Happy fun time Blog

One of these day’s I’ll put up the last days of the trip :-/

The Great Wall.

After a lengthy drive we arrived. The first view of the wall left me
awestruck.

Before going into the experience of climbing the wall I’m going to go
off on a pollution rant. This trip in China has given me a much
greater respect for the environment and how it needs to be protected.
Now, anyone that knows me well knows that I do care greatly about the
environment. When I was younger I was more active in preservation and
at one time I was the president of my middle school environmental
club.

On our first day arriving in Beijing, once we exited the train station
we were greeted by a foggy haze covering the city. At first I thought
it was fog but then came to realize it was pollution. It’s amazing,
I’ve never seen anything like this, the way it hangs in the air and
blocks out the sun. As you’ll see in the next few photos it looks as
if it’s very foggy out, its not fog, its smog. Now that I’ve been
here for a few days I can feel it in my chest. My lungs feel heavier
and my throat is banging to get soar.

Its beyond me how these people can live here, breathing this air their
whole life. I have no idea how the air is going to clean up in time
for the Olympics, even with the Government mandating the shutdown of
coal burning plants in the areas surrounding Beijing. Something needs
to be done, if not for the environmental aspect but for the health of
those living here. As stated earlier, I’ve only been here a few days
and yet I feel as if I’ve spent a week in an unventilated smokers
lounge at a rehab center.

Ok, back onto the wall. This is only one part of the “Great Wall”
most people are not aware that there are about 600 Great Walls in
China, this particular one was designed in a circular manor in order
to protect the middle which was likely used as a military base.

The sheer size and the expanse of it up the mountain is amazing,
especially when you consider that it was build by hand, without any
modern machinery.

We tried our best to climb it in groups but eventually thinned out as
some moved along quicker while others slowed down, either to look at
the view or to take a break as it’s quite a strenuous climb.

They had bathrooms along the way up but I doubt that they’ve been
cleaned since the original construction of the wall; well at least
they smelled that way.

Along the way up we saw what looked like it could be a shelter of some
kind, I wonder what it is used for.

The views were amazing but I couldn’t help but think how much better
they would have been if there was no pollution.

Once at the top, we took a brief but much needed break…

And then continued on our way down.

This is one of my favorite pictures take so far this trip.

We made it all the way up and back down the longer side of the wall.
Although quite exhausted, I would have liked to have the time to be
able to continue around to the other side to complete the full circle
but we had to be back at the bus.

The climbing of the Great Wall is up there in the top three most
amazing experiences of my life. The other two would be hiking the
Grand Canyon and asking the woman of my life to marry me on top of the
Pali Lookout in Hawaii. I truly will remember this day for the rest
of my life.

On the bus ride back I was still on cloud nine. Even with my body
tired and my calves and knees aching after climbing up and down
thousands of steep stairs I couldn’t sleep on the bus. It was truly
amazing.

More to follow…..

The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at both of these venues but they are both very massive. The square doesn’t have much going on in it other then lots of people milling about and lots of signs that big brother is watching…

Here I am holding up Chairman Mao’s head. I’m a dork.

Oddly (well maybe not so) there was no mention by anyone leading the tour about civil unrest or the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The gov’t seems to act almost as if it never happened or atleast what did occur was vastly exaggerated by the world media outlets..

There are lots and lots of ‘gates’ in the forbidden city, so many that I lost count. Well I didn’t loose count because I never started counting but they do all look the same. I’d like to meet this architect that designed this building because he apparently designed most of the temples and historic buildings in China and must be very rich ;o). They all look very similar.

Tonight I had to return to Silk Street to have my first fitting for my custom suit. Seeing the suit roughed out makes you realize how much work goes into making a custom suit. I think I’m going to like it. After the fitting Rebecca, Jen, Bulga and myself headed over to dinner at a Mexican joint down the street called Mexican Wave. Later on we were joined by John and Eddy. Again, it was nice to have a meal where we got to choose what we eat and didn’t have to eat the same Chinese food again. It was a cool place, filled with almost exclusively with ex-pats and tourists. They had a live band that was pretty decent and added to the atmosphere with the American classic rock tunes, often times jamming out.

