris. He loved the soft pork bones (cartilage) but i refused to eat them. Here is a pic of the meal:

Yeah, we definitely got McD's delivery when we got home later that night There was a Chinese guy there who was giving us the low down on what Chinsese women were the prettiest based on faces, skin tone & smoothness, & body proportions. He also told us this joke about how the Chinese view heaven & hell:

Heaven = Chinese food, American Salary, British House, Japanese Wife
Hell = Chinese Salary, British Food, Japanese House, American Wife

So I guess I wouldn't be obedient enough for him!

After dinner, Chris & I went out with John and two British guys (one was his former roommate in Hong Kong) who were travelling around China for 2 months. First stop was People 7, which made you work to get into the enterance by solving a puzzle. Chris decided to try a new drink that he thought sounded good. It had Gin, Simple Syrup, Lemon Juice, Rum, Milk & 7-up, which clearly implies tastey goodness! This is what he got:
Good one, chris!
Next we headed to Laris for martinis. There were mostly westerners at Laris and John knew a lot of people there, so it must be a hot spot for expats. I even saw one of the guys on my flight there. This was the place for quality people watching.

For those of you who are interested in following exactly what we are doing, you can find my travel plans and meeting schedule (as of now) below.

8/26/2009 Shanghai UA 835 ORD 10:34 AM PVG 1:55 PM With Michelle Clinton or John Cox

8/28/2009 Qingdao HO 1195 PVG 8:20 AM TAO 9:40 AM Shangri-La Hotel Qingdao

8/31/2009 Shanghai MU 5512 TAO 3:40 PM SHA 4:55 PM The Portman Ritz-Carlton

9/5/2009 Beijing MU 5117 SHA 4:00 PM PEK 6:20 PM Hotel G

9/10/2009 Shunde CA 1315 PEK 11:00 AM CAN 2:05 PM Marriott Courtyard Shunde

9/11/2009 Hong Kong Ferry Shun De Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel & Towers

9/14/2009 San Francisco SQ 2 HKG 10:45 PM SFO 8:35 PM

9/14/2009 Chicago UA 158 SFO 11:20 PM ORD 5:16 AM