Back to the U.S.A!

On the plane to Newark now. Screaming babies. Yeah! Just over 3,000 more miles! Its -65 degrees outside the plane. Hurray north pole! We don’t have the cool flight path thing anymore though, I’m assuming due to heightened security. Security at the Hong Kong airport was a little more intense, we had to go through another screening just before boarding where they went through the carry on, gave us a pat down and checked our shoes. Made me feel a little better considering recent events I suppose.

Its 10 am Buffalo but my body thinks its 9 pm. We were delayed about two hours because of electronic issues with the plane. Glad to have that taken care of before we took off though. We did have a three hour layover in Newark, but now that’s probably going to be more like one. We have to claim our luggage, then go through customs and recheck before boarding to Buffalo. Could be close.

I’ll take this opportunity to wrap up random thoughts I may not have touched on

In Hong Kong the pedestrian/driver relationship is unlike mainland China cities in that people actually obey traffic signals, and the signals are really useful! There are also very few bicycles, just some scooters, which is probably due to the higher income. Still baffled by the Rolls Royces, Maseratis all over

China is not a tipping nation, though ironically we were expected to tip our tour guides handsomely. Our first day in Beijing we were chased down the street for leaving 10 ¥ at the restaurant we ate at. It was about 15% but only worth $1.50 or so. Cab drivers acted about the same way as in restaurants.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned one of the fascinating features of Hong Kong. As I said before the entire city is pretty much high rises. In an effort to prevent fires from getting out of control, any building over 40 floors must have a floor that doesn’t contain anything. Literally nothing. I think they have to have another empty story above 60 floors as well. Some of the buildings hide it in the architecture but you can see it pretty obviously in most, see this apartment complex. (which could probably hold half the population of Buffalo). The building in the background is being built now, and will be the tallest in (I believe China). I think the one in Dubai will be taller still so no claim to tallest in Asia or world.

I think my references to the bottle, bottle opener buildings in Shanghai earlier may have been lost along the way in my head. Here’s a good showing of why they got those nicknames.

At some of the nicer restaurants, they covered our coats that were on our chairs. I don’t think they do that anywhere in the states. I think it is to keep food from falling on them since they leaned in to put plates on the turn tables.

I believe this is known to be the largest floating restaurant in the world. (in Hong Kong)

This guy is made completely from ONE single piece of Jade. From what I remember it cost around $65,000 (U.S.)

There was a reason I took a picture of this door! 9’s are lucky in China. 9 dots across this door in the emperors garden. I guess there were 9 arches, etc. all over

I’ve been taking pictures of awesome Chinese-English translations. Here are a few of the goodies. Apparently Beijing had lots more but they fixed a lot of them before the Olympics. Very disappointing.

Well, that’s all for me. Back in the states safe and sound, and no worse for the wear. So glad I made this voyage and I certainly learned and saw a lot. I don’t know that I will be going back to PRC anytime soon but would certainly stop in to Hong Kong if I were jetting around Asia for some reason. I hope the blog has been somewhat informational but mostly entertaining for you! See you soon. School tomorrow. Hurray for 20 minutes of sleep in 26 hours!

-R-

ps plllease don’t ask me to get Chinese food for at least the next decade. Ok 2 weeks.

Last day in China!

Saturday was a very relaxing day. With nothing planned until dinner at 6:30 we slept in for a bit, I missed breakfast which ended at 10:30. Hehe. I planned on getting Starbucks but didn’t end up going by one, surprisingly. We first walked to a really nice park right next to the hotel. It had lots of sculptures, a small maze, rose garden and ponds. It also had this awesome tank with water in it and a poem at the bottom. There were pieces of paper and you wrote your thoughts on it in pencil and placed it on top of the water. All the paper that wasn’t written on falls to the bottom, leaving your message at the top. It was so cool! There were even residents doing tai chi. I think that would be a beneficial routine to get in to. We tried to be cultural and visit the historical museum part of the park but the exhibit was apparently under construction.

