I updated the gallery with shots from Tuesday’s training. Also there are a few pictures of the Beijing Holiday Inn Central Plaza. As you can see, the room is like any other Holiday Inn.

Beijing was unusally clear again Wednesday morning so I got a few more shots of the skyline from my hotel. I also couldn’t resist a shot of the neon above the Shanghai airport. You can also see my Shanghai hotel room.

I can really tell I’m farther south now. The sun rose sooner this morning than the previous days. It was a compelling sight out my Shanghai hotel this morning so I snapped a few of it. You’ll have to wait 12 more hours to see those!

Time to get dressed and enjoy my complimentary breakfast in this beautiful hotel, the Jian Guo Hotel Shanghai.

Ah, Shanghai. Where else can you enjoy the view of glittering skyscrapers together with the aroma of raw sewage? I suppose that sums up where China is in its rapid growth: between two worlds.

We walked to a popular area of downtown where we eventually found an interesting Chinese restaurant. Unlike the restaurants in Beijing, this one didn’t cater to Western diners. The menus had no English whatsoever and none of the staff spoke English, either.

Gary and I managed to point to the pictures well enough to order decent-tasting dishes. Gary ordered some kind of fish in a cold sauce and a plate of beef in a spicy sauce. I ordered a stir-fry with walnuts and ham cubes. It was very good.

On the walk back to the hotel I had the urge to visit the corner Best Buy, just because every corner in America seems to have one. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending) it was closed.

Tomorrow’s another training day, so any looking around will have to wait. I hope to soon get a chance to see this city in the daylight.

My Beijing training day is over now. Things went very well. I’m beat but I can post a few words about it.

There were 36 attendees for today’s training. None of them spoke English, which made my training last at least twice as long once the translation (and spotty hotel internet) was factored in. It was awkward to have to stop every few sentences and wait for the Chinese version, but we got by. I think Jasper, our Beijing colleague, got more information across in his 15-minute talk than Gary and I did all day.

I was impressed that such a large group hung in there the whole day. If my blabbering alone wasn’t enough to bore them, hearing it in two languages must have been twice as boring. They asked good questions during the talk and left with smiles on their faces. I hope they go out and sell now!

After the training we were invited to dinner with John, the company’s country manager for China. We stopped by the company office to pick up Logan before heading to the restaurant.

No sooner had we gotten in the car than BOOM! We weren’t going anywhere because the roads were gridlocked with the notoriously bad Beijing traffic. I think it took an hour for us to drive 6 kilometers. I must have stared at the back of the same VW Sahara for 45 minutes while neither one of us was moving. We could’ve walked in baby steps and arrived sooner! I’ll never again laugh at the bicyclists here taking their lives into their own hands: a bicycle is still the easiest way to get around Beijing.

We finally made it to the restaurant, a famous, traditional Chinese restaurant next to the B&Binn (unfortunately I never caught the name of this restaurant). On the menu were, um, interesting dishes such as (and I am not making this up) grilled fish head, goose gizzard, rabbit intestine, and God knows what else. I played it safe with an order of stir-fried shrimp but still got roped into trying others’ rabbit stew (tasty!) and cow’s foot (imagine eating fatty cartilege- yuck!). After my requisite tastes of the exotic meals, I tried my damnedest to fill up on the broccoli and mushrooms before anyone offered seconds!

Talk with John, Logan, and Gary ranged from kids (of course), golf courses of the world, Las Vegas, Beijing traffic (of course), China vacation spots off the beaten path, Australia’s overrated Gold Coast, and many others. I truly enjoyed hearing my Chinese colleagues’ opinions on matters. We all got along very well.

Tomorrow we fine-tune our training presentation before hopping a 3:30 plane to Shanghai. I’ll be there until Saturday evening, when I fly back to Beijing to catch my flight home the following day. I’m told Shanghai is much like Hong Kong now: glittery, modern, and quite expensive. I’m looking forward to my first look at this world-famous city.

It was a clear morning in Beijing yesterday so I took some pictures out the window oof my hotel. Also I took some pictures at our Beijing office. Mostly I just prepared for today’s training.

You can see my new pics in the gallery, of course.

Time for breakfast and then a long day of training.

Since my post got eaten yesterday, here is take two.

The Great Wall tour was the highlight of the day. I began at 7:45 by meeting a driver in the hotel lobby, who took me to another hotel to pick up other tourists. I was happy to see these tourists were the British couple I met the day before. We rode together to the Grand Hyatt to pick up a Californian expat now living in Sydney (though I never caught his name). Once the four of us were together we walked to the other side of the hotel to meet the tour bus, filled with three others: Neil, an Aussie by birth who has lived in Paris most of his life, a pleasant woman of retiree age from Helsinki, and a French woman working for the UN as a nuclear inspector. John, our tour guide from the day before, led us on this tour as well, this time on a bigger, more comfortable bus.
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I spent an hour and a half last night detailing the day’s activities, only to have my browser eat it when I was done. I should’ve known better since this has happened before.

While I work to recompose it, check out the gallery for pictures of me at the Great Wall.

I had a great day at the Great Wall of China. I’ll post about that in a moment.

On the way back, I took our tour guide’s advice and gave up a ride back to my hotel in favor of walking around the local markets. I had an enjoyable time browsing the stores, bookstores, and malls. I ate some decent pizza at the food court before hopping on to the subway for a trip back to my hotel.

The subway was easy to navigate. Soon I was at my stop, one block from my hotel. At that point, however, I was stymied. I had no idea which direction to go and could not find anyone near the subway stop who spoke English.

What’s more, there were fireworks going off everywhere, celebrating the end of Spring Festival. And I’m not talking little bottle rockets or sparklers here, either. I’m talking huge, commercial-grade rockets and firecrackers. It was like frickin’ downtown Baghdad! Dark sidewalks would explode in a flash of light as another meter-long package of firecrackers went off. Bottle rockets screamed above my head. A gale-force wind is also blowing: perfect for sweeping out the Year of the Dog and ushering in the Year of the Pig, but not conducive to navigating an urban fireworks battlefield.

I walked as many blocks as I dared before deciding I was hopelessly lost and in danger of losing a limb or eye. The next stop was to flag down a taxi to shepherd me back to my hotel. I got a card from the hotel with a rudimentary map of the city and some Chinese phrases. I’ve been keeping it with me, thinking the Chinese characters on it was enough to get me back.

I was wrong. The first cabbie shook his head and kicked me out of his taxi. The second was more accomodating but equally clueless about which direction to go. After stopping his cab three times to ask directions of passersby I finally pointed in a direction and said “go.” I pointed right a the next street and lo and behold the Holiday Inn Central Plaza appeared on the horizon. I’ve never been so happy to see a Holiday Inn!

I’m back in my hotel and the war is still going on outside. The wind is gusting so strongly it is making my window whistle louder than the din outside, if you can believe it. I can see now I took the wrong card: there is a taxi card the recptionist gave me for my trip to dinner last night which has detailed hotel directions in Chinese. I’ll know now to take that one with me on my journeys.

I’ll also remember not to choose to wander around on the last night of the Chinese Spring Festival!