After our train pulled in, we checked into the hotel which was even nicer than the Shanghai one.  After quick showers, we headed out to a 24 hr dim sum place for an incredible feast of glory.  I ate so many buns and dumplings and noodles, I was starting to feel like a chau siu bao!

After feasting, we went out for a full day walking tour in the freezing cold.  We went to Tiananmen which is the largest urban square in the world.  While there, many locals asked for pictures with me which was pretty fun.  Then we went into the forbidden city which was absolutely amazing.  It is huge with hundreds of buildings, all of which were incredibly detailed and well preserved.  They were all constructed without any metal or nails, so they are held up with interlocking wood.  We even climbed a mountain right behind it to a big temple with a great view of beijing.

That night I went out with Nan to an ultra swanky lounge at the park hyatt to meet up with a prospective student he had met earlier in the break.  She was super nice and brought her old boss, who was one of the founders of Rotten Tomatoes so he was interesting to talk to also.  After that, we met up with a bunch of friends at Karaoke and ended up singing until about 3:30.  It was pretty epic, but we had to get up at 7:30 to visit companies, so maybe not that smart.

The next morning, we went to the office of Google China, which was pretty cool.  The office was pretty nice, but the tour was a bit boring (and here we keep our printers which all have names so you can print to any of them from any computer!).  The most interesting thing actually was that the very next morning, Google made their big announcement about maybe pulling out of China.

That night we went to another lounge and I was all set to call it an early night at around 10, when someone said “Let’s make this a crazy night, I want to go to the wildest club in Beijing”.  Nan agreed to set it up, but wouldn’t tell anywhere where he was sending us, so I obviously couldn’t miss out on an experience like this.  We went to a club called Mix, which is part of their clubbing district which has a lot of huge Mega Clubs within a few blocks.  It was really fun, the Chinese people definitely enjoyed watching us (we were the only westerners).  Chinese clubs are very different, they are more focused on table service than dance floors, and when they do dance it is usually fairly tame by our standards.  Needless to say, they didn’t know how to react to a group of 10 Americas in a circle jumping up and down and singing along at the top of our lungs.  One thing of interest was that all of the music was American, no Chinese pop at all.

The night was capped off by a late night Taiwanese meal with the best Kiwi juice in all of Beijing (Nan has tried them all apparently).  Another 4am bedtime before another 7am wakeup call.

Saturday morning, we checked out of the hotel and took the bus to zhujiajiao, a village built around a network of canals (like a Chinese Venice).  The village was pretty touristy, but still fun.  We took gondolas through the canals and by the town’s temple.

After a day of walking around, we headed back into Shanghai for dinner and to catch an overnight train to Beijing.  I was pretty worried about the train, would it be super smoky? Would I fit on the beds? Would it be super rough?

The train was amazing.  It was super clean and brand new looking, and it went 260 km/h even though I could barely feel it moving.  The beds were super comfortable and I even fit on it.  We all hung out and drank some beers and then I got a pretty decent nights sleep.  I highly recommend splurging for the first class if you ever need to take a Chinese night train.

On our final day in Shanghai we had a free morning (finally!), so I decided to go to a market with a few friends to do some shopping.  The market was really fun, it had 5 levels of stalls filled with vendors pushing their fake sweaters, watches, purses, iphones etc on us.  We decided to buy fake Rolexes (why that would ever seem like a good idea is beyond me), so we did a lot of recon and some heavy duty negotiating before picking our vendor.  When we asked her to show us the good watches, she used a remote to open a fake wall which led into a room filled with counterfeit purses, and then opened yet another fake wall to get us to the watches.  We ended up all getting watches for about $15, and by the end of the night one of them had stopped working.  Oh well, it was all for the experience.  I also bought a sweater which was a huge lifesaver in the freezing cold of beijing.

The fake rooms where we bought our watches

We did not identify watch truth

That afternoon, we went to an entrepreneurs panel with a bunch of Haas alums who were entrepreneurs and VCs in China.  They all had interesting stories and talked a lot about the challenges and opportunities of doing business in China.  One of them had a great quote which was “There are three things you need to know about China 1) Anything is possible in China, 2) Nothing is easy in China, 3) When someone says there is no problem, you have a big problem”.  (This last one was echoed the next day when our bus tire blew out on the highway and instead of changing it, the driver said “It’s no problem, not an important tire” and continued to drive on it all day.)  All of the panelists talked about the growth and how many opportunities there were, but none of them said anything about the work being rewarding or wanting to stay in China.  It sounded very stressful, having to deal with the government and all of the cultural differences as an outsider.  They also said Mandarin is a must, one told me if you are willing to dedicate a year in China to studying Mandarin full time then within 3-5 years your career will be way ahead of where it would be in the states.