We then took the subway (very clean and similar to Beijing’s, HK$5,000 fine for eating or drinking on the trains) up to the Lady’s Market. I don’t know why it is called that. We made some very successful bargains.

After lunch we took the train down to the piers to see the view of downtown over the harbor. We walked along the promenade called the star avenue or something like that. They had all the famous Chinese actors handprints in the cement like in Hollywood. I particularly liked the giant replica of Jackie Chan. They love themselves some Jackie Chan.

Our farewell dinner was held at the Peking Garden, and we got to try the famous peking duck. I didn’t really think it was all that great. Overall the meal was ok. It had some bright spots (breaded fish and soup), and low points (vegetable roll). The vegetable roll looked harmless, but had some sort of sauce that I’d rather not describe its taste. It was the first thing I gagged on this trip, and that’s saying something….it almost came back up. Gross.

Went to a similar area of the harbor as earlier today to view downtown at night. Very pretty.

Ended the night with, you guessed it, marketplace! Pushed my total of ties to *cough*thirteen*cough* They’re not all for me!!

Early morning to the airport. Last night in Chiner! It’s bittersweet, especially because school starts Monday. Ugh. I really like Hong Kong but am ready to go home. Final blog probably in the 3 hour layover I have in Newark tomorrow.

Random note, I’m glad I picked the worst two weeks to leave Buffalo. Sabres on a six game win streak!? Jeez!

-R-

Neato sculptures:

Rose Garden, in January!

At dinner, this guy made noodles with his handles from a pile of dough by spinning and twisting and separating it with his fingers. it was cool.

Downtown during the day

similar area at night

Back to the mainland (sad face)

Friday is our last day of business meetings. Not a whole lot of meetings but a busy travel day. We left early, took a train (first class!) back into China from Hong Kong. I felt sick sitting backward on the train so moved down the car, and almost missed the stop when everyone got off. That would have been an adventure! The forty minute train ride was followed by an hour and a half trip bus trip to Shenzhen. The differences between Hong Kong and mainland China became even more stark after coming back. This was particularly true because Shenzhen is pretty much just a city for cheap labor. You can tell Beijing and Shanghai had been (and are in the process of) being updated. Beijing for the Olympics, and Shanghai is hosting the World Expo in May.

After a long and BUMPY ride on a dingy bus we started our day at a manufacturing plant. It was pretty much what you think of when you think about Chinese manufacturing. Very inefficient processes, few safety measures, and lots of labor. It was pretty unbelievable to see they actually had people doing silk-screening and folding boxes instead of machines. Archaic but financially the best means I suppose. Talking to some of the engineers we found this particular plant has relatively high standards. They comply with somewhat new Chinese labor laws that include 8 hour work days, and their wages are ‘high’ in comparison to their counterparts (750rmb or $100 US per month).We witnessed the entire plant shutting down at exactly noon for lunch.

Daniel let me down for lunch. Traditional Chinese round table. Ugh. That means American food for dinner! Good thing I brought Oreos today.

The afternoon was a trip to Huawei, another case study from last semester. It is certainly cool to see the businesses in real life instead of just reading about them in a case. Unfortunately we only had a tour and did not get to talk to them about their business at all. Pretty useless. Hi-lite from the trip included seeing their sweet pallet retrieval system that was all automated.

We then went to ANOTHER marketplace, where people tried to get us to buy their knockoff stuff. The train ride back one of my friends lost his ticket, but did not get detained or anything. We had to go through several customs and immigrations checks today, since Shenzhen was mainland. Very annoying. The whole one country, two systems thing still blows my mind.

This would have been up Friday except the internet I have been using was being fuzzy yesterday. Grr!