They had a special, 1 anejo tequila shot for 10¥. It wasn’t bad but as you can see it didn’t go down that well for Eddy.

The margaritas weren’t bad either. The food however…. Not the best yet still a welcome change from what we’ve been eating. Unfortunately (but thankfully after I had finished eating) I saw one of the cooks in the bathroom who decided it wasn’t necessary for him to wash (or even rinse) his hands. Yum.

More to follow…..

Ok, for today’s lesson in getting along in China…. Bargaining.

First off, you must understand that everything you buy in China is
fake or a copy of some sorts, nothing is genuine, no matter what they
say. Once you have that understanding you’ll feel better about the
whole process.

There are two schools of thought about this practice. The first one
is that these ’sales-people’ are trying to rip you off so you should
get the absolute lowest price possible. Where the second one is that
you should leave the shopping experience with a feeling that you got a
good deal and that the person selling the item to you will still make
money. I follow the first school on this one, I mean after all, I am
here as part of studying my MBA.

Before stepping into a shop, know what you want to pay, ask around,
find an American with a plastic bag with stuff in it and ask them what
they paid for it. Typically the prices are inflated 70-80% on small
ticket items.

When you walk by a shop the sales-people usually say, “herro, herro
sir, come buy custom suit” (we’ll use custom tailored suits here as an
example), “I give you good price.” Now you can do one of two things,
give a wave of the hand indicating you aren’t interested and just keep
walking and don’t make eye contact. Your other option, if you are
interested is to fain some interest but don’t dive right in. Act as
if you don’t really need what they are selling and you are just
checking out the shop. You’ll have a few different sales people come
up to you, pick the least persistent one. Start looking at the
products with them then start to ask questions about quality. They
will then give you a price that is very high.

“Ok sir, I give you special price cause I rikea you. I give you suit
for special price of not 10,000¥ but only for 5,000¥” (about $800
USD).

At this time I usually say no way and start to walk away. They will
typically grab your arm and say, “you give me price.” For the suit I
started out at 750¥.

They will then say, “impossibrle, I loose monies. I give to you for
4,000¥, this very good price for custom tailored suit, very good
quality.”

Then you respond with, “No, I can’t pay more than 800¥, 800 my last
price.” They’ll come back with a much lower number now, I got a
counter offer for 2,000¥. Ok, now we’re getting in the neighborhood
of a good price, but still too high. I then went back with the
previous offer of 800¥ then they’ll say something to the effect of, “I
give you better price if you buy 5 suit but I no can give you one for
less than 1,500¥.

Then you go up a little bit on your offer, I went up to 850¥ but say,
I only need one suit. If they don’t accept it, walk away. They’ll
run after you yelling, “Herro, sir come back, I give better price.
Ok, rast offer 1,250¥.”

Say, no thanks, still too high and walk away. Now you should be able
to get it for about 1,000¥. After agreeing to the price they’ll
either call you a mean person or say, “you very good bargainer, you
must be business man”.

Congratulations, you just got a custom tailored suit for $145.00.
Follow the same for buying luggage, purses, souvenirs, t-shirts, polo
shirts and other clothes. Be careful of sizes and try everything on
before buying as the clothing sizes are often different than US sizes.
Other tricks that work are:

Pretending that you purchased one for your desired price from the same
shop the day before for your price. This is a quick way of getting
down to the bottom price as the above method can take up to an hour on
a big ticket item.

Say, “the other shop, over there (just point in any direction) said this price”

Tell them, “your sister gave me this price.” This works because they
all claim to be sisters. When they point at the other girl in the
booth, say to them, “no not her, your other sister.”

More to follow…..

The people here in China drive just like they do in the states,
horribly. They have a tendency to not obey any traffic laws what so
ever. Buses just cut everyone off, including pedestrians and
bicycles. Yet somehow these folks don’t get in that many accidents.
I’ve only seen one this far. I’ve been nearly run over by scooters,
bicycles, three wheeled ‘trucks’ that sound like they run on a steam
engine, buses, cars and one tractor. While riding in a cab one feels
as if they are in a video game, Need For Speed comes to mind.

