Back to Beijing

For a long time now I have trying to find a way back to Beijing. It is seriously one of my favorite places ever. So it was rather fortuitous that I took over a project for my branch office in China to work on a partnership with HP (yes, that HP). Well turns out their head office is in Beijing and I needed to go there for a meeting.

First some observations: the city has changed. I commented to friends that I felt like an old hand since I could say, "Wow I remember when this was a beat up crappy area, now look, they turned this around." The city has changed so much. The people are wearing modern clothes (as Jay says the girls even look decent...but only decent), there are crazy cool new buildings all over (Beijing has to be, no joke, one of the coolest architectural cities in the world now), less dirty and polluted, people don't spit as much, and there are tons of foreigners in town. But some things haven't changed: the thick accents (which I can no longer understand), crowds, and traffic are all still there in force.

On my first day I flew up from Xiamen with a Chinese coworker and since there were no meetings planned I set up a dinner with my old tutor. It was cool to see her again. The last I heard from her was helping her to write grad school essays (she got into UC Davis). We had a Sichuan hot pot out in my old stomping grounds of Wudaokou at a place next to my favorite student club. Wudaokao has definitely changed, it is much nicer and there are way more students. I also randomly ran into an old ND prof who I used to work with a lot...in a city of 16 million. Small world.

The next day I had a pre meeting HP prep session then had a good meeting with HP. I can't give away details but the result was what I expected. Now I just have to make a huge business plan. The rest of the day I went to Starbucks in a classy district to do some serious emailing/Skyping. I met some old coworkers of my Chinese colleague and we all had dinner. After that we went to the insane high class shopping area in the city. So damn nice--not the Beijing I remember.

The next day was more meetings. And since we got done early we went to a huge lunch at an old-style Beijing restaurant.

After that I took my colleague to my favorite hutong area in the city. But I had to rush through a tea shop tour at my favorite tea shop since I was getting urgent calls from my boss and my sales manager about my Thailand customer. That solved...sort of. went to a dinner with my boss's friend. That dude loves hot pot and loves to drink hard. We should be brothers. But the problem is he drinks Beijing baijiu. I cannot take that. It is basically 60%+ gasoline that made me nearly die last time in Beijing. Boss's friend wanted to drink a lot but I had no such plans.

Afterward I went out with my old buddies Jay and Santana to my new favorite bar (new since it changed locations but kept the old feel) Nanjie. After that we went to a new and pretty damn empty club called Bling. When I was at dinner I had a funny experience contacting Santana. I put his number into my phone wrong so instead I sent a text to some random Chinese person asking them to head out for beers. Well I get a call from that number (entered as Santana) I picked up and it was some Chinese person wondering who I was and what I was sending them a message for. I apologized. They sent a new message, in Chinese, saying "Sorry I don't understand English." Ok, matter finished. Then as I was having a beer that night I got an English text from that same person asking, "Do you want massage tonight."

The next day I got up early with my colleague and one of her friends and we all went out to the Olympic Stadium. Cool venues but there really isn't much going on. Just take some pictures and move on. We had a Korean lunch and in the evening I went and got some jasmine tea before having dinner with an old coworker at a place called, well, "The Place" It has an outdoor screen hung overhead that is larger than a football field.

Then at almost 10PM I went to meet Jay and Santana for a Ghostface Killah show. Yes, you read that right. I saw the Ghostface Killah in Beijing...how many people can say that. I really wasn't, nor am I now, familiar with his body of work. But it was still a cool show (despite waiting 2 hours for it to start and having a unintentionally funny opening act). When the show was over we went to the new Club LA. The place was awesome. It was packed, amazing dj's and music, sick lights, and no cover. And wouldn't you know it we ran into Ghostface Killah there. The picture from the show below is lifted from Jay's facebook .

At about 3:30AM I said my goodbyes and went to the hotel to pack and sleep at 4:30AM. At 5:30AM I was up to the airport and then back to Xiamen before catching a ferry and another flight back to Taiwan.

Quite a week.