Day 12 – This morning we went to Lenovo. Once inside Michelle and I were playing mahjong on one of the big touch screen computers. A Lenovo worker came out and asked Matt to throw a paper plane into a hole. The whole Lenovo tour was completely interactive and a huge marketing deal. Lenovo is a huge company in China and wants to beat out apple for computer sales. Lenovo had a lot of new touch screen computers, tablets, and a 3D TV. Lenovo played a big part in the Beijing Olympics, they helped design the torch. They also have a military computer that can be run over by a tank and still function and a computer that works underwater. I will probably never have a Lenovo computer but it was still cool to learn about how the company works.
For lunch we went to a really nice restaurant for Peking duck. This was the meal we had been looking forward to all trip. We were still in our business casual clothes so we fit in the restaurant. All of the Chinese restaurants have the large lazy Susan in the middle of the table and this meal was no different. Over to the side you could see the cooks preparing the ducks for us. The restaurant gave a certificate with each duck served proving its authenticity. First, the waiter brought out the duck skin. It was very crispy and tasted good. Next, little thin pancakes were brought out for the duck and the actual duck meat was brought out. You could put the duck in the pancakes with plum sauce, veggies, and sugar if you wanted it. It made a little burrito and tasted very good. Some other food at this meal that I really enjoyed was the shrimp fired rice, asparagus, and chicken. The duck’s head was also brought out and one kid at our table ate the brain. I didn’t really want to try that, so I stuck with the meat.
We had our next to last lesson of the trip with an older Chinese woman today. She had very good English and has traveled all over the world. She gave us charts to help us understand the Chinese politics. The charts had the name an years of all of the Dynasties and the order of importance of the people in china. While she was speaking I was listening and practicing drawing Chinese characters. I have Beijing, north, south, east, and west down.
After our lesson our good friend Ruby took us to the silk market. Only a small number of us went and the rest of the group went to hang out at the hotel and work on our business plan presentations. WE had to take the subway to get there and we went at a really bad time. It was very crowded and the subway workers literally pushed people into the trains. I am very thankful that I do not have to be in that type of crowd every day. At the silk market I had my fun bargaining. The workers there do not like when we bargain because they aren’t making as much money on us as opposed to the people who don’t know you can bargain and pay the original price. I was bargaining with one man for key chains and wanted to pay 5 rmb and he wanted 50 or so. At first he thought I was British and wanted to pay 5 pounds. When I told him I was American he told me “Ahh Americans. I hate Americans. I want to kill them.” So I told him I didn’t want his key chains anymore and walked away. My favorite purchase of the night was my pearl necklace. It is my birthstone and my name means pearl in Greek so I thought it would be appropriate to get some for a good price in China.
Once we went back to the hotel we still needed to work on our business plan, but we hadn’t had dinner yet. We decided to be lazy and order McDonalds again. We tried ordering a big Mac combo and 3 cheeseburger combos. We ended up getting 3 cheeseburgers and 3 big macs. It wasn’t what we wanted exactly but we were tired and hungry so it was close enough.
fawcettplus3china2012 