After the panel we went on a 4 hour karaoke binge, which was my first ever karaoke experience.  They take their karaoke very seriously there.  The place could only be described as a karaoke palace with hundreds of individual rooms (that fit up to 25 ppl).  It was massive, and on more than one occasion we had to wait for a room to be available!  They bring cases of beer to your room, and there is even a free buffet after 11pm.

Chinese Duet

Editors note: this entry was mainly written about a week ago in shanghai.

Yesterday morning after a massive breakfast, we headed out to the suburbs for a presentation at China GM. They have a 50/50 JV with Shanghai Auto Company due to government requirements, so it was really interesting hearing about the cultural issues of blending old school detroit with up and coming Shanghai. GM has been really successful in China, with Buicks being a very popular car. They are selling almost as many cars in China as in the US and China is projected to become GM’s biggest market in a few years. After the talk, we went and toured a factory which was pretty cool, but not that different from a factory anywhere.

We had the afternoon off, and a lot of people were talking about going to get massages. Haiping, one of the organizers mentioned that she was going to get massage therapy from her doctor at a local hospital. My back had been pretty sore from all the airplane, train and bus rides and when I mentioned that she offered to bring me with her. I agreed, so her Nan and I went to a local hospital. The doctor was around our age and very fashionably dressed and spoke good English. After a quick chat he started in on me, giving me a very painful but great massage and cracking my back. While this was going on, Nan went and registered me for the Shanghai public health system, so now I have medical records and a Medical ID card in China. After the massage, I got cupping, which I have had before. They put a torch in a glass cup to burn up all the oxygen and make a vaccum, then stick in on my back where it forms super tight suction to draw out the toxins. They put about 10 on each of us, so now our backs are covered in big circular bruises, but my back feels way better now. The whole procedure cost about $15.

After the massage we went out to dinner at a northeastern Chinese restaurant. The food was great and very typical of that region (lamb kebabs, dumplings, and lots of pickled vegetables. We had more food than we could eat for about $4 per person. Chinese food is incredibly cheap, you can get a big bowl of noodles for about a buck, or a nice sit down meal for under 5.

My Chinese doctor

The aftermath of the cupping

Hey guys, sorry the entries have dropped off. Our hotel in Beijing didn’t have free wifi and I never saw an Internet cafe.

I am heading back to USA today and have been jotting down some notes so expect a lot of entries upon my return.

China has been great, it really has exceeded my expectations in almost everyway. I am excited to be going home, but will definitely miss china and hope to return soon.

Thanks for all the good comments guys, good to know people are reading (maybe even enjoying) the blog.

Yesterday, Haiping (a Shanghai local) arranged a trip to Hangzhou for 7 of us who got in early.  We left early in the morning and took a 2 hour train ride out there.  The train was very modern and smooth (although the bathroom was a hole in the ground).  Upon arrival, we took a 45 minute bus out to a “top 10 temple in China”.  Hangzhou is on a giant lake which is super beautiful and surrounded by wooded mountains, a very stark contrast to Shanghai.  When we got out to the temple we were exploring the grounds, which had tons of Buddha’s carved into the stone cliffs and rivers running through the woods.  I convinced the group to climb this little mountain next to the temple, which led us to amazing views and also heated us up a bit (it was well below freezing).  After our hike we went into the temple, which was made up of a few temples.  Each temple had giant golden buddhas which were in incredible condition, considering the temple is 1700 years old.  Haiping taught us how to light incense and pray for our wishes which was pretty neat.

Yesterday was definitely the coldest I have ever been though.  Even the New Yorkers in our group were struggling.  I had on a sweatshirt, gloves, ear muffs, a scarf and my Dad’s ski jacket and I was still shivering so hard my neck was sore.  We went to lunch, but the restaurant wasnt heated, so we took turns holding on to the tea pot.  After lunch we walked around the lake for a bit and then huddled in a pizza hut to stay warm and wait for our train.  Pizza Huts here are fancy and are popular date destinations.  Weird.

I am going to die in Beijing which is 20 degrees lower.

We took a train back, and then I checked into our hotel.  We are staying at the Westin, which is pretty incredible.  It is super nice, has a gym and hot tub and an insane breakfast buffet.  It has a full american buffett, full chinese one including made to order dim sum and also tons of tropical fruit.  Best way to start the day.  Jon my roommate is Starwood double secret ultra platinum, so we are in a suite (a very small one) and I get access to the executive lounge which means free food and drinks all day.  Score!

Today the trek officially began, and it was great to see the other 50 people.  We went to climb the World Financial Center which is the worlds 3rd highest building (was 2nd 2 days ago, damn you Dubai!).  The views were incredible, and defintely made me a bit dizzy.  Shanghai’s skyline is unlike any other I have seen, there are tons of skyscrapers of all different shapes with no apparent theme and at night they are all lit up crazy colors. 