They even ride bikes on the highway, like this guy.

Today was a day that I’ve been waiting for months for. The Terracotta
Warriors! Words and photos can’t do it justice. The fact that these
relics were once all built by hand to honour the first emperor of
china is amazing. Each statue is unique, not one face is repeated.
Truly amazing.

After the warriors we headed to the train station to head out to Beijing.

We had to buy our beers from a guy selling them from a cart on the
platform, we had him pass them through the window of the car, it was
quite comical. Val decided he wanted to try the local liquor, it was
disgusting, we didn’t get past a sip each.

That belt Dominique got me sure has come in handy this trip.

It’s going to be another early night. Beijing in just a few hours.

more to follow….

Our first full day in Xi’an. It’s quite nice to see a blue sky, the
air pollution is much less what we experienced while in Shanghai.

Our first stop of the day was the Xi’an history museum. Right outside
of the museum we got to see some military training exercises.

Inside there was more of the same stuff we’ve been seeing at the other
museums we’ve visited along the trip. Yay, more pottery! I’m
beginning to get museum-ed out! There were a few cool items and
exhibits, here’s a sampling:

A 10th century BC bronze wine vessel… wow, they must have liked
their wine to put this much effort into a carafe.

Hey, look it’s a 6,000 year old Olive statue

And a lead up to what we’ll be seeing tomorrow, the Terracotta Wariors

Next up we met with some Chinese MBA students. While it was fun to
speak with students from other cultures, the language barrier was
tough and at times quite frustrating!

This evening, after dinner a few of us went over to one of the nearby
streets to some of the bars. The first one we went into was this
small, smoky, poorly lit bar where we had a beer then went on our way.
Next spot we hit was what appeared to be a street racer bar. The
glass tables were supported by rims, there were ricer exhausts hanging
from the ceiling and a carbon-fiber Mitsubishi Evolution hood hanging
on the wall. An interesting but fun place. The waitress spoke no
English but wore a shirt that said something along the lines of “cute,
funny chinee girl” in English. We wanted to have some vodka and
coke’s but this proved to be a difficult task. After about a half
hour we had a small bottle of “Absolute” and what they called orange
juice on the table. The drinks were poured out then we all clanked
our glasses together and said “GOMBAY” which is the Chinese equivalent
of cheers. Then after a sip, everyone made this horrible face and
slammed each of our full glasses back down on the table. Well, I’ve
heard it happens but we were just served a bottle of counterfeit
vodka. It tasted like kerosene. We tried to explain this to the
waitress but she just said, “I sorry, my manager not here, no can give
free.” After this 3 of us decided that we had had our share of Xi’an
nightlife and that we’d skip the Absolute for the rest of the trip and
headed home for the evening.

More to follow…..

Sorry to be a bit behind on putting these up, I’ve been exhausted each night when I get back home and haven’t had time to get it down on “paper.”

Woke up this morning just in time to see the sunrise. It’s amazing how fast the time flew by on the train as compared to an airplane. I enjoyed the train much, much more than I thought I would. It was amazing to see the diversity of the countryside whizzing by.

We could see these tunnels dug into the sides of ledges that were peoples homes.

We also passed by beautiful valleys and farmland. The contrast between two types of china is amazing.

Once we arrived in Xi’an we disembarked the train and met up with our new tour guide, Yale. Xi’an is what I expected China to look like. The architecture here is much more traditional, yes there are tall buildings but no giant sky-scrapers. The center of the city is encompassed by the 8mile Xi’an City Wall (haha, south park) which we bicycled around.

First we had lunch which was actually pretty decent, the local specialty is hand stretched noodles, which is like hand made pasta but with a pork or beef sauce. After lunch we went over to see the Giant Goose Pagoda. What a beautiful place this is. I’m quite surprised that there is as much religious freedom in China as we are seeing, this was our 2nd Buddhist temple that we’ve visited this trip.