-R-

street restaurant! this was actually tasty...beef and broccoli. yum!

what was to be our dinner! nothin like fresh

wrist pads made for 3M, made in China, right here, for real!

pretty much what you would expect:

this gentleman was manually placing a stamp/cut out on the fabric and then having the machine cut it, and repeating. infinitely.

part of the quality assurance, this guy was checking for defects. by sight. yeah, those are big spinning things. don't get your hand stuck!


you're not going to believe this. this is the paper towel dispenser in the plant's bathroom. the characters are upside down, but it literally translates into 'suggestion box'. One of the guys on our trip can read mandarin and he told us, then we looked it up online to double check. someone has a very sick sense of humor.

Yeah, we're kind of a big deal. and then they wouldn't let me take anymore pictures :(

I LOVE HONG KONG

Wednesday was a very long day, but very enjoyable. Wake up call at 5am and the hotel made breakfast for us early, then we headed to Pu Dong International Airport for our flight to Hong Kong. It was strange that we had to go through customs again, considering Hong Kong is technically back under Chinese jurisdiction.

Hong Kong is pretty much amazing. And by amazing, I mean warm, and westernized. No problem finding Burger King or Starbucks here, not that Shanghai was too much different. It is certainly much more diverse here, as we aren’t the only non-asians walking down the streets. The amount of wealth here is truly amazing. Stand on the street for a few minutes and you’ll be sure to see several each of Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and Porsche mixed in with Toyota and Mazda. Notice anything wrong with the picture of the road? As Hong Kong used to be a British Colony all of the cars are switched and we’re driving on the left side of the street. First time experiencing that and its quite strange. Fun fact: only 1% of Hong Kong residents live in single family homes. Not surprising considering the number of high rises EVERYWHERE.

From the airport we went immediately into sightseeing mode (great idea) with our new tour guide Daniel. We stopped at a touristy market. I am without a spring jacket and figured I would be needing one for the next few days so I bought a new one, and got a pretty good deal. We drove around the city, and saw the golf course (pictured, and the next picture is the view from the other way), the horse racing course, and some of the few houses and some high rises up the hills.

We moved onto this pretty sweet trolley that took us up a mountain. It had several stops for people who actually live on the hill, and at the top was a shopping mall (random) complete with, you guessed it, Starbucks! The view would have been better had Hong Kong not been covered in mist. The ride up might have been at even more than a 45 degree angle, which made for some interesting pictures.

Next Daniel took us to see the less glamorous side of the city. We took a boat ride around the bay where some residents live on their own boats and fish for a living. They don’t pay property taxes as a result, but they were granted 90 year licenses to the owners of the boat, and when the person with the license dies it is unrenewable, so the family has to leave their boat. The government then sets them up in subsidized housing, which Daniel said consists of a “condo” of 160 square feet. One room. 14x9ish. Terrible.

Wednesday night almost all of us went to a hot pot restaurant. What happens is you order a broth (or three in our case) on a heated pad and then you order meats, veggies, noodles, etc and cook them in your hotpot yourselves. Somewhat labor intensive but quite a lot of fun. And very cheap, as most all local food is.

Thursday was our first day of meetings.Unicom was our first stop. They are one of the three telecommunication companies serving Hong Kong and Mainland China. Interesting points from that visit include learning that a few years ago the government (70% shareholders in Unicom) decided to restructure the industry. Unicom was burdened with a low profit part of the industry, and their stock prices declined accordingly. About 50-70% of all of the businesses in China have non-privately owned. I won’t be investing in any companies that the government can just do their bidding with.

We moved on the HKTDC, which none of us knew what it was going in (we figured HK stood for Hong Kong but that’s as far as we could get). Turns out it was the Hong Kong (yes!) Trade Development Center. They help foreign and domestic companies form partnerships, and give overall business information to whoever needs it. They had an extensive library, and all of their resources are open to the public.

Lunch. Was. Amazing. Daniel is my new favorite tour guide. He took us to an Italian/Indian Restaurant (Weird combination, I know) and we were able to PICK an appetizer, main course and dessert from the pre-selected list. I went with I went with the cantaloupe ham salad…best cantaloupe I’ve had in awhile, ravioli and tiramisu. A ma zing. May go traditional with dinner tonight…I should probably have at least something legit each day. We randomly ran into one of the MBAs not on the trip and are going to dinner with her...apparently she is stopping here on her way back from Bangkok and Phuket. She doesn't like 'how cold' it is here (50's) because I guess Phuket was in the 90's. Maybe i'll go there next year. No more northern hemisphere winter vacations.

