This post will be all about China... I'll try and do this in chronological order so I capture everything. I left here on Wednesday the 19th of January and arrived in Beijing in the evening of the 20th. It is a 14 hour flight from Chicago and they are 13 hrs ahead of us. The whole country is on the same time... not like here in the states. On our way to visit our first supplier on Friday I got a picture of the nest from the Olympics... which is pretty impressive. I also saw both the nest and the watercube lite up at night but don't have pictures.
After work on Friday we had the weekend to sight see in Beijing and we got right to it. Lisa or Xiaoli our Chinese Metallurgist was kind enough to spend the weekend with us. On Friday night she took us to Tienanmen Square which is where the below picture was taken... although do to some communication gaps, :-) we didn't realize we had been at the square until sometime later in the trip...but we got all got a good laugh about it and have pictures to prove we were there. Alot of our pictures were taken at night since we were technically there on a business trip and had to work during the day. :-)
This picture was taken on a place that is famous for making Beijing Duck. We tried it for lunch the next day and it was excellent! And bonus for China, it is a dish where the meat is removed from the bones before serving!
Cool picture of a person selling a Chinese Desert from his bike... this we did not try. Xiaoli told us it is never a good idea to buy things from peddlers on bikes and if she says that and lives in the country then I'm listening!
In China they are getting ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year which actually is a 45 day celebration. So most things were decorated beautifully. These particular decorations are everywhere!
More pictures of everything decorated...
The gateway to Tienanmen Square
A very small portion of TTienanmen Square
Just thought this was plain funny. I wonder if Obama would appreciate this....
On Saturday morning we got up early to see the great wall. The people in China are very very nice even the cab drives. Xiaoli talked with a cab driver and he agreed to drive us to the great wall (1.5 hrs from where we were staying) wait for us for us while we were at the great wall, about 3.5 hrs and drive us back to the city for 500 RMB. And at an exchange rate of 6 to 1 it costs us about 80 dollars in total! What a deal, and he must have been really nice because Xiaoli talked to him the whole way there and back! I bet you couldn't find that in the US.
So upon arriving at the great wall we discovered that it was a long walk up... lots and lots of stairs! I enjoyed the exercise but I'm not going to speak for all of my colleagues. Lets just say that one of them walked really really stiff for the next three days!
Here is the view from one of the look out towers. I heard afterwards in the summer the look out towers smell of urine... thank-goodness it was cold I didn't smell anything.
Another view from the top.
My method of transportation down... a luge run! Awesome! So in the picture below you can see the run zig zag and if you look towards the top of the pictures you can still see it. It appears as a straight line. This point is about 1/2 way to the bottom! Every person gets their own little seat and you control the speed with a hand held break. It was awesome! Who would have ever thought I would get to do that at the great wall. I attempted to take a video while going down... it didn't work because I was going to fast and I realized that would be a very unsafe decision.
Proof that I was actually was on and walked along the great wall!
So after all of our exercise of course it was lunch time. Here is where we had the famous Beijing Duck! Most meals in China are served like this. In the US we call it family style. In China all of the dishes are placed in a center table that spins. Since there was only three of us this is a very small meal. After I get pictures from my colleagues I will post a picture of a normal lunch for us.... very impressive.
The rest of the day on Saturday was spent shopping. Xiaoli took us to get knock off American Stuff! That is where we found out what a good bargainer she was! I came home with three coach purses. I felt like I was shopping on the black market. We sat in a basement with catalog of Coach, Channel, and LV to name a few picked what we wanted out of a catalog and they brought it to us. Very interesting, but also really fun!
Sunday unfortunately was not a play day. We traveled to a supplier which mean another plane trip to Chengdu about 2 hrs by plane into the interior of China.
The food in this city is spicy... the dish below wasn't spicy but well... I felt like it was saying don't eat me! I am happy to report that I tried this and every other dish that was served on the trip. Some good and some not so good but I'm glad I tried it all.
A picture of ginger break house in the lobby of our hotel in Chengdu... Christmas and our western traditions are now universal.
Xiaoli had never visited Chengdu and wanted to see the downtown so we headed out on Sunday night and went to a famous street in English it translates to Wide and Narrow Street. Before we got to the street we saw more decorations for the Chinese New Year. This is the year of the rabbit.
A beautiful traditional picture on the doors of a restaurant on the famous street.
On the way to the supplier Monday morning we found out just how bad the air quality is in China. The significance of the picture below is not the building which is cool is it is the smog... that's right it isn't fog! It made our eyes burn. Everyone needs to be thankful that we have clean air in the US!
Here is a picture of Xiaoli! The lantern she is holding says Happy New Year! Can't you read it. :-)
Tuesday night we headed to another supplier in Mianyian, about 2 hr drive north from Chengdu. We walked around the city with Grace who works for our supplier there. It is actually a beautiful city and the air appears to be much cleaner. This city is decorated to the hilts for the Chinese new year... here are some pictures.
This elephant stands about 12 ft tall and is the small part of a huge structure which when completed will all light up. This was on decoration of about 40 in a park in the city center.
On Wednesday night we headed flew to Wuhan where our plant is located. 1.5 hr flight southeast of Mianyian. We were only there for one night to visit the plant. Nothing to significant and I didn't get any pictures since we weren't there long enough. Then Thursday night we flew to Shanghai to make a emergency visit to another supplier... this part of the trip was not planned. We were suppose to stay in Wuhan until Saturday. But after our visit on Friday we got to out briefly in Shanghai the largest city in China with 20 million people! We wrapped up the rest of our shopping and then on Saturday we flew from Shanghai to Beijing and then back to home. Here are some pictures of Shanghai at night.
Lourdes and Xiaoli!
I did get one more picture of food. The white stuff is Chinese Kiwi. It tastes very similar to US Kiwi but is much bigger and obviously looks much different.
It was an excellent trip and I had great travel companions and and Xiaoli was an excellent tour guide. It will be our turn in May when she comes here for 6-8 weeks of training! However despite all of the fun I am happy to be home with my family!