Our next stop was the City Wall of Xi’an. Wow, this wall has been preserved beautifully quite amazing. We rode bicycles around it but didn’t make the full loop, we got abouot 3/8th of the way around then turned back as to not be late. It was about 96deg. with bright sun. I wanted a hat to shade my face but the only ones that would fit me were the woman’s hat.

Next up was the Great Mosque of Xi’an and an open market. We didn’t spend much time at the mosque but walked around the market a bunch. This guy was following us around trying to pick our pockets.

Our rooms here are not even close to as nice as they were in Shanghai, it sure will be nice to shower at my own house!

More to follow…..

~Ryan

I’m still basking in the glory of last night’s meal.

Well after our late night Karaoke session everyone had to ‘rush’ to get their bags packed and onto the bus by 10:30am. Our first stop of the day was the Shanghai history museum. Think of it like the “It’s a Small World” ride but minus the ride part and all the people are Chinese. It was a quick, fun hit and surprisingly the group brought our maturity level down to make it more fun.

After the museum we grabbed a few pizzas in the lobby area….normally it would have been horrible pizza but man did it taste good. For lunch we ate at a nice Chinese restaurant, the nicest thus far. The menu below was made for Queen Elizabeth.

After lunch we made our way over to the train station to head over to Xian. We almost missed the train but got there just in time. This was my first long distance international train ride and boy is it a long one, 15 hours long to be exact. I sure wish the plane went by this quickly. The group was moving from cabin to cabin and just hanging out, having fun. The bathroom was nasty, pee all over the floor, thank god I’m a guy. Here’s what the girls had to do to prepare for a trip to the restroom:

Beers were big and cheep, 6RMB (less than $1) each. The bad part was that they were pure wolf urine and it must have been right out of the wolf because it was warm. Most of the beer here is room temperature, I’ve actually gotten used to the warm beer. But, I can’t wait for that first cold Sierra Nevada once I get back stateside.

Everyone turned in pretty early and got a decent night’s sleep. OK, only 10 hours left to go.

More to follow…..

~Ryan

Today we had two corporate visits, the first was the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the second was a chemical importer/exporter called Sinochem Shanghai. Yet that didn’t stand out as the highlight of the day, but I’ll elaborate on that later on.

The SSE is a relatively young stock exchange, it was established in 1990 and has grown impressively. They are regulated by a government body that appears to have some of the same function of the SEC. They state that the exchange is not government run yet the president is appointed by the government.

Sinochem was the next company visit. They were very gracious to have us there and put on a nice (but long) presentation. One of their partnerships that they are very proud of is that with Monsanto (right….). After the visit we were given very nice gifts. The women got very nice silk scarves and the men received books with traditional Chinese paper cutouts.

There are scooters and bicycles everywhere, I think I wrote that before but I’ll say it again. Here’s a husband and wife out for a nice mid-day ride, how romantic.

Ok, now onto dinner. I heard about a fantastic steakhouse in Shanghai and I needed a break from the same thing for 3 meals a day. Initially there were about 12 of us that wanted to go but when it came down for commitment time, me and two others, Bulga and Jen that were big enough to make the trip away from the group.

Roosevelt Prime Steakhouse will hold a special place in my heart for ever. My refuge from sticky, gooey chickenish-porkish-beefish fish meals and rice. Almost immediately after sitting down the owner, George, came over to welcome us, a Chinese American who owns two other restaurants in San Francisco. First up was a dirty Bombay Sapphire martini then a Cesar salad with bacon, ahh real lettuce. Then they brought out our uncooked steaks for our approval. Man did they look good, I could have eaten it raw. Then came the glory that is a USDA Prime New York Strip, cooked perfectly.

After dinner George came back over to our table and invited us to join him and 4 of his interns, who were MBA students for a cigar and some port. We chatted for about an hour and a half. Great time and great networking.

After Steaktopia we met up with the rest of the tribe and ripped it up till the wee hours of the morning singing Karaoke.

More to follow…..

~Ryan

Got up…did stuff in China…ate Chinese food…did other Chinese stuff…smelled bad smells…and drank Cuban rum at the highest bar in the world, Cloud 9.

Too tired to write anymore, I’ll fill you in tomor

Ok, so my blog made it one day in China before being blocked by the gov’t. At least that’s my theory, as I can no longer access www.Never-Follow.net from my hotel room.

The first stop of the day was the Shanghai Museum. On the drive over there we got our first daytime view of the City. There are these ugly, tall apartment buildings all over the city, hundreds, if not thousands of them. They all have dirty dripping a/c units on the outside of each unit and everyone appears to air dry their laundry out their windows.

Just about all of Shanghai is devoid of classical Chinese architecture, and the only areas that look traditionally Chinese are pretty much the same thing you will see in just about any Chinatown in America.

So…on to the museum

They took my two chilled, fresh, unopened water bottles after going through a security checkpoint. I figured that this was to help preserve the artwork inside the museum so I wasn’t too upset with them, that was until I saw that they were selling bottles of water on the 2nd floor, almost directly above the trash can which held my two bottles.

Cherry gave us a brief overview of the museum and we made our way to the top floor and started to check out the different exhibits. The first room was the Chinese Minority Nationalities’ Art Gallery. In this hall, they displayed historic examples of traditional dress from various areas of China as well as some pretty sweet masks.

The next room we went to was the Chinese Coin Gallery this room had lots of realy old currency, and by realy old, I mean over 3,000 years old, old.

After the coin room we moved onto the Chinese Furniture Gallery. Lots of old Ming and Qing dynasty pieces there, the intricate detail work was amazing. I’m not going to go into detail about the other rooms, as I’m sure most folks are already bored but I’ll touch on a few highlights.

The oldest thing I saw were some pottery fragments. Granted they are just pieces of a broken pot, but they pieces of an 8,800 year old pot.

Here are some other interesting pieces I saw there

Glazed Pottery Dog

Big warrior dude crushin a fat little guy

Thousand Buddha Stone

Greg checkin out the dog’s rump

The last exhibit we went to was one specializing in the history of the Olympic Games. I almost got kicked out because I violated the “NO PIKTUR” policy. Whoops.

Next up was lunch. Guess what kind of food we had? Nope, wrong, we had Chinese food again. Ok, so let me re cap what I’ve had for the last 4 meals: Rice, Chicken and a glass of Beer.

After lunch we walked over to a scenic outlook that faced the other side of the river, New Shanghai, aka. Pudong. Samsung advertises all over China, even on boats in the river

Shanghai is a very young city. For example everything you see in the next two photos has been developed in only the last 18 years.

Our next stop for the day was the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. This museum goes over the history of the development of Shanghai. They had a scale model of the whole city, which gives a feel for how big the city is.

The last sightseeing stop of the day was Nanjing Road. Think of it like Times Square or Downtown Crossing in Boston, but with LOTS LOTS more people. We had a Chinese man follow our group for about 2 hours trying to get us to go with him to his “market” where we could buy watches “four for 100.”

We basically just walked around and took it all in. I tried an “iced tall latte” from Starbucks. Yeh, it was a glass of iced milk for the most part, barely any espresso.

After that, dinner for more….yep you guessed it CHINESE FOOD.

The group had planned to go out in the city at 9:30 so I went back to the room for a 1 ½ hour nap. Set my alarm and passed out. Well, 11:30 rolls around and I finally wake up. Needless to say everyone had already left. My roommate said he tried to wake me up a few times and I just grumbled at him and rolled over. Oh well.

Well, it is now 4 am and I think I may try to get some sleep.

More to follow…..

~Ryan

woke up at 5:30am and headed out to the airport with the wonderful future bride. Go through security and meander my way to the gate. I got yelled at by a vendor who I purchased a bottle of water from because I grabbed a styrofoam cup because she said it’s only for the frozen “yoooert.”

I got to the gate and connected with a few fellow UMASS travelers. The flight to San Fran was uneventful and I even slept a little bit.

After a 4 hour layover we finally get on the plane, which was delayed 2 1/2 hours. A group of us switched up our seating assignments so we could fly together and have someone to talk to. To be honest, I’m just glad I wasn’t sandwiched between two fat people. The flight was a LONG 12 hours during which I grabbed a few hours of sleep again. But as anyone who has slept on a plane before knows, sleep on an airplane is not good sleep. We were fed three times throughout the flight, none of which were all that good.