The afternoon we visited Kerry Logistics. They're kind of like a UPS or FedEx. That's really all that is relevant. I was kinda falling asleep due to food coma during the presentation.

A few of us went to a suit tailor recommended by Daniel. They didn't have any pictures or examples of styles so I wasn't going to fork over a few hundred on something I don't know what will look like. I've been pretty good about purchasing despite the cheapness of EVERYTHING. I got 'tricked' into buying 3 (more) ties last night, bringing my total up to *cough*six*cough*.

Aside from the relatively warm temperature and westernization of Hong Kong I am liking their lack of censorship. Today is the first day I've actually been able to post directly to the blog, Steph has been updating for me, and she’s done a FABULOUS job! I hope I don't mess it up. Facebook also exists again. I didn't really miss that too much, but felt VERY out of contact without it or my phone.

-R-

something is wrong here:

Angle-trolley:


electronics store, which Daniel said not to frequent because they are run by the chinese mafia, and generally give travelers problems. good advice!

Golf course on the mountain:View from the golf course, (I know a few people who would like this!)


random architecture:
i didn't know what this sign meant, but i knew it had to be awesome. turned out to be a playground. awesome.

poor house boats:
irony: (not more than 200 feet from the poverty above)

hot pot!!!!

view from unicom on the 75th floor:

All work and no play!