After a huge lunch, we went and visited J&J’s China Medical headquarters.  The guy presenting was interesting and it is amazing how much growth there is in China.  Another thing which was surprising is that even with that growth there is very little opportunity for American MBAs.  There are now so many American educated Chinese that if you don’t speak Mandarin, most companies have no use for you. 

After the visit, we went out to a great dinner which spanned featured 10+ courses over 2+ hours and many many beers.  Then we went to a bar for a bit and I came back to sit in the hot tub, write the blog and get some rest.  I am still a bit jet lagged, so hopefully I will sleep well tonight.

Welcome to my new blog.

Apparently my other blog was “harmonized” (Chinese slang for censored).  China blocks tons of websites with the Great Firewall (more slang), including: blogger, facebook, twitter, google groups etc.  I have had this domain for a few months now, as a failed attempt to become a “tech blogger” and get some industry credibility.  I quickly found that trying to blog formally is a lot of work and not too exciting.  I am going to use this site for my trip and by the end of the trip I will decide to either export my entries back to blogger and try to tech blogging again (doubtful), or import my blogger entries and keep this as a general use blog I will occasionally update on trips or when I see something of interest.

Now, on to the update.

After my last post, I went to the food court and ordered a bowl of dolsot bi bim bab with lot’s of spicy bulgogi on it.  It was incredible, I have pictures, but I am not sure how to upload them to Nan’s Mac.  It was some of the best Korean food I have eaten, and definitely the best airport food, and it was only like $8.  Korea is high on my list of desired destinations now.

My flight into Shanghai went smoothly, it was about 2 hours and I slept for a lot of it.  The airport was huge and empty, there was no one there except our flight which made immigration and baggage check super easy.  At the immigration stand, there was a little box with buttons I could push to indicate how satisfied I was with the interaction, I thought that was really cool, and the lady was one of the most friendly immigration officers I have ever dealt with.

I saw Nan as soon as I walked out, and even though he didn’t have a sign with my name on it like he promised, it was great to see him.  We tried to take the high speed maglev train, but we were 10 minutes past the last train of the night.  We took a cab instead which was like 30 miles, and about $10 each, so not a bad deal at all.  We are staying in Nan’s friend’s parents apartment (they are on vacation), which is a big, nice 3 bd 2 bath apt.  It was absolutely freezing last night, since the heaters haven’t been on inb weeks, but it is much more tolerable now.

I got up at 6 since I was kind of jet lagged, but really not too bad considering it was a 16 hour difference.  I waited for Nan to get up and then we went to eat breakfast.  We waked to a little stand on the street and ate various bao’s and friend things, as well as hot soy milk.  It was pretty tasty.  We then walked through a market which had a ton of different live seafood (inc eels and turtles) as well as like 6 different kinds of eggs.

After eating, we went into town and walked around the historic french concession.  There was a big park which was filled with old people who were flying kites, dancing, doing tai chi and playing cards.  They all seemed really happy and it was very communal, it seems like a great place to be old.  We visited Sun Ya Sen’s old house and museum, which had some neat artifacts.  After walking around for a bit, we met one of Nan’s friends at Ding Tai Fung, which is probably the most famous dumpling restaurant in the world.  They have locations all over Asia and were rated one of the top ten restaurants in the world by New York Times.  We stuffed ourselves on 4 kinds of dumplings, soups, veggies and fried rice.  It was all quite delicious, and Nan’s friend was very nice.

After that we walked around Huai Hai lane, a very famous upscale shopping district.  We went to the old house of our family friend Tina’s mom, which has since been renovated into a ULTRA posh luxury store.  The story of the house is here http://www.creativehunt.com/shanghai/articles/shanghai-shanghai.  It is huge, and has a massive yard behind a big gate right off the street, it is one of the nicest places we saw all day.  We also went to a big buddhist temple, which had an impressive giant buddha.

Shanghai is really modern – there are flat screens everywhere, really clean, not very crowded and easy to navigate – English on every sign.  It is way less intimidating then I expected China to be, and very nice.  Everyone we talk to who is from here says there really isn’t much to do in Shanghai except for eat and shop, but so far it has been very fun.  We will see how the week progresses!

Hopefully I will be able to keep writing regularly, right now we have wifi at the apartment, and Nan has lent me his computer, we will see how the hotel situation is.  Tomorrow I am going to Hangzhou, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful cities in China, so I will be sure to take lots of pictures (I have taken 40 so far, mostly of food).

My cell phone here is (86) 13482506740 in case anyone needs to reach me.