My first “Chinese” meal of the trip was on the airplane and it was a bowl of Chinese instant noodles and a Tsingtao beer.

Once arriving in Shanghai we shuffled our way to customs. The agent did not say a single word to me the entire time I was standing there, she just looked at my passport, then at me, then at the passport and at me again and then wrote some stuff down and handed me back my papers and motioned for me to walk by. They have these little boxes where you can push a button indicating the level satisfaction of the service you received, the choices are very satisfactory with a big smiling face, satisfactory with a grinning face, unsatisfactory with a sad face, then very unsatisfactory with an angry looking face. I chose satisfactory because I wasn’t spoken to or smiled at and I was afraid of imprisonment if I pushed one of the red buttons.

We then met our tour guide, we almost missed her tiny banner that was held up but someone spotted it.

We were escorted outside by our tour guide who had this as her “follow me flag”

The airport is very clean and bright, I was impressed

Once we got onto the bus, the tour guide introduced herself as “Cherry, small and sweet, like the fruit” (her words, not mine)

On to dinner……

8 people to a table, no more or they get confused. They kept bringing out different plates and didn’t speak english so nobody really knew what they were eating.

First thing that came out was some sort of fried “fresh fish” it tasted like salty batter that was deep fried. Best thing I ate was the fried rice. They brought out some fried fish concoction with the head and tail still attached, I skipped that one.

This place was next door, I think I’m going to get a perfect hair cut there tomorrow.

We finally arrived at the “New Garden Hotel” and now it’s time for me to get some sleep on the hardest mattress I’ve ever sat on.

more to follow….

~Ryan

United Airlines 173 05/29/08 BOSTON 7:45A —-> SAN FRANCISCO 11:13A
United Airlines 857 05/29/08 SAN FRANCISCO 1:21P —-> PUDONG 5:25P
United Airlines 850 06/15/08 BEIJING 4:10P —-> CHICAGO 4:21P
United Airlines 542 06/15/08 CHICAGO 7:40P —-> BOSTON 10:55P

2008 UMass MBA China Program
———————
Shanghai-Xian-Beijing
———————
Thu 05/29/08 Flight
Boston-shanghai

Fri 5/30/08 Shanghai
Arrive in Shanghai

Sat 5/31/08 Shanghai
After breakfast, you’ll visit the Urban Planning Museum, Nanjing Road , Shanghai Museum

Sun 6/01/08 Shanghai
Southern Water Village – Zhouzhuang

Mon 6/02/08 Shanghai
Visiting two companies for the whole day

Tue.
6/03/08 Shanghai
Shanghai History Museum and after dinner, you’ll take the train to Xian.
Train :T164 Shanghai-xian 20:08PM-Xian 10:00am+1

Wed. 6/04/08 Xi’an
Visit the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, the City Wall of xian and the Great Mosque of Xian

Thu.
6/05/08 Xian
Visit 2 companies and Economic Development zone in xian

Fri. 6/06/08 Xian
After breakfast , you’ll go to visit the Terra-cotta Warriors and on the way to terra-cotta, you ‘ll visit the Banpo Museum. After dinner, take the train to Beijing.
Train : z20 xian-beijing 2016pm-0717am+1

Sat 6/07/08 Beijing
After arrival , have your breakfast and then to visit the Temple of Heaven (two groups together)
Free time in the afternoon

Sun 6/08/08 Beijing
After breakfast, you’ll embark on your whole day tour , including Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, Wangfujing Street.

Mon. 6/09/08 Beijing
visit two companies

Tue. 6/10/08 Beijing
To visit the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs.

Wed. 6/11/08 Beijing
Visit the two companies for the whole day

Thu. 6/12/08 Beijing
Visit an organic farming company in Changping

Fri 6/13/08 Beijing
AM: Lecture by Prof. Yang Hengda about Reform Outcome in Concept, political and Economical Systems in China
PM: Talk with Renda MBA students

Sat. 6/14/08

Sun. 6/15/08
Flight Beijing-Boston