Monday, as anticipated, starting out pretty boring. We had a two hour commute to Suzhou, where they are, of course, developing a large business area. We visited two companies from Buffalo, which was cool. In the morning we visited Unifrax. Yay Sara! (They were her corporate champion/business sponsor for our first year at the school of management. They gave a lackluster presentation and tour of their facility.
Then we toured the Suzhou-Singapore Business complex. The two countries are working together in a sort of joint venture to help create business opportunities.
Lunch was underwhelming. As usual. We had a soup that had a creature in it native only to the Suzhou region. It looked like a salamander/eel. I did not try it. I feel like the restaurants are somewhat offended when we don’t eat all of the food but first of all they give us waaay too much, and second they rarely even tell us what the dishes are. We eat the things that look edible and familiar but only sometimes try the odd looking dishes.
The other night I had a chicken and vegetable dish. It was a bit spicy, but the meet had a lot of bones in it and was gross. At one point I was scooping food from the pot to my plate and found chicken feet chilling in the pot. I quickly lost what little appetite I had left. Contrary to popular belief, canine is not a menu item regularly found. Its apparently an expensive delicacy and the locals wouldn’t waste it by putting it into a foreigners meal randomly, so it would have to be ordered. Some members of the group did find it and try it at some point. It looked gross. I also did not try this.
After lunch we visited MY corporate champion from last year, Rich Products! We had a presentation on the company from a big whig…GM of Rich’s China. THEN we had one of their chef’s prepare THREE cakes for us. Two of the students helped. Then we ate them. It was delicious. I was in a VERY good mood then. It made the bus ride back much more bearable. I slept and read a bit.
Watching BBC news now…a pipe burst in the yellow river here in China so they are telling residents not to use water from the river. Sounds good, but the spill happened Wednesday, and they just released the information today. Fail.
Tuesday would have been almost a perfect day except for the cold. I thought Shanghai was supposed to be warmer!?! The problem is that very few establishments heat their buildings, be they offices or restaurants, everything seems to be at a cozy 50 degrees. We first visited SMIC, which is a Chinese firm that manufacturers electrical conductors. They are like Intel but not as advanced. In their presentation they spoke on their strategy of being a late mover into the market. They pretty much just wait for other companies to develop products then copy the designs. They just settled an intellectual property lawsuit for US 200 million. They’ve been in business for 10 years and their only year of profitability has been 2004, when they basically manipulated their product line in order to be profitable. Glad that business plan is working out for them! Hey, at least they like their company culture! Their original CEO (who had to leave due to the lawsuit) founded the company to produce conductors and spread Christianity to China, looks like he’s succeeded at neither! Which reminds me…side note from the other day…During the cultural revolution religion was illegal and such, but now the Chinese are allowed to practice four religions only…Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism aaand I can’t remember the fourth. Just a fun fact.
Another fun fact, have I mentioned how enormous China is? Learned today there are 238 cities with over 1 million people. TWO HUNDRED THIRTY EIGHT CITIES. That’s just insane. They also have the largest municipality in the world…I believe its called the Gangzou Province and it has 38 million people under its jurisdiction.
I do love hearing how China has the ‘most’ and ‘biggest’ of everything. OF COURSE YOU DO, you have a population of 1.3 BILLION people!!!
Anyways directly after the SMIC presentation a guy named Kent spoke to us about strategies for entry into China. He runs a consulting firm that he founded in 1985. He describes himself as a ‘China addict’ I would sure hope so if he’s been here for 25 years. Kent was VERY knowledgeable and gave some great advice for us if we were to ever decide to jump into the China biz. Unlikely for me, but you never know.
Lunch was held at the Pu Dung (new Shanghai) Shangri-la. As in, the world class hotel chain Shangri-la. It was magnificent. We had the CEO of HSBC China (no big deal) speak to us for about an hour and a half. He was really really cool. And British. So even if he wasn’t talking about really interesting things his accent would have been entertaining enough just to listen to. But it turned out to be a double bonus. He was very genuine and made banking actually seem somewhat interesting. It was funny to learn that the financial markets are actually highly regulated in China (as well as stock market being government controlled). The banks actually have more restrictions than U.S. Firms. For example, they can only lend $80 for every $100 deposited. This being the opposite of what happened with Lehman brothers in the US, where they were loaning way more money than they had. Nice work on this one, China.
After lunch we had a presentation at GM Shanghai, which is a joint venture between GM and the Chinese (government run) car company SAIC. We actually did a case on the joint venture in class so we knew a bit about them going in. The case was about when GM first entered China, it had to have a partner, and SAIC was the largest firm available for this type of business in China so they teamed up 50/50 in the joint venture. SAIC didn’t have any car models of their own coming in, nor did they know anything about making cars. GM would teach them how to make cars and together they would manufacture and sell them. What ended up happening is the plans for vehicles “got leaked” to SAIC (intellectual property transfer was not part of the agreement) and GM sort of got the short stick. They did end up resolving it and have been happily married ever since, but SAIC is going to break away from GM at some point and inevitably become the largest manufacturer of cars in the world, using the knowledge gained from GM. GM knew this going in (as our presenter told us today), but GM has made $3 billion (50% of the 6 billion revenue made) so far. Basically GM could have sat on the sidelines and SAIC would have eventually gotten manufacturing knowledge anyways, and GM wouldn’t have been cashing in on the Chinese market at all.
Seeing a trend in this thievery by Chinese government? Me too. It seems if in China if you can’t beat em (stop them from stealing), join em (jump into the market). I would really like to get Kent (consulting firm from today) together with the lawyer we met with in Beijing last week. While they both acknowledge the problems with regulation, one is very optimistic the other quite the opposite idea of how the successful China will be with the limitations of its corrupt government.
So far so good I suppose, Goldman Sachs just projected an 11% increase in GDP for China in 2010.
Maybe the U.S. will have positive growth.
-R-
p.s. they are still playing (American) Christmas music here. Its entertaining.
Pictures include Shuzhou-Singapore industrial center, Rich’s, up close and personal with downtown giant buildings (the two are affectionately known as bottle and bottle opener…see earlier pics from far away to understand the bottle opener….it was the one that is the second tallest in the world), and Shangri-la